SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
THE TUTU DOCTRINE – THE NEW WORLD ORDER
To
understand the changes in the new edition of A Course in
Miracles, called ACIM, the new, published by the World Service of
http://acim-ekim.org/
an explanation is needed as to how the concepts of the Course
have been changed seen through the eyes of the principles of The
TuTu Doctrine - The New World Order.
A
Course in Miracles, the original exclusively
uses the masculine principle to explain how the Spiritual and the
earthly are related, and The TuTu Doctrine - The New World
Order uses both the masculine principle and the feminine principle
for these explanations.
The
TuTu Doctrine – The New World Order
perceives the merged masculine and feminine principle to be an
individual Spirit, who is the personal God of a creaturemanifestation,
and in the personal God, the masculine principle is perceived to be the
power of creation and the feminine principle to be the power of
manifestation.
In the
below four graphs the black areas are perceived to be an illustration of
the unmanifested masculine principle God the Father as the two black
fish and God the Son as the two black circles, and together they make up
the creating principle.
The white areas are perceived to be an illustration of the unmanifested
feminine principle Goddess the Mother as the two white fish and Goddess
the Daughter as the two white circles, and together they make up the
manifesting principle.
In the
same way the son of humankind holds the creating principle in the form
of the Seed of Love and the daughter of humankind holds the manifesting
principle in the form of the Egg of Love.
Goddess the Mother and Goddess the Daughter are perceived to be the
veiled feminine principle, the Holy Spirit, whom God now wants to lift
the veil from and as the manifesting principle the Holy Spirit
understands both the unmanifest and the manifest and can therefore
translate the unmanifest to the manifest and the manifest to the
unmanifest.
The
second graph is an illustration of the archetype, which is that field of
energy, who holds all the individual Spirits, createdmanifested by God
and that field of energy is called the God Realm or the Spirit plane.
This
energy field is also
called the universal and impersonal God of all individual Spirits and
their creaturesmanifestations,
because the archetype not only holds a single individual Spirit, but
all
individual Spirits and their creationsmanifestations.
Each individual and personal Spirit in the archetype is God’s
SonDaughter and holds the merged masculine and feminine principle in the
same way as God HimHerself, and all God’s SonsDaughters put together
make up the SonDaughtership, who is the God Realm.
In the
archetype, the individual Spirit is considered to be an individual and
personal pattern for each single Spirit, and the relation between the
archetype X and the individual part Y is being set up in the equation:
X
= (Y x Z) + S
multiplying
Y
by Z, who is the number of the parts and adding S, which is the
synthesis of them, as the synthesis of the parts is greater than the sum
of the individual parts, in the same way that an alarm clock is more
than the sum of its individual parts, and this archetype is what
humankind generally refer to as God.
The third
graph illustrates the merged masculine and feminine principle, in the
form of the heart, accentuated with red color, and that illustrates the
oneness that holds the warmth of God the Father’s, Goddess the Mother’s,
God the Son’s and Goddess the Daughter’s mutual heart and the two areas
outside the heart illustrates the individuality that holds the cold of
God the Father and God the Son and Goddess the Mother and Goddess the
Daughter.
The
fourth graph illustrates the Holy Grail, the Absolute Oneness that holds
the unconditional love, care, compassion and mercy of the Heart’s Heart
in the merged masculine and feminine principle, accentuated with red
color.
The
following four graphs illustrate this:
When
a desire arose in an individual Spirit to see hisher Spirit Mate, hisher
Eternal Beloved in a new perspective, heshe projected a mirror image of
himherself into the Ocean of Love, that is the nourishment of the all,
in that event, which is called 'the big bang'.
In this nuclear fission, the masculine and the feminine principle were
separated into a 'he' and a 'she', and in the individual Spirit’s
creationmanifestation of the Soul plane arose in the separated ones. the
four basic emotions: love, fear, pain and joy.
Because of the separation, fear of having lost hisher Spirit Mate,
hisher Eternal Beloved arose in the process of separation.
This fear is the basic pain of the Soul plane, but the joy re-arose when
the separated ones discovered that their Spirit Mate, their Eternal
Beloved still was to be found together with them inside the Cosmic Egg.
This ‘he’ and this ‘she’ are called Soul Mates, and below
are
two graphs, which first illustrates two individual Soul Mates followed
by a graph illustrating the archetype of Soul Mates that is called the
Soul plane or the Soul Realm.
THE
ARCHETYPE OF THE SOULMATES
Thus, the
changes in the use of language will be:
When it concerns ‘Heaven’ the words ‘God Realm’ are used instead, if it
concerns the Spirit plane and if it concerns the Soul plane the words
‘the Soul Realm’ are used.
Furthermore, the word Soul is changed to the words ‘individual Spirit,
or merely ‘Spirit’ in those places, where it concerns the Spirit plane
and the word ‘Soul’ where it concerns the Soul plane.
Instead
of the words Christ Mind or the word Christ is used the words Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness, which is a term for the state of the
consciousness of mercy, which comes to expression in a person who has a
personal contact with his/her chosen Higher Power, has surrendered
his/her will and his/her life to the care of his/her chosen Higher Power
and has attained a spiritual awakening to a state of mercy towards those
who still suffer.
For the
God Realm, instead of the word ‘He’ for God the word ‘HeShe’ is used,
instead of ‘Himself’ is used ‘HimHerself’, ‘FatherMother’ instead of
‘Father’, ‘SonDaughter’ is used instead of Son, and the word
‘SonDaughtership’ instead of ‘Sonship’.
Furthermore,
the
word ‘CreatorManifestor’ is used instead of ‘Creator’ to include the
feminine principle, because the masculine principle is the Creator and
the feminine principle is the Manifestor, just like it is on Earth,
where the man’s seed is the creating power and the woman’s egg is the
manifesting power.
Capital beginning letters are used for God, the FatherMother as the
CreatorManifestor, and lower case beginning letters are used for the
creatormanifestor, when it concerns God, the SonDaughter.
For the
SonDaughtership in the God Realm is used the word ‘heshe’ with lower
case letters to show whether it concerns the SonDaughter or the
FatherMother, who is written with capital as ‘HeShe’.
The word
the LordLady is used instead of the Lord.
When it
concerns the Soul plane, the word He/She is used for the Father/Mother,
which means He or She or He and She,
as He and She have become separated in ‘the big bang’ and thus become
two instead of one because of the nuclear fission.
‘He’ is
the masculine Soul, God the Father and God the Son and ‘She’ is the
feminine Soul Goddess Mother and Goddess the Daughter, and furthermore
is used the Creator/Manifestor instead of Creator, where /
also stands for or or for and.
To make a
distinction between God the Father and Goddess the Mother that are
written as ‘He/She’ and God the Son and Goddess the Daughter at Soul
level lower case letters for ‘he/she’ are used for God the Son and
Goddess the Daughter.
The
feminine principle Goddess the Mother and Goddess the Daughter, who are
one both at the Spirit plane and the Soul plane, are perceived to be the
Holy Spirit and will therefore be referred to as ‘She’ instead of ‘He’,
and when She is mentioned as God’s Teacher teacher will
be written with capital T and the feminine form ‘Teacheress’
will be used.
In all
contexts that concerns the human being the words ‘man/woman’ are used
instead of ‘man’, and where the word ‘he’ is used the words ‘he/she’ is
used instead.
___________________________________________________________
Now four
editions exists beyond the original short hand notes by Helen Schuchman.
An edition of the
original, as it was written down more or less stenographically by Helen
Schucman and typewritten by and discussed with William T. Thetford, can
be found in an edited version, published by 'Foundation for inner
peace', which Helen Schucman chose to edit together with Kenneth
Wapnick, so that the areas of the original edition, which Helen Schucman
did not think should be there were removed, and the edited version can
be found for free here:
https://acim.org/digital-editions/
As
described below in the foreword to the original version of A Course in
Miracle by JCIM, which stands for Jesus' Course in Miracles, also called
the original, which came to light after 'Foundation for inner peace' had
released their version, and the JCIM group undertook to write the
original down with that, which had been edited away by Helen Schucman
and Kenneth Wapnick, and that edition can be found for free here:
https://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php
Circle of
Atonement made an annotated version of the Course that is different from
the Original because it includes Helen Schucman's handwritten notes from
the first four chapters on sex and personal mistakes, which had been
edited away by Helen Schucman and Kenneth Wapnick, and the four chapters
exist for free on the link below in addition to their suboriginal notes
on link number two:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z4t54On1IbLX0F_pcnoGKdxNIbQ39fL8/view
http://www.jcim.net/Images/Notes_Transcript.pdf
The above
mentioned texts include exclusively the masculine principle in their
explanations about the connection between the earthly and the spiritual,
and the new edition uses the original as a basis to include the feminine
principle of these explanations, as they come to expression in the TuTu
Doctrine - The New World Order, which is available for free here:
The new
edition of A Course in Miracles can be found for free at the link below,
which contains the original in English in the original language and in
Danish translation as well as the new edition in both Danish and
English, so the student has the opportunity to compare the English
original, plus the Danish translation of the original with the English
and Danish version of the new edition found here:
To understand the changes in
the new edition of A Course in
Miracles, called ACIM, the new, published by the World Service of
http://acim-ekim.org/
an explanation is needed as to how the
concepts of the Course have
been changed seen through the eyes of the principles of The
TuTu Doctrine - The New World Order.
A Course in Miracles, the original
exclusively uses the masculine principle to explain how the Spiritual
and the earthly are related, and The
TuTu Doctrine - The New World Order uses both the masculine
principle and the feminine principle for these explanations.
The TuTu Doctrine – The New World Order
perceives the merged masculine and feminine principle to be an
individual Spirit, who is the personal God of a creaturemanifestation,
and in the personal God, the masculine principle is perceived to be the
power of creation and the feminine principle to be the power of
manifestation.
In the below four graphs the
black areas are perceived to be an illustration of the unmanifested
masculine principle God the Father as the two black fish and God the Son
as the two black circles, and together they make up the creating
principle.
The white areas are perceived to be an illustration of the unmanifested
feminine principle Goddess the Mother as the two white fish and Goddess
the Daughter as the two white circles, and together they make up the
manifesting principle.
In the same way the son of
humankind holds the creating principle in the form of the Seed of Love
and the daughter of humankind holds the manifesting principle in the
form of the Egg of Love.
Goddess the Mother and Goddess the Daughter are perceived to be the
veiled feminine principle, the Holy Spirit, whom God now wants to lift
the veil from and as the manifesting principle the Holy Spirit
understands both the unmanifest and the manifest and can therefore
translate the unmanifest to the manifest and the manifest to the
unmanifest.
The second graph is an
illustration of the archetype, which is that field of energy, who holds
all the individual Spirits, createdmanifested by God and that field of
energy is called the God Realm or the Spirit plane.
This energy field is also
called the universal and impersonal God of all creaturesmanifestations,
because the archetype not only holds a single creature’smanifestation’s
individual and personal God, but the individual and personal God of all
creaturesmanifestations, who are all aspects of Gud HimHerself same way
as the liver is an aspect of a human body, but not the whole body, and
each individual spirit has hisher function same way as each aspekt of
the human body has its own function.
Each individual and personal Spirit in the archetype is an aspect of
God’s SonDaughter and holds the merged masculine and feminine principle
in the same way as God HimHerself, and all God’s SonsDaughters put
together make up the SonDaughtership, who is the God Realm.
In the archetype, the
individual Spirit is considered to be an individual and personal pattern
for each single Spirit, and the relation between the archetype X and the
individual part Y is being set up in the equation:
X
= (Y x Z) + S
multiplying Y by Z, who is the
number of the parts and adding S, which is the synthesis of them, as the
synthesis of the parts is greater than the sum of the individual parts,
in the same way that an alarm clock is more than the sum of its
individual parts, and this archetype is what humankind generally refer
to as God.
The third graph illustrates the merged masculine
and feminine principle, in the form of the heart, accentuated with red
color, and that illustrates the oneness that holds the warmth of God the
Father’s, Goddess the Mother’s, God the Son’s and Goddess the Daughter’s
mutual heart and the two areas outside the heart illustrates the
individuality that holds the cold of God the Father and God the Son and
Goddess the Mother and Goddess the Daughter.
The fourth graph illustrates the Holy Grail, the
Absolute Oneness that holds the unconditional love, care, compassion and
mercy of the Heart’s Heart in the merged masculine and feminine
principle, accentuated with red color.
The
following four graphs illustrate this:
When a desire arose in an individual Spirit to
see hisher Spirit Mate, hisher Eternal Beloved in a new perspective,
heshe projected a mirror image of himherself into the Ocean of Love,
that is the nourishment of the all, in that event, which is called 'the
big bang'.
In this nuclear fission, the masculine and the feminine principle were
separated into a 'he' and a 'she', and in the individual Spirit’s
creationmanifestation of the Soul plane arose in the separated ones. The
four basic emotions: love, fear, pain and joy.
Because of the separation, fear of having lost hisher Spirit Mate,
hisher Eternal Beloved arose in the process of separation.
This fear is the basic pain of the Soul plane, but the joy re-arose when
the separated ones discovered that their Spirit Mate, their Eternal
Beloved still was to be found together with them inside the Cosmic Egg.
This ‘he’ and this ‘she’ are called Soul Mates, and below
are
two graphs, which first illustrates two individual Soul Mates followed
by a graph illustrating the archetype of Soul Mates that is called the
Soul plane or the Soul Realm.
THE
ARCHETYPE
OF THE SOULMATES
Thus, the changes in the
use of language will be:
When it concerns ‘Heaven’ the words ‘God Realm’ are used instead, if it
concerns the Spirit plane and if it concerns the Soul plane the words
‘the Soul Realm’ are used.
Furthermore, the word Soul is changed to the words ‘individual Spirit,
or merely ‘Spirit’ in those places, where it concerns the Spirit plane
and the word ‘Soul’ where it concerns the Soul plane.
Instead of the words
Christ Mind or the word Christ is used the words Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness, which is a term for the state of the
consciousness of mercy, which comes to expression in a person who has a
personal contact with his/her chosen Higher Power, has surrendered
his/her will and his/her life to the care of his/her chosen Higher Power
and has attained a spiritual awakening to a state of mercy towards those
who still suffer.
For the God Realm, instead
of the word ‘He’ for God the word ‘HeShe’ is used, instead of ‘Himself’
is used ‘HimHerself’, ‘FatherMother’ instead of ‘Father’, ‘SonDaughter’
is used instead of Son, and the word ‘SonDaughtership’ instead of
‘Sonship’.
Furthermore, the word
‘CreatorManifestor’ is used instead of ‘Creator’ to include the feminine
principle, because the masculine principle is the Creator and the
feminine principle is the Manifestor, just like it is on Earth, where
the man’s seed is the creating power and the woman’s egg is the
manifesting power.
Capital beginning letters are used for God, the FatherMother as the
CreatorManifestor, and lower case beginning letters are used for the
creatormanifestor, when it concerns God, the SonDaughter.
For the SonDaughtership in
the God Realm is used the word ‘heshe’ with lower case letters to show
whether it concerns the SonDaughter or the FatherMother, who is written
with capital as ‘HeShe’.
The word the LordLady is
used instead of the Lord.
When it concerns the Soul
plane, the word He/She is used for the Father/Mother, which means He or
She or He and She, as He and She have become separated in ‘the big bang’ and
thus become two instead of one because of the nuclear fission.
‘He’ is the masculine
Soul, God the Father and God the Son and ‘She’ is the feminine Soul
Goddess Mother and Goddess the Daughter, and furthermore is used the
Creator/Manifestor instead of Creator, where /
also stands for or or for and.
To make a distinction
between God the Father and Goddess the Mother that are written as
‘He/She’ and God the Son and Goddess the Daughter at Soul level lower
case letters for ‘he/she’ are used for God the Son and Goddess the
Daughter.
The feminine principle
Goddess the Mother and Goddess the Daughter, who are one both at the
Spirit plane and the Soul plane, are perceived to be the Holy Spirit and
will therefore be referred to as ‘She’ instead of ‘He’, and when She is
mentioned as God’s Teacher will teacher be written with capital T and
the feminine form ‘Teacheress’ will be used.
In all contexts that
concerns the human being the words ‘man/woman’ are used instead of
‘man’, and where the word ‘he’ is used the words ‘he/she’ is used
instead.
___________________________________________________________
Now four editions exists
beyond the original short hand notes by Helen Schuchman.
An
edition of the original, as it was written down more or less
stenographically by Helen Schucman and typewritten by and discussed with
William T. Thetford, can be found in an edited version, published by
'Foundation for inner peace', which Helen Schucman chose to edit
together with Kenneth Wapnick, so that the areas of the original
edition, which Helen Schucman did not think should be there were
removed, and the edited version can be found for free here:
https://acim.org/digital-editions/
As described below in the
foreword to the original version of A Course in Miracle by JCIM, which
stands for Jesus' Course in Miracles, also called the original, which
came to light after 'Foundation for inner peace' had released their
version, and the JCIM group undertook to write the original down with
that, which had been edited away by Helen Schucman and Kenneth Wapnick,
and that edition can be found for free here:
https://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php
Circle of Atonement made
an annotated version of the Course that is different from the Original
because it includes Helen Schucman's handwritten notes from the first
four chapters on sex and personal mistakes, which had been edited away
by Helen Schucman and Kenneth Wapnick, and the four chapters exist for
free on the link below in addition to their suboriginal notes on link
number two:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z4t54On1IbLX0F_pcnoGKdxNIbQ39fL8/view
http://www.jcim.net/Images/Notes_Transcript.pdf
The above mentioned texts
include exclusively the masculine principle in their explanations about
the connection between the earthly and the spiritual, and the new
edition uses the original as a basis to include the feminine principle
of these explanations, as they come to expression in the TuTu Doctrine -
The New World Order, which is available for free here:
The new edition of A
Course in Miracles can be found for free at the link below, which
contains the original in English in the original language and in Danish
translation as well as the new edition in both Danish and English, so
the student has the opportunity to compare the English original, plus
the Danish translation of the original with the English and Danish
version of the new edition found here:
This
course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are
not alone. No one who calls on HimHer can call in vain. Whatever
troubles you, be certain that HeShe has the answer and will gladly
give it to you if you simply turn to HimHer and ask it of HimHer.
HeShe will not withhold all answers that you need for anything that
seems to trouble you. HeShe knows the way to solve all problems and
resolve all doubts. HisHer certainty is yours. You need but ask it of
HimHer, and it will be given you.
You
are as certain of arriving home as is the pathway of the sun laid down
before it rises, after it has set, and in the half-lit hours in
between. Indeed, your pathway is more certain still, for it cannot be
possible to change the course of those whom God has called to HimHer.
Therefore obey your will, and follow HimHer Whom you accepted as your
Voice, to speak of what you really want and really need. HisHer is the
Voice for God, and also yours. And thus HeShe speaks of freedom and of
truth.[1]
With these words, A Course in Miracles
concludes its prescribed curriculum of 365 daily lessons, and it is with
these words, too, that we begin our study.
A
Course in Miracles
(often called just "the Course") is a self-study course for
retraining the mind that is spiritual, rather than religious, in its
perspective. Although it uses Christian terminology, it is ecumenical in
its approach, and its underlying ontology is reminiscent of ancient
refrains, echoing the world's most hallowed traditions.
The Course is pragmatic in its method,
and its aim is a peaceful mind: "Knowledge is not the motivation for
learning this course. Peace is.[2]
Nevertheless, the Course frequently emphasizes its simplicity.[3]
The story of the Course began when, in
the midst of an environment of intense competition and negative
attitudes, Columbia University clinical psychologist Dr. William T.
Thetford decided he had had enough and declared to his colleague, Dr.
Helen Schucman, "There must be another way, and I'm determined to find
it." Dr. Schucman vowed to help him.
What ensued was a dramatic progression of waking
dreams for Schucman, which culminated in October 1965 with her
experience of a voice which spoke clearly in her mind, saying "This is a
course in miracles. Please take notes."
With Thetford's support and assistance in
transcribing her shorthand notes, Schucman took down some fifteen
hundred typewritten pages of A Course in Miracles over a
period of seven years.
Schucman did not claim to be the author of the
material herself. As she often explained, she heard a kind of inner
dictation and she felt compelled to write it down, even though at times
she disagreed with the content and resisted the process. The voice which
spoke through Helen clearly identifies himself as Jesus. Nonetheless,
one need not be Christian nor accept Christianity's traditional
doctrines to benefit from the teachings of the Course. Indeed,
traditional Christians will at first find many of the pronouncements
contained in this work to be startling and perhaps unbelievable.
Persistence and open-mindedness will nevertheless be rewarded.
The dictation of A Course in Miracles
was completed in September 1972 and resulted in three volumes - the
Text, the Workbook for Students, and the Manual for Teachers. As the
development of the material progressed, Schucman and Thetford faced the
formidable task of organizing the original typescript (often called the
"Urtext") into what would become A Course in Miracles. They
divided the Text into chapters and sections and gave titles to each, and
they removed a great deal of material from the early chapters, material
they believed was meant for them personally, not for the Course.
The edition that resulted from those efforts is the book you hold in
your hands.
The Text volume of the Original Edition
has undergone an evolutionary process since the 1972 manuscript of A
Course in Miracles was discovered and released on the internet in
late 1999. In early 2000 Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) printed the
1972 manuscript of the text as Jesus' Course in Miracles.
Distribution of that book was suspended during the continuance of the
copyright litigation, which was concluded in 2006.
In November 2006 the initial printing of the Original
Edition (referred to as the 2006 Printing), containing the
Workbook for Students and Manual for Teachers in addition to the Text,
was released. The 2006 Printing corrected numerous typographic errors,
misspellings, and aberrant punctuation that had appeared in the original
1972 manuscript and which were reproduced in the Jesus' Course in
Miracles edition.
There was a second printing in 2009 (referred to
as the 2009 Printing) which continued the process of correcting errors
in the manuscript. In this undertaking the editors for the first time
looked back to earlier manuscripts and restored material that appeared
to have been inadvertently or mistakenly omitted in retyping. This
process of restoration has continued through the 2012, 2017, and 2018
Printings, adhering always to the fundamental directive, "fidelity to
Source." Among the improvements, beginning with the 2012 Printing, was
the updating of paragraph numbering in Chapters 2, 9, 26, and 27,
necessitated mainly by the restoration of material from an earlier
manuscript. Paragraph renumbering is described in footnotes where
pertinent.
In its continuing evolution, this Original
Edition faithfully reproduces the original transcript of the book
that was the result of the collaboration between Schucman and Thetford,
whom many believe were involved with each other in the "holy
relationship" described in Chapters 17 through 22 of the Text. This
edition preserves the original language of the dictation of those
chapters, which were addressed to the two collaborators as they worked
together to produce the manuscript. Later editing of the manuscript
changed the focus of these important chapters and addresses them to a
solitary reader, removing the mutuality that is explicit in the original
dictation.
It seems clear that this Original Edition is
what Schucman and Thetford originally intended to be A Course in
Miracles. However, in 1973 Ken Wapnick, who had joined their small
circle and received a copy of the 1972 manuscript, expressed his belief
that further editing was needed. Thetford withdrew from further detailed
editing work, and Schucman and Wapnick resumed the editing process.
Along with changes in paragraphing, punctuation, capitalization, and
section titles, there was a great deal of line-by-line editing. In
addition, about one-fifth of the material in the first five chapters was
removed. Finally, a new section, the Clarification of Terms, was added.
The resulting edition, published in 1975 by the Foundation for Inner
Peace, became the Course with which the world would become familiar.
While we honor that edition of the Course,
we believe that the additional editing resulted both in shifts of
meaning and a change in the over-all tone of the work. When encountering
Schucman and Thetford's Original Edition, students often find fresh
clarity as they read its wording or new understanding as they encounter
passages that were not included in the later 1975 edition. In the case
of editing, it seems to us that the "less-is-best" rule applies—the less
tampering with the eloquent and carefully worded dictation that Schucman
received, the better.
In this Original Edition, we have
taken great care in dealing with the editorial issues presented by the
original typed manuscript. Our focus has been upon reproducing as nearly
as possible the content as it was originally given to Schucman and
Thetford. It is to be noted, however, that there are a few occasions
where we encountered material from the original dictation that appears
to have been inadvertently or mistakenly dropped in the early retyping.
In those instances, we have re-inserted the missing lines, noting our
addition by placing the inserted material in square brackets. Otherwise,
the only changes that have been made to the original manuscript of the Course
as completed by Schucman and Thetford have been to correct obvious
typographic errors and misspellings, to standardize punctuation and
capitalization, and to format the material for print publication. Apart
from the simple section and paragraph numbering which we include for
ease of reference and navigation, nothing has been added to or omitted
from the work.
We would be remiss were we to fail to
acknowledge the selfless support provided to the Course in Miracles
Society by its members and others. From its earliest days, the work of
the Society has been enabled by tireless contributions of labor and
generous financial support provided by many individuals whose only
compensation has been the satisfaction of fostering the circulation of
this sacred writing in the world. Publication of this edition, in
particular, has been underwritten by a substantial grant from a member
who wishes to remain anonymous. To those supporters and all of our
members, we extend a sincere "thank you." We are most grateful.
1
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you
take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the
curriculum. It means only that you may elect what you want to take at a
given time.
2
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is
beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks
to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance.
The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no
opposite.
3
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
5
Herein lies the peace of God.
1.1
There is no order of difficulty among miracles. One is not "harder" or
"bigger" than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love
are maximal.
2. 2
Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their
Source, Which is far beyond human evaluation.
3. 3
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the
love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love
is a miracle.
4. 4
All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. HisHer Voice will
direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.
5. 5
Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under
conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.
6. 6
Miracles are natural. When they do not occur, something has gone
wrong.
7. 7
Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.
8. 8
Miracles are [a form of] healing because they supply a lack in that they
are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who
temporarily have less.
9. 9
Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are
always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the
physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and
the receiver.
10. 10
The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is wrong, or
better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used for
and by believers.
11. 11
Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of
the createdmanifested with the CreatorManifestor. Through prayer love is
received, and through miracles love is expressed.
12. 12
Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent lower-order or
higher-order reality. This is the basic distinction between
intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical and the other
createsmanifests the Spiritual, and we believe in what we make or
createmanifest.
13. 13
Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus alter the temporal
order. They are always affirmations of rebirth which seem to go back but
really go forward. They undo the past in the present and thus release
the future.
14. 14
Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise
from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which
is mindless and therefore destructive, or rather the
uncreativeunmanifestive use of mind.
15. 15
Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable
a man/woman to learn to use it constructively. Time is thus a teaching
device and a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful
in facilitating learning.
16. 16
Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is as blessed to
give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the
giver and supply strength to the receiver.
17. 17
Miracles are the transcendence of the body. They are sudden shifts into
invisibility, away from a sense of lower-order reality. That is why they
heal.
18. 18
A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service one individual can
render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The
doer recognizes his/her own and his/her neighbor's inestimable worth
simultaneously.
19. 19
[Miracles make Souls one in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness.] They depend on cooperation because the SonDaughtership
is the sum of all Spirits God createdmanifested. Miracles therefore rest
on the laws of eternity, not of time.
20. 20
Miracles reawaken the awareness that the Spirit, not the body, is the
altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power
of the miracle.
21. 21
Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles,
a man/woman accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others.
22. 22
Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacious belief
that darkness can hide. The man/woman believes that what he/she
cannot see does not exist, and his/her physical eyes cannot see in the
dark. This is a very primitive solution and has led to a denial of the
Spiritual eye. The escape from darkness involves two stages:
A. 23
The recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually
entails fear.
B. 24
The recognition that there is nothing you want to hide, even if
you could. This step brings escape from fear.
23. 25
Miracles rearrange perception and place the levels of perception in true
perspective. This heals at all levels because sickness comes
from confusing the levels.
26
When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be
willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy.
Your commitment is not yet total, and that is why you still have more to
learn than to teach. When your equilibrium stabilizes, you will be able
to teach as much as you learn, which will give you the proper balance.
Meanwhile, remember that no effort is wasted, for unless you remember
this, you cannot avail yourselves of my efforts, which are
limitless. Only eternity is real. Why not use the illusion of time
constructively?
24. 27
Miracles enable a man/woman to heal the sick and raise the dead because
he/she made sickness and death himself/herself and can abolish both. You
are a miracle, capable of creatingmanifesting in the likeness of your
CreatorManifestor. Everything else is only your own nightmare and does
not exist. Only the creationsmanifestations of light are real.
25. 28
Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when
completed, is the Atonement. This process works all the time and in all
the dimensions of time.
29
I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook
to begin. When you offer a miracle unto any of my brothers/sisters, you
do it unto yourself and me. The reason you come before me
is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the
end in case you fail temporarily. The purpose of my part in the
Atonement is the canceling out of all lacks of love which men/women
could not otherwise correct. The word "sin" should be changed to "lack
of love" because "sin" is a man/woman-made word with threat connotations
which he/she made up himself/herself. No real threat is involved
anywhere. Nothing is gained by frightening yourselves, and it is very
destructive to do so.
26. 30
Miracles represent freedom from fear. "Atoning" really means
"undoing." The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement
value of miracles.
31
The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you, or rather
to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were
createdmanifested, just as everyone was. When you have been restored to
the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the
Atonement yourself. As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love
in yourself and others, you must join the Great Crusade to correct it.
The slogan for the Crusade is "Listen, learn and do": Listen to
my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it.
The first two are not enough. The real members of my party are active
workers.
32
The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the
opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing
since you are already able. Doing them will bring conviction in the
ability, since conviction really comes through accomplishment. The
ability is the potential; the achievement is its expression; and the
Atonement is the purpose.
27. 33
A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my
brothers/sisters. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.
34
The disciples were specifically told to be physicians of the LordLady
and to heal others. They were also told to heal themselves and
were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement
is the natural profession of the Children of God because they have
professed me. "The God Realm and earth shall pass away" simply means
that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which
is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away, because life is
eternal. You are the work of God, and HisHer work is wholly
lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man/woman must think of
himself/herself in his/her heart because this is what he/she is.
28. 35
Miracles are a means of organizing different levels of consciousness.
36
Miracles come from the below or subconscious level. Revelations come
from the above or superconscious level. The conscious level is in
between and reacts to either sub- or superconscious impulses in varying
ratios. Consciousness is the level which engages in the world and is
capable of responding to both. Having no impulses from itself and being
primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong.
37
Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear.
It represents the original form of communication between God and HisHer
Spirits, involving an extremely personal sense of closeness to
creationmanifestation which the man/woman tries to find in physical
relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve this. The
subconscious impulses properly induce miracles, which are genuinely
interpersonal and result in real closeness to others. This can be
misunderstood by a personally willful consciousness as impulses
toward physical gratification.
38
Revelation unites Souls directly with God. Miracles unite [Souls]
directly with each other. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both
are experienced there. This is essential since consciousness is
the state which produces action, though it does not inspire it.
A man/woman is free to believe what he/she chooses, and what he/she does
attests to what he/she believes. The deeper levels of his/her
subconscious always contain the impulse to miracles, but he/she
is free to fill its more superficial levels, which are closer to
consciousness, with the impulses of this world and to identify
himself/herself with them. This results in denying
himself/herself access to the miracle level underneath. In conscious
actions, then, his/her relationships also become superficial, and
miracle-inspired relating becomes impossible.
29. 39
Miracles are a way of earning release from fear.
40
Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been
abolished. Miracles are thus a means, and revelation is an end. [In this
sense, they work together.] Miracles do not depend on revelation; they induce
it. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot actually be translated
into conscious content at all. That is why any attempt to describe it in
words is usually incomprehensible. Revelation induces only
experience. Miracles, on the other hand, induce [interpersonal] action.
Miracles are more useful now because of their impersonal nature.
In this phase of learning, working miracles is more important because
freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you.
30. 41
Miracles praise God through men/women. They praise God by honoring
HisHer creationsmanifestations, affirming their perfection. They heal
because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By
perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper
alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where individual Souls
can communicate directly.
31. 42
Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. A man/woman should thank God
for what he/she really is. The Children of God are very holy, and the
miracle honors their holiness.
43
God's creationsmanifestations never lose their holiness, although it can
be hidden. The miracle uncovers it and brings it into the light where it
belongs. Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but the
man/woman can deceive himself/herself about it. This illusion makes
him/her fearful because he/she knows in his/her heart it is an illusion,
and he/she exerts enormous efforts to establish its reality. The miracle
sets reality where it belongs. Eternal reality belongs only to the
Spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only the truth. It thus dispels the
man’s/woman’s illusions about himself/herself and puts him/her in
communion with himself/herself and God.
32. 44
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy inspires all miracles, which are
really intercessions. They intercede for the man’s/woman’s holiness and
make his/her perceptions holy. By placing him/her beyond the physical
laws, they raise him/her into the sphere of celestial order. In this
order, the man/woman is perfect.
45
The individual Spirit never loses its communion with God. Only the mind
needs Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness by placing the mind in the service
of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of the mind and
corrects its errors.
33. 46
Miracles honor the man/woman because he/she is lovable. They
dispel illusions about him/her and perceive the light in him/her. They
thus atone for his/her errors by freeing him/her from his/her own
nightmares. They release him/her from a prison in which he/she has
imprisoned himself/herself, and by freeing his/her mind from
illusions, they restore his/her sanity. The man’s/woman’s mind can
be possessed by illusions, but his/her Spirit is eternally free. If a
mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware
of the Spirit within it. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its
proper place. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.
34. 47
Miracles restore [the Soul] to its fullness. By atoning for lack, they
establish perfect protection. The strength of the Spirit leaves no room
for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Spirit, and they
forgive in return. It is the duty of the released to release their
brothers/sisters.
48
The forgiven are the means of Atonement. Those released by the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness must join in releasing
their brothers/sisters, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles
are the way in which minds which serve the Spirit unite with the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness for the salvation or release of
all God's creationsmanifestations.
35. 49
Miracles are expressions of love, but it does not follow that
they will have observable effects. I am the only one, who can perform
miracles indiscriminately because I am the Atonement. You have a
role in the Atonement, which I will dictate to you. Ask me
which miracles you should perform. This spares you exhaustion because
you will act under direct communication.
36. 50
Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness-controlled miracles are part of
the Atonement, but Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness-guidance is
personal and leads to personal salvation. The impersonal nature
of miracles is an essential ingredient because this enables me
to control their distribution. Christ Consciousness/Mercy
Consciousness-guidance leads to the highly personal experience
of revelation. This is why it involves personal choice. A guide
does not control, but he/she does direct, leaving the
following up to you. "Lead us not into temptation" means "guide us out
of our own errors." "Take up thy cross and follow me" means, "Recognize
your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance."
51
Remember that error cannot really threaten truth, which can always
withstand it. Only the error is really vulnerable. You are free
to establish your realm where you see fit, but the right choice is
inevitable if you remember this:
53
Atonement undoes all errors in this respect and thus uproots the real
source of fear. Whenever God's reassurances are experienced as threat,
it is always because you are defending misplaced and misdirected
loyalty. That is what projection always involves. Error is lack of love.
When the man/woman projects this onto others, he/she does
imprison them, but only to the extent that he/she reinforces errors they
have already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions
of others since their own perception of themselves is distorted.
The miracle worker can only bless and this undoes their
distortions and frees them from prison.
37. 54
Miracles are examples of right thinking. reality contact at all levels
becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of
intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer's perceptions
are aligned with truth as God createdmanifested it.
38. 55
A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by me.
It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing
it properly. This places the man/woman under the Atonement principle,
where his/her perception is healed. Until this has occurred, revelation
of the divine order is impossible.
39. 56
The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles because what It perceives
is true. It perceives both the creationsmanifestations of God and
the creationsmanifestations of the man/woman. Among the
creationsmanifestations of the man/woman, it can also separate the true
from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than
selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing,
which always involves the necessary distinction between the false and
the true.
40. 57
The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error
as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light,
darkness automatically disappears.
58
Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique
properties of its own. It is an example of the "scarcity" fallacy, from
which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those
who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for
driven behavior of any kind.
41. 59
The miracle acknowledges all men/women as your brothers/sisters and
mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God in them. The
specialness of God’s SonsDaughters does not stem from exclusion
but from inclusion. All my brothers/sisters are special. If they
believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes
distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the
SonDaughtership, is impaired in its relationships. Ultimately, every
member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him/her to
return because it blesses and honors him/her even though he/she may be
absent in Spirit.
60
"God is not mocked" is not a warning but a reassurance on this point.
God would be mocked if any of HisHer creationsmanifestations
lacked holiness. The creationmanifestation is whole, and the
mark of wholeness is holiness.
42. 61
Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It thus corrects or
atones for the faulty perception of lack anywhere.
62
Here we begin to make the fundamental distinction between miracles and
projection. The stimulus must precede the response and will also
determine the kind of response that is evoked. Behavior is
response, so that the question "response to what?" becomes crucial.
Since stimuli are identified through perception, you first perceive the
stimulus and then behave accordingly. It follows, then, that:
64
The Golden Rule asks you to behave toward others as you would have them
behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must
be accurate. The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You
cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately, because
appropriate behavior depends on lack of level confusion. The
presence of level confusion always results in variable reality
testing and therefore in variability in behavioral appropriateness.
Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you
perceive both, so you will behave toward both. The way to perceive for
Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own
holiness and perceive the holiness of others.
65
The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love because love
and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be
undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been
a confusion of levels. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in
[hate] or level confusion. That is why the Bible says, "There is
no death" and why I demonstrated that death does not exist. I came to
fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if
properly understood, offers only protection to the man/woman. It is
those who have not yet "changed their minds" who entered the "hellfire"
concept into it.
66
I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me and to
whatever extent he/she permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates
your belief and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are
expressing through their miracles that they have abandoned the belief in
deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs
to them.
43. 67
A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing
the man/woman from his/her misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation,
and lack.
68
Miracles are affirmations of the SonDaughtership, which is a state of
completion and abundance. Whatever is true and real is eternal and cannot
change or be changed. The Spirit is therefore unalterable
because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect the level it
chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is
that it cannot serve two masters.
69
The mind, if it elects to do so, becomes a medium by which the Spirit
createsmanifests along the line of its own creationmanifestation. If it
does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creativemanifestive potential
but places itself under tyrannous rather than genuinely 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.
70
The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in his/her service. The
abundance of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the
natural result of choosing to follow him/her. All shallow roots
must be uprooted because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The
illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to
hold is one of the distortions on which the reversal of the
Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the
equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, the fact is
that nothing is less stable than an orientation that is upside
down. Nor can anything which holds it that way be really conducive to
greater stability.
44. 71
Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being one, this state
of mind goes out to anyone, even without the awareness of the
miracle worker himself/herself. The impersonal nature of miracles is
because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all creationsmanifestations
with their CreatorManifestor.
45. 72
The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and the acceptance of It’s
Atonement. The mind is then in a state of grace and naturally becomes
gracious both to the host within and the stranger without. By bringing
in the stranger, he/she becomes your brother/sister.
46. 73
A miracle is never lost. It touches the many people you do not even know
and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are
not even aware. That is not your concern. The miracle will always bless
you.
74
The miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their
value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action
aspect of the miracle should be Christ Consciousness/Mercy
Consciousness-controlled because of It’s complete awareness of the whole
plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your
grace, but only the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is in a
position to know where grace can be bestowed.
47. 75
Miracle-mindedness means miracle-readiness. Readiness means that you
should always keep your perceptions straight, so that you will always
be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen,
learn, and do." You must be ready to listen, willing to
learn, and able to do. Only the last is involuntary because it
is the application of miracles, which must be Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness-controlled. The other two, which are
the voluntary aspects of miracle-mindedness, are up to
you.
48. 76
Awe is an inappropriate response to miracles.
77
Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of
unspeakable love. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is
perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for
miracles, because a state of awe is worshipful. It implies that one of a
lesser order stands before a greater one. This is the case only
when a Spirit stands before its CreatorManifestor. Individual Spirits
are perfect creationsmanifestations and experience awe only in the
Presence of the CreatorManifestor of perfection.
78
The miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of love among equals. Equals
cannot be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is
therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother/sister is
entitled to respect for his/her greater experience and a reasonable
amount of obedience for his/her greater wisdom. He/she is also entitled
to love because he/she is a brother/sister and also to devotion
if he/she is devoted. It is only my devotion that entitles me us to
yours. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have
nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between me as
yet is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state of
true holiness, which is only a potential in you.
79
"No man/woman cometh unto the FatherMother but by me" is among the most
misunderstood statements in the Bible. It does not mean that I
am in any way separate or different from you except in time,
which does not really exist at all. Actually, the quotation is more
meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal
axis. Regarded along the vertical, the man/woman stands below me and I
stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I am higher.
This is because, without me, the distance between God and the man/woman
would be too great for you to encompass.
80
I bridge the distance as an elder brother/sister to the man/woman on the
one hand and as a SonDaughter of God on the other. My devotion to my
brothers and sisters have placed me in charge of the SonDaughtership,
which I can render complete only to the extent to which I can share
it. This may appear to contradict the statement, "I and my FatherMother
are one," but there are still separate parts in the statement in
recognition that the FatherMother is greater. (The original statement
was "are of one kind"). The Holy Spirit is the bringer of revelations.
Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close to
the Holy Spirit and alert to the revelation-readiness of my
brothers/sisters. I can thus bring down to them more than they
can draw down to themselves.
49. 81
The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles do not
involve this type of communication because they are temporary
communication devices. When the man/woman returns to his/her original
form of communication with God, the need for miracles is over. The Holy
Spirit mediates higher to lower communication, keeping the direct
channel from God to human open for revelation. Revelation is not
reciprocal. It is always from God to human. The miracle
is reciprocal because it involves equality.
50. 82
The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. In the
longitudinal or horizontal plane, the recognition of the true equality
of all the members of the SonDaughtership appears to involve almost
endless time. However, the sudden shift from horizontal to vertical
perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which
the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time
than they would otherwise have been.
83
The miracle thus has the unique property of shortening time by rendering
the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There is no
relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers.
It substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It
does this by the underlying recognition of perfect equality and holiness
between the doer and the receiver on which the miracle rests.
84
We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does this by a
process of collapsing it and thus abolishing certain intervals
within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal
sequence. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval which is not
under the usual laws of time. Only in this sense is it timeless. By
collapsing time, it literally saves time. Much as daylight saving time
does, it rearranges the distribution of light.
51. 85
The miracle is the only device which a man/woman has at his/her
immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends
time, having nothing to do with time at all.
86
The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids which
aim at facilitating a state in which they are unnecessary. When the
individual Spirit's original state of direct communication is reached,
neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. While he/she
believes he/she is in a body, however, a man/woman can choose between
loveless and miraculous channels of expression. He/she can make an empty
shell, but he/she cannot express nothing at all. He/she can
wait, delay, paralyze himself/herself, reduce his/her
creativity/manifestivity to almost nothing, and even introduce a
developmental arrest or even a regression. But he/she cannot
abolish his/her creativity. He/she can destroy his/her medium of
communication but not his/her potential.
87
The man/woman was not createdmanifested by his/her own free will
alone. Only what he/she
creates/manifests is his/her to decide. The basic decision of the
miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time
can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle-worker, therefore, accepts
the time-control factor gladly because he/she recognizes that every
collapse of time brings all men/women closer to the ultimate release
from time in which the SonDaughter and the FatherMother are one.
88
Equality does not imply homogeneity now. When everyone
recognizes that he/she has everything, individual contributions to the
SonDaughtership will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement has been
completed, all talents will be shared by all the
SonsDaughters of God. God is not partial. All HisHer Children
have HisHer total love, and all HisHer gifts are freely given to
everyone alike. "Except ye become as little children" means that, unless
you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the
real power of the SonDaughter in hisher true relationship with the
FatherMother.
89
You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. You never
really wanted peace before, so there was no point in being told
how to achieve it. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he/she wants
to learn it and believes in some way that he/she needs it. While
the concept of lack does not exist in the creationmanifestation of God,
it is very apparent in the creationsmanifestions of humans. It
is, in fact, the essential difference. A need implies lack by
definition. It involves the recognition that you would be better off in
a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.
90
Until the "separation," which is a better term than the "fall," nothing
was lacking. This meant that a man/woman had no needs at all. If he/she
had not deprived himself/herself, he/she would never have experienced
them. After the separation, needs became the most powerful source of
motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by
needs, but behavior itself is not a divine attribute. The body is the
mechanism for behavior. The belief that he/she could be better
off is the reason why a man/woman has this mechanism at his/her
disposal.
91
Each one acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he/she
establishes for himself/herself. His/her hierarchy, in turn, depends on
his/her perception of what he/she is—that is, what he/she lacks.
A sense of separation from God is the only lack he/she really
needs to correct. This sense of separation would never have occurred if
he/she had not distorted his/her perception of truth and thus perceived
himself/herself as lacking. The concept of any sort of
need hierarchy arose because, having made this fundamental error, he/she
had already fragmented himself/herself into levels with different needs.
As he/she integrates he/she becomes one, and his/her needs become one
accordingly.
92
Unified need produces unified action because it produces a lack of
ambivalence. The concept of a need hierarchy, a corollary to the
original error that a man/woman can be separated from God, requires
correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all
can be corrected. A man/woman cannot behave effectively while he/she
operates at split levels. However, while he/she does, correction must be
introduced from the bottom up. This is because he/she now
operates in space, where concepts such as "up" and "down" are
meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is
really one of space-time belief.
93
The physical world exists only because the man/woman can use it to
correct his/her unbelief, which placed him/her in it originally.
He/she can never control the effects of fear himself/herself because
he/she made fear and believes in what he/she made. In attitude,
then, though not in content, he/she resembles his/her own
CreatorManifestor, Who has perfect faith in HisHer
creationsmanifestations because HeShe createdmanifested them.
Belief in a creationmanifestation produces its existence. That is why a
the man/woman can believe in what no one else thinks is true. It is true
for him/her because it was made by him/her.
94
Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside-down perception. The more
truly creativemanifestive devote their efforts to correcting perceptual
distortions. The neurotic devotes his/her to compromise. The psychotic
tries to escape by establishing the certain truth of his/her own errors.
It is most difficult to free him/her by ordinary means because he/she is
more consistent in his/her own denial of truth. The miracle, however,
makes no such distinctions. It corrects errors because they are
errors. Thus, the next point to remember about miracles is:
52. 95
The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception.
It is a device for perception-correction, effective quite apart from
either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its true
indiscriminateness.
96
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy-controlled miracles are selective only
in the sense that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves.
Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a
strong chain of Atonement is welded. However, the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness-control takes no account at all of
the magnitude of the miracle itself because the concept of size exists
in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring
the awareness of reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by
the laws which govern the error it aims to correct. Only a man/woman
makes this kind of mistake. It is an example of the foolish consistency
which his/her own false beliefs have engendered.
97
The power and strength of man’s/woman's creativemanifestive will must be
understood before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and
relinquished. It is not mere negation. It is a positive
miscreationmismanifestation. While the miscreationmismanifestation is necessarily
believed in by its maker, it does not exist at all at the level of true
creationmanifestation.
53. 98
The miracle compares what a man/woman has made with the higher level
creationmanifestation, accepting what is in accord as true and
rejecting the discordant as false. All aspects of fear
are untrue because they do not exist at the higher creativemanifestive
level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a human is
willing to submit his/her beliefs to this test, to that extent are
perceptions corrected.
99
In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along the
following lines:
102
You are involved in unconscious distortions which are producing a dense
cover over miracle impulses and which make it hard for them to reach
consciousness. The nature of any interpersonal relationship is limited
or defined by what you want it to do. Relating is a way of
achieving an outcome. The danger of defenses lies in their propensity
for holding misperceptions rigidly in place. All actions which stem from
reverse thinking are literally the behavioral expressions of those who
know not what they do. A rigid orientation can be extremely reliable,
even if it is upside-down. In fact, the more consistently upside-down it
is, the more reliable it is.
103
However, validity is still the ultimate goal, which reliability can only
serve. Hostility, triumph, vengeance, self-debasement, and all kinds of
expressions of lack of love are often very clearly seen in the fantasies
which accompany them. But it is a profound error to imagine that
because these fantasies are so frequent or occur so reliably that this
implies validity. Remember that while validity implies reliability, the
relationship is not reversible. You can be wholly reliable and entirely
wrong. While a reliable instrument does measure something, what
use is it unless you discover what the "something" is? This
course, then, will concentrate on validity and let reliability fall
naturally into place.
104
The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major
source of perceptual distortion because it induces, rather than
straightens out, the basic level confusion which underlies the
perception of all those who seek happiness with the instruments of this
world. Inappropriate physical impulses (or misdirected miracle impulses)
result in conscious guilt if expressed and depression if denied. All
real pleasure comes from doing God's will. This is because not
doing it is a denial of self. Denial of error results in
projection. Correction of error brings release. "Lead us not
into temptation" means "do not let us deceive ourselves into believing
that we can relate in peace to God or to our brothers/sisters with anything
external."
105
Child of God, you were createdmanifested to createmanifest the good, the
beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this. The love of God for
a little while must still be expressed through one body to another
because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can use his/her body
best by enlarging his/her perception so he/she can see the real
vision. This vision is invisible to the physical eye. The
ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning
to do this is the only real reason for its creationmanifestation.
106
Fantasies of any kind are distorted forms of thinking because they always
involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of
vision. Vision and revelation are closely related, while fantasy and
projection are more closely associated because both attempt to control
external reality according to false internal needs. Twist reality in any
way, and you are perceiving destructively. Reality was lost through
usurpation, which in turn produced tyranny. I told you that you are now
restored to your former role in the plan of Atonement, but you must
still choose freely to devote yourselves to the greater restoration. As
long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not
complete. Complete restoration of the SonDaughtership is the
only true goal of the miracle-minded.
107
No fantasies are true. They are distortions of perception by
definition. They are a means of making false associations and obtaining
pleasure from them. The man/woman can do this only because he/she is
creativemanifestive. But, although he/she can perceive false
associations, he/she can never make them real except to
himself/herself. The man/woman believes in what he/she
createsmanifests. If he/she createsmanifests miracles, he/she will be
equally strong in his/her belief in them. The strength of
his/her conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle receiver.
And fantasies become totally unnecessary as the wholly satisfying nature
of reality becomes apparent to both.
2:1
This section deals with a fundamental misuse of knowledge, referred to
in the Bible as the cause of the "fall," or separation. There are some
definitions which I asked you to take from the dictionary which will be
helpful here. They are somewhat unusual since they are not the first
definitions which are given. Nevertheless, the fact that each of them
does appear in the dictionary should be reassuring.
2
Project (verb): to extend forward or out.
Project (noun): a plan in the mind.
World: a natural grand division.
3
We will refer later to projection as related to both mental health and
mental illness. We have already observed that a man/woman can
createmanifest an empty shell, but he/she cannot createmanifest nothing
at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection.
4
The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible,
was not an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of
complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that
the pre-separation state was essentially one in which a man/woman needed
nothing. The "tree of knowledge" is also an overly literal figure. These
concepts need to be clarified before the real meaning of the separation,
or the "detour into fear," can be fully understood.
5
To "project," as defined above, is a fundamental attribute of God which
HeShe gave to HisHer SonDaughter. In the creationmanifestation, God
projected HisHer creativemanifestive ability from HimHerself to the
individual Spirits HeShe createdmanifested, and HeShe also imbued them
with the same loving will to createmanifest. The individual Spirit has
not only been fully createdmanifested but has also been
createdmanifested perfect. There is no emptiness in it. Because
of its likeness to its CreatorManifestor, it is creativemanifestive. No
Child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what heshe
is, but heshe can use it inappropriately. Whenever
projection is used inappropriately, it always implies that some
emptiness or lack exists and that it is in the man's/woman’s ability to
put his/her own ideas there instead of truth.
6
If you consider carefully what this entails, the following will become
quite apparent:
7
First, the assumption is implicit that what God createdmanifested can be
changed by the mind of the man/woman.
8
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or
wanting is accepted.
9
Third, the belief that a man/woman can distort the
creationsmanifestations of God, including himself/herself, is
accepted.
10
Fourth, the idea that since a man/woman can createmanifest
himself/herself, the direction of his/her own creationmanifestation is
up to him/her is implied.
11
These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred
in the separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually
exist now. The world was made as "a natural grand division," or
a projecting outward of God. That is why everything that HeShe
createdmanifested is like HimHer. Projection, as undertaken by God, is
very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the
FatherMother inherit from HimHer. It is important to note that the term
"project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of
projection is internal. This is as true of the SonDaughter as of the
FatherMother.
12
The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the
proper creationmanifestation of the man/woman by God and the
proper creationmanifestation by a man/woman in his/her right mind. The
latter required the endowment of the man/woman by God with free will
because all loving creationmanifestation is freely given.
Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in
fact anything except one continuous line of creationmanifestation in
which all aspects are of the same order.
13
When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically
called "lies" because they are not true. When the man/woman listened,
all he/she heard was untruth. He/she does not have to continue to
believe what is not true unless he/she chooses to do so. All of his/her
miscreationsmismanifestations can literally disappear in "the twinkling
of an eye" because they are merely visual misperceptions. The
man's/woman’s Spiritual Eye can sleep, but a sleeping eye can still see.
What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. The Bible mentions that "a
deep sleep fell upon Adam and Eve," and nowhere is there any reference
to his/her waking up.
14
The history of the man/woman in the world as he/she sees it has not yet
been marked by any genuine or comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. This
is impossible as long as a man/woman projects in the Spirit of
miscreationmismanifestation. It still remains within him/her, however,
to project as God projected HisHer own Spirit to him/her. In reality,
this is his/her only choice because his/her free will was given
him/her for his/her own joy in creatingmanifesting the perfect.
15
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that a
man/woman has the ability to usurp the power of God. It can only
be emphasized that he/she neither can nor has been able
to do this. In this fact lies the real justification for his/her escape
from fear. The escape is brought about by his/her acceptance of the
Atonement, which places him/her in a position to realize that his/her
own errors never really occurred. When the "deep sleep" fell upon
Adam/Eve, he/she was in a condition to experience nightmares because
he/she was asleep. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is
dreaming a fearful dream, he/she may initially interpret the light
itself as a part of his/her own dream and be afraid of it. However, when
he/she awakens the light is correctly perceived as the release
from the dream, which is no longer accorded reality.
16
It is quite apparent that this release does not depend on the
kind of "knowledge" which is nothing more than deceiving lies. The
knowledge which illuminates rather than obscures is the knowledge which
not only sets you free, but which also shows you clearly that
you are free. Whatever lies you may believe are of no concern to
the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. It
makes no distinctions among misperceptions. Its sole
concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand and all kinds of
errors on the other. Some miracles may seem to be of greater
magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course—that
there is no order of difficulty in miracles.
17
In reality, you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of
lack of love. These can be either from yourself and others or
from yourself to others or from others to you. Peace is
an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. All mental
illness is some form of external searching. Mental health is inner
peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without
and capable through your own miracles of correcting the external
conditions which proceed from lack of love in others.
18
When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power
to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure
also. This means that you believe in what you value. If you are
afraid, you are valuing wrongly. Human understanding will
inevitably value wrongly and, by endowing all human thoughts with equal
power, will inevitably destroy peace. That is why the Bible
speaks of "the peace of God which passeth understanding." This
peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any
kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to
affect you in any way.
19
This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide
anything but to correct error. It brings all error into
the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error
automatically. True denial is a powerful protective device. You can and
should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is
not a concealment device but a correction device. The "right mind" of
the mentally healthy depends on it. You can do anything
I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles and have made it clear that
miracles are natural, corrective, healing, and universal. There
is nothing good they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the
Spirit of doubt.
20
God and the individual Spirits HeShe createdmanifested are completely
dependent on each other. The creationmanifestation of the individual
Spirit has already been perfectly accomplished, but the
creationmanifestation by individual Spirits has not. God
createdmanifested individual Spirits so HeShe could depend on them because
HeShe createdmanifested them perfectly. HeShe gave them HisHer peace so
they could not be shaken and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever
you are afraid, you are deceived. Your mind is not
serving the Spirit. This literally starves the individual Spirit by
denying its daily bread. God offers only mercy. Your
words should reflect only mercy because that is what you have received,
and that is what you should give.
21
Justice is a temporary expedient or an attempt to teach the man/woman
the meaning of mercy. Its judgmental side arises only because a
man/woman is capable of injustice if that is what his/her mind
createsmanifests. You are afraid of God's Will because you have used
your own will, which HeShe createdmanifested in the likeness of HisHer
own, to miscreatemismanifest. What you do not realize is
that the mind can miscreatemismanifest only when it is not
free. An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed or
held back by itself. Its will is therefore limited and is not
free to assert itself. The real meaning of "are of one kind," which was
mentioned before, is "are of one mind or will." When the will of the
SonDaughtership and the FatherMother are one, their perfect accord is
the Realm of God.
22
Denial of error is a powerful defense of truth. You will note that we
have been shifting the emphasis from the negative to the positive use of
denial. As we have already stated, denial is not a purely negative
device; it results in positive miscreationmismanifestation. That is the
way the mentally ill do employ it. But remember a very early
thought of your own—"Never underestimate the power of denial." In the
service of the "right mind," the denial of error frees the mind
and reestablishes the freedom of the will. When the will is really
free, it cannot miscreatemismanifest because it recognizes only
truth.
23
False projection arises out of false denial, not out of its
proper use. My own role in the Atonement is one of true
projection; I can project to you the affirmation of truth. If you
project error to us or to yourself, you are interfering with the
process. My use of projection, which can also be yours, is not
based on faulty denial. It does involve, however, the very
powerful use of the denial of errors. The miracle worker is one who
accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites his/her own inherent
abilities to deny and project with mine, and imposes them back on
himself/herself and others. This establishes the total lack of
threat anywhere. Together we can then work for the real time of peace,
which is eternal.
24
The improper use of defenses is quite widely recognized, but their
proper use had not been sufficiently understood as yet. They can indeed
createmanifest man’s/woman's perception both of himself/herself and of
the world. They can distort or correct depending on what you use them for.
25
Denial should be directed only to error, and projection should be
reserved only for truth. You should truly give as you have truly
received. The Golden Rule can work effectively only on this basis.
26
Intellectualization is a term which stems from the mind-brain confusion.
"Right-mindedness" is the device which defends the right mind
and gives it control over the body. "Intellectualization" implies a
split, while "right-mindedness" involves healing.
27
Withdrawal is properly employed in the service of withdrawing from the
meaningless. It is not a device for escape, but for
consolidation. There is only One Mind.
28
Dissociation is quite similar. You should split off or
dissociate yourself from error but only in defense of integration.
29
Detachment is essentially a weaker form of dissociation.
30
Flight can be undertaken in whatever direction you choose, but note that
the concept itself implies flight from something. Flight from
error is perfectly appropriate.
31
Distantiation can be properly used as a way of putting distance between
yourself and what you should fly from.
32
Regression is an effort to return to your own original state. It can
thus be utilized to restore, rather than to go back to the less
mature.
33
Sublimation should be a redirection of effort to the sublime.
34
There are the many other so-called "dynamic" concepts which are profound
errors due essentially to the misuse of defenses. Among them is the
concept of different levels of aspiration, which actually result from
level confusion. However, the main point to be understood from this
section is that you can defend truth as well as error and, in fact, much
better.
35
The means are easier to clarify after the value of the goal itself is
firmly established. Everyone defends his/her own treasure. You do not
have to tell him/her to do so because he/she will do it automatically.
The real questions still remain. What do you treasure, and how
much do you treasure it? Once you have learned to consider these
two questions and to bring them into all your actions as the
true criteria for behavior, I will have little difficulty in clarifying
the means. You have not learned to be consistent about this as yet. I
have therefore concentrated on showing you that the means are
available whenever you ask. You can, however, save a lot of time
if you do not extend this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it
immeasurably.
36
The Atonement is the only defense which cannot be used
destructively. That is because, while everyone must eventually join it,
it is not a device which was generated by a man/woman. The
Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement
itself began. The principle was love, and the Atonement itself was an act
of love. Acts were not necessary before the separation because the
time-space belief did not exist. It was only after the separation that
the defense of Atonement and the necessary conditions for its
fulfillment were planned.
37
It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses which a
man/woman can choose to use constructively or destructively were
not enough to save him/her. It was therefore decided that he/she needed
a defense which was so splendid that he/she could not misuse it,
although he/she could refuse it. His/her choice could not,
however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent
characteristic of all other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only
defense which is not a two-edged sword.
38
The Atonement actually began long before the crucifixion. Many
individual Spirits offered their efforts on behalf of the separated
ones, but they could not withstand the strength of the attack and had to
be brought back. Angels came, too, but their protection did not suffice
because the separated ones were not interested in peace. They had
already split their minds and were bent on further dividing rather than
reintegrating. The levels they introduced into their minds turned
against each other, and they established differences, divisions,
cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to the
increasing splits which they produced.
39
Not being in their right minds, they turned their defenses from
protection to assault and acted literally insanely. It was essential to
introduce a split-proof device which could be used only to heal,
if it were used at all. The Atonement was built into the space-time
belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief and ultimately
to make learning complete. The Atonement is the final lesson.
Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary.
The ability to learn has no value when change of understanding is no
longer necessary. The eternally creativemanifestive have nothing to
learn. Only after the separation was it necessary to direct the
creativemanifestive forces to learning because changed behavior had
become mandatory.
40
Men/women can learn to improve their behavior and can also learn to
become better and better learners. This serves to bring them into closer
and closer accord with the SonDaughtership, but the SonDaughtership
itself is a perfect creationmanifestation, and perfection is not
a matter of degree. Only while there are different degrees is learning
meaningful. The "evolution" of the man/woman is merely a process by
which he/she proceeds from one degree to the next. He/she corrects
his/her previous missteps by stepping forward. This represents a process
which is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms because he/she returns
as he/she goes forward.
41
The Atonement is the device by which he/she can free himself/herself
from the past as he/she goes ahead. It undoes his/her past
errors, thus making it unnecessary for him/her to keep retracing his/her
steps without advancing to his/her return. In this sense the Atonement
saves time but, like the miracle which serves it, does not
abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for
time. But the Atonement as a completed plan does have a unique
relationship to time. Until the Atonement is finished, its
various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement
stands at time's end. At this point, the bridge of the return has been
built.
42
The Atonement is a total commitment. You still think this is
associated with loss. This is the same mistake all the separated
ones make in one way or another. They cannot believe that a defense
which cannot attack is the best defense. This is what is meant
by "the meek shall inherit the earth." They will literally take it over
because of their strength. A two-way defense is inherently weak
precisely because it has two edges and can turn against the self
very unexpectedly. This tendency cannot be controlled except by
miracles.
43
The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to the protection of the
inner self, which, as it becomes more and more secure, assumes its
natural talent of protecting others. The inner self knows itself as both
a brother/sister and a SonDaughter. You know that when defenses
are disrupted, there is a period of real disorientation accompanied by
fear, guilt, and usually vacillations between anxiety and depression.
This course is different in that defenses are not being
disrupted but reinterpreted, even though you may experience it
as the same thing. In the reinterpretation of defenses, only their use
for attack is lost. Since this means they can be used only one
way, they become much stronger and much more dependable. They no longer
oppose the Atonement but greatly facilitate it.
44
The Atonement can only be accepted within you. You have
perceived it largely as external thus far, and that is why your
experience of it has been minimal. The reinterpretation of defenses is
essential in releasing the inner light. Since the separation,
man’s/woman’s defenses have been used almost entirely to defend
himself/herself against the Atonement and thus maintain the
separation. They themselves generally see this as a need to protect the
body. The many body fantasies with which men’s/women’s minds are
engaged arise from the distorted belief that the body can be used as a
means for attaining "atonement."
45
Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in correcting
this kind of distortion. It alters part of the misperception but not all
of it. It does recognize, however, that the concept of Atonement
in physical terms is not appropriate. However, the next step is to
realize that a temple is not a building at all. Its real
holiness lies in the inner altar around which the building is
built. The inappropriate emphasis men/women have put on beautiful church
buildings is a sign of their fear of Atonement and their
unwillingness to reach the altar itself. The real beauty of the
temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The Spiritual eye, on the
other hand, cannot see the building at all because it has perfect sight.
It can, however, see the altar with perfect clarity.
46
For perfect effectiveness, the Atonement belongs at the center of the
inner altar, where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness
of the mind. Before the separation, the mind was invulnerable to fear
because fear did not exist. Both the separation and the fear are
miscreationsmismanifestations of the mind which must be undone. This is
what is meant by "the restoration of the temple." It does not mean the
restoration of the building but the opening of the altar to receive the
Atonement. This heals the separation and places within a
man/woman the one defense against all separation mind-errors
which can make him/her perfectly invulnerable.
47
The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In
fact, both time and matter were createdmanifested for this
purpose. This appears to contradict free will because of the
inevitability of the final decision. If you review the idea carefully,
however, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited
in some way by the man/woman of its creationmanifestation. Free will can
temporize and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot
depart entirely from its CreatorManifestor, Who set the limits on its
ability to miscreatemismanifest by virtue of its own real
purpose.
48
The misuse of will engenders a situation which in the extreme becomes
altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not
limitless. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that
there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more
firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This
ultimately reawakens the Spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the
investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two
types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a
long time and can become very acute, but the outcome is as certain as
God.
49
The Spiritual eye literally cannot see error and merely looks
for Atonement. All the solutions which the physical eyes seek dissolve
in its sight. The Spiritual eye, which looks within, recognizes
immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and
protected. Perfectly aware of the right defense, It passes over
all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the real strength of
Its vision, It pulls the will into Its service and impels the
mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes
it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with
increasing certainty that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary
pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops
accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it
would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.
50
The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes
from a sense of perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste
themselves and their true creativemanifestive powers on useless attempts
to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real
means is already provided and does not involve any effort at all
on their part. Their egocentricity usually misperceives this as
personally insulting, an interpretation which obviously arises from
their misperception of themselves. Egocentricity and communion cannot
coexist. Even the terms are contradictory.
51
The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered to the
altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the altar
itself. It was createdmanifested perfect and is entirely worthy of
receiving perfection. God is lonely without HisHer individual
Spirits, and they are lonely without HimHer. Men/women must
learn to perceive the world as a means of healing the
separation. The Atonement is the guarantee that they will
ultimately succeed.
52
The emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the
Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. Those who speak
of "a miracle of healing" are combining two orders of reality
inappropriately. Healing is not a miracle. The Atonement or the
final miracle is a remedy, while any type of healing is a
result. The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is
irrelevant. Essentially, all healing is the release from fear.
To undertake this, you cannot be fearful yourself. You do not
understand healing because of your own fear.
53
A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all
levels. Illness, which is really "not-right-mindedness," is the result
of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the belief that
what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another. We have
constantly referred to miracles as the means of correcting level
confusion, and all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they
occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act
erroneously, but this is only because it is responding to mis-thought.
The body cannot createmanifest, and the belief that it can, a
fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms.
54
All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion
which createdmanifested magic rests on the belief that there is a
creativemanifestive ability in matter which the mind cannot control.
This error can take two forms—it can be believed that the mind can
miscreatemismanifest in the body or that the body can
miscreatemismanifest in the mind. If it is understood that the mind,
which is the only level of creationmanifestation, cannot
createmanifest beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.
55
The reason only the mind can createmanifest is more obvious than may be
immediately apparent. The individual Spirit has been
createdmanifested. The body is a learning device for the mind. Learning
devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to
facilitate the thinking of the learner. The most that a faulty use of a
learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no
power in itself to introduce actual learning errors.
56
The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the
Atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a
miracle but because it is not inherently open to
misinterpretation. The body is merely a fact in human experience. Its
abilities can be and frequently are over-evaluated. However, it is
almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do so are engaging in
a particularly unworthy form of denial. The term "unworthy" here implies
simply that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the
unmindful. [There is little doubt that the mind can
miscreatemismanifest.] If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the
mind's power, one is also denying the power itself.
57
All material means which a man/woman accepts as remedies for bodily ills
are merely restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of
the error to believe that the body createdmanifested its own illness. It
is a second misstep to attempt to heal it through
non-creativenon-manifestive agents. It does not follow, however, that
the use of these very weak corrective devices is evil. Sometimes the
illness has a sufficiently great hold over a mind to render a personal
inaccessible to Atonement. In this case it may be wise to utilize a
compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from
the outside is temporarily given healing belief.
58
This is because the last thing that can help the
non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. They are
already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately
exposed to an "undiluted" miracle, they may be precipitated into panic.
This is particularly likely to occur when upside-down perception has
induced the belief that miracles are frightening.
59
The value of the Atonement does not lie in manner in which it is
expressed. In fact, if it is truly used, it will inevitably be
expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver, [not the
giver]. This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must
be expressed in a language which the recipient can understand without
fear. It does not follow by any means that this is the highest level of
communication of which he/she is capable. It does mean, however,
that it is the highest level of communication of which he/she is capable
now. The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level
of communication, not to impose regression in the improper sense upon
it.
60
Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this
world, it is essential that they fully understand the fear of
release. Otherwise, they may unwittingly foster the belief that
release is imprisonment, a belief that is very prevalent. This
misperception arose from the underlying misbelief that harm can be
limited to the body. This was because of the much greater fear that the
mind can hurt itself. Neither error is really meaningful because the
miscreationsmismanifestations of the mind do not really exist. This
recognition is a far better protective device than any form of
level confusion because it introduces correction at the level of the
error.
61
It is essential to remember that only the mind can
createmanifest. Implicit in this is the corollary that correction
belongs at the thought level. To repeat an earlier statement and
to extend it somewhat, the individual Spirit is already perfect and
therefore does not require correction. The body does not really exist
except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not
subject to errors of its own because it was createdmanifested but is not
creatingmanifesting. It should be obvious, then, that correcting the
creatormanifestor or inducing it to give up its
miscreationsmismanifestations is the only application of
creativemanifestive ability which is truly meaningful.
62
Magic is essentially mindless or the miscreativemismanifestive use of
the mind. Physical medications are forms of "spells." Those who are
afraid to use the mind to heal should not attempt to do so. The very
fact that they are afraid has made them vulnerable to
miscreationmismanifestation. They are therefore likely to misunderstand
any healing they might induce and, because egocentricity and fear
usually occur together, may be unable to accept the real Source of the
healing. Under these conditions, it is safer for them to rely temporarily
on physical healing devices because they cannot misperceive them as
their own creationsmanifestations. As long as their sense of
vulnerability persists, they should be preserved from even attempting
miracles.
63
We have already said that the miracle is an expression of
miracle-mindedness. Miracle-mindedness merely means right-mindedness in
the sense that we are now using it. The right-minded neither exalt nor
depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle
receiver. However, as a creativemanifestive act, the miracle need not
await the right-mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore
him/her to his/her right mind. It is essential, however, that the
miracle worker be in his/her right mind or he/she will be unable
to reestablish right-mindedness in someone else.
64
The healer who relies on his/her own readiness is endangering
his/her understanding. He/she is perfectly safe as long as he/she is
completely unconcerned about his/her readiness but maintains a
consistent trust in mine. If your miracle working propensities
are not functioning properly, it is always because fear has
intruded on your right-mindedness and has literally upset it. All forms
of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the
Atonement for yourself. If the miracle worker does
accept it, he/she places himself/herself in a position to recognize that
those who need to be healed are simply those who have not realized that
right-mindedness is healing.
65
The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the
Atonement for himself/herself. This means that he/she recognizes that
mind is the only creativemanifestive level and that its errors are
healed by the Atonement. Once he/she accepts this, his/her mind can only
heal. By denying his/her mind any destructive potential and reinstating
its purely constructive powers, he/she has placed himself/herself in a
position where he/she can undo the level confusion of others. The
message he/she then gives to others is the truth that their
minds are similarly constructive and that their
miscreationsmismanifestations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the
miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning
device (the body) and restores the mind to its true position as the
learner.
66
It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than
it createsmanifests. As a learning device, it merely follows the
learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a
serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only
the mind is capable of illumination. The individual Spirit is already
illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can
bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that
density is the opposite of intelligence and therefore unamenable to
independent learning. It is, however, easily brought into alignment with
a mind which has learned to look beyond density toward light.
67
Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of the Spiritual
eye and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. The reason
this so often entails fear is because the man/woman is afraid of what
his/her Spiritual eye will see. We said before that the Spiritual eye
cannot see error and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense
of Atonement. There is no doubt that the Spiritual eye does
produce extreme discomfort by what it sees. Yet what the man/woman
forgets is that the discomfort is not the final outcome of its
perception. When the Spiritual eye is permitted to look upon the
defilement of the altar, it also looks immediately toward the
Atonement.
68
Nothing the Spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. Everything
that results from accurate Spiritual awareness is merely channelized
toward correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need
for correction forcibly into awareness. What the physical eye sees is not
corrective nor can it be corrected by any device which can be
seen physically. As long as a man/woman believes in what his/her
physical sight tells him/her, all his/her corrective behavior
will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured because the
man/woman cannot endure to see his/her own defiled altar. But since the
altar has been defiled, his/her state becomes doubly dangerous
unless it is perceived.
69
The fear of healing arises, in the end, from an unwillingness to accept
the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The man/woman is not
willing to look on what he/she has done to himself/herself.
Healing is an ability lent to the man/woman after the separation, before
which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time
belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists,
healing is needed as a means for human protection. This is because
healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the
perfection of another even if he/she cannot perceive it himself/herself.
70
Most of the loftier concepts of which a man/woman is capable now are
time-dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more
powerful love-encompassment which is far beyond any form of
charity that a man/woman can conceive of as yet. Charity is essential to
right-mindedness in the limited sense in which right-mindedness can now
be attained. Charity is a way of looking at another as if he/she
had already gone far beyond his/her actual accomplishments in time.
Since his/her own thinking is faulty, he/she cannot see the Atonement
for himself/herself or he/she would have no need for charity. The
charity which is accorded him/her is both an acknowledgment that he/she
is weak and a recognition that he/she could be stronger.
71
The way in which both of these perceptions are stated clearly implies
their dependence on time, making it quite apparent that charity lies
within man’s/woman’s limitations, though toward its higher levels. We
said before that only revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an
expression of true human charity, can only shorten time at most. It must
be understood, however, that whenever a man/woman offers a miracle to
another, he/she is shortening the suffering of both. This
introduces a correction into the whole record which corrects
retroactively as well as progressively.
72
You believe that "being afraid" is involuntary, something beyond your
control. Yet I have told you several times that only constructive
acts should be involuntary. We have said that Christ Consciousness/Mercy
Consciousness-control can take over everything that does not
matter, while Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness-guidance can
direct everything that does if you so choose. Fear cannot be
Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness-controlled, but it can
be self-controlled. It prevents me from controlling it. The
correction is therefore a matter of your will because its
presence shows that you have raised the unimportant to a higher
level than it warrants. You have thus brought it under your
will, where it does not belong. This means that you feel
responsible for it. The level confusion here is obvious.
73
The reason I cannot control fear for you is that you are attempting to
raise to the mind level the proper content of lower-order reality. I do
not foster level confusion, but you can choose to correct it.
You would not tolerate insane behavior on your part and would
hardly advance the excuse that you could not help it. Why should you
tolerate insane thinking? There is a confusion here which you
would do well to look at clearly. You believe that you are
responsible for what you do but not for what you think.
The truth is that you are responsible for what you think because
it is only at this level that you can exercise choice.
74
What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate
yourself from the truth by "giving" autonomy to behavior. This is
controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under
our guidance. Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have
allowed your mind to miscreatemismanifest or have not allowed me
to guide it. It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome
of mis-thought can result in healing. When you are fearful you have
willed wrongly. This is why you feel responsible for it. You must change
your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of
will.
75
You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction
belongs only at the level where creationmanifestation is
possible. The term does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it
cannot work. The correction of fear is your responsibility. When
you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You
should ask instead for help in the conditions which have brought the
fear about. These conditions always entail a separated mind
willingness. At that level, you can help it. You are much too
tolerant of mind wandering, thus passively condoning its
miscreationsmismanifestations. The particular result does not matter,
but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the
same. Before you will to do anything, ask me if your will is in accord
with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.
76
Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the will
to do conflicts with what you do. This situation arises in two
ways:
77
First, you can will to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or
successively. This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to
yourself because the part of the will that wants to do something else
is outraged.
78
Second, you can behave as you think you should but without
entirely willing to do so. This produces consistent behavior but
entails great strain within the self.
79
In both cases, the will and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in
a situation in which you are doing what you do not will. This
arouses a sense of coercion, which usually produces rage. The rage then
invades the mind and projection in the wrong sense is likely to follow.
Depression or anxiety is virtually certain.
80
Remember that whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up
your mind. Your will is split, and your behavior inevitably becomes
erratic. Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the
first to the second type of strain described above but will not
obliterate the fear. It is possible to reach a state in which you bring
your will under my guidance without much conscious effort, but this
implies habit patterns which you have not developed dependably as yet.
God cannot ask more than you will. The strength to do comes from your
own undivided will to do. There is no strain in doing God's Will as soon
as you recognize that it is also your own.
81
The lesson here is quite simple but particularly apt to be overlooked. I
will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind
can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wills,
thus producing inevitable strain because willing and doing become
discordant. This cannot be corrected by better doing, but it can
be corrected by higher willing.
82
The first corrective step is know first that this is an
expression of fear. Then say to yourself that you must somehow have
willed not to love, or the fear which arises from behavior-will conflict
could not have arisen. Then the whole process is nothing more than a
series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the
Atonement as the remedy. These steps can be summarized as
follows:
83
1. Know first that this is fear.
84
2. Fear arises from lack of love.
85
3. The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
86
4. Perfect love is the Atonement.
87
We have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of
Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy to
the worthy. This worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is
obvious then that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a
position where you need Atonement because you have done
something loveless, having willed without love. This is precisely the
situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy
inspired its creationmanifestation. As long as you recognize only the
need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you remedy
it, you have also abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs.
88
Everyone experiences fear, and no one enjoys it. Yet it would take very
little right-thinking to realize why fear occurs. Very few people
appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of
it all the time. However, if anyone hopes to spare himself/herself from
fear, there are some things he/she must realize and realize fully. The
mind is a very powerful creatormanifestor, and it never loses its
creativemanifestive force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is
creatingmanifesting and always as you will. Many of your
ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say, "Don't
give it a thought," you imply that if you do not think about something,
it will have no effect on you. And this is true enough.
89
On the other hand, the many other expressions clearly illustrate the
prevailing lack of awareness of thought-power. For example, you
say, "Just an idle thought," and mean that the thought has no effect.
You also speak of some actions as "thoughtless," implying that if the
personal had thought, he/she would not behave as he/she did. While
expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of
thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to
grow when you say it because you do not really think that you will.
90
It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power
surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that
to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not
the real reason why you do not believe it. People prefer to
believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are
literally afraid of them. Many psychotherapists attempt to help
people who are afraid, say, of their death wishes by depreciating the
power of the wish. They even try to "free" the patient by persuading
him/her that he/she can think whatever he/she wants without any real
effect at all.
91
There is a real dilemma here which only the truly right-minded can
escape. Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they do
kill Spiritual awareness. All destructive thinking is dangerous.
Given a death wish, a man/woman has no choice except to act upon
the thought or behave contrary to it. He/she thus chooses only
between homicide and fear. The other possibility is that he/she
depreciates the power of his/her thought. This is the usual
psychoanalytic approach. It does allay guilt but at the cost of
rendering thinking impotent. If you believe that what you think is
ineffectual you may cease to be overly afraid of it, but you are hardly
likely to respect it.
92
The world is full of examples of how the man/woman has depreciated
himself/herself because he/she is afraid of his/her own thoughts. In
some forms of insanity, thoughts are glorified, but this is only because
the underlying depreciation was too effective for tolerance. The truth
is that there are no "idle" thoughts. All thinking
produces form at some level. The reason people are afraid of ESP and so
often react against it is because they know that thoughts can
hurt them. Their own thoughts have made them vulnerable.
93
You who constantly complain about fear still persist in
creatingmanifesting it. I told you before that you cannot ask me to
release you from fear because I know it does not exist, but you
do not. If I merely intervened between your thoughts and their results,
I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, the most
fundamental law there is in this world. I would hardly help if I
depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct
opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to
remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully except for a
small part of the day and somewhat inconsistently even then. You may
feel at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you to do
this, which is perfectly true.
94
Men/women are not used to miraculous thinking, but they can be trained
to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training. I
cannot let them leave their minds unguarded, or they will not be able to
help me. Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of
thought and real avoidance of miscreationmismanifestation. Otherwise, a
miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a
circular process which would hardly foster the time collapse for which
the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect for
true cause and effect which every miracle worker must have.
95
[Miracles cannot free the miracle worker from fear.] Both miracles and
fear come from thoughts, and if you were not free to choose one, you
would also not be free to choose the other. By choosing the miracle, you
have rejected fear. You have been afraid of God, of me, of
yourselves, and of practically everyone you know at one time or another.
This is because you have misperceived or miscreatedmismanifested me and
believe in what you have made. You would never have done this if you
were not afraid of your own thoughts. The vulnerable are essentially
miscreatorsmismanifestors because they misperceive
creationmanifestation.
96
You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your
mind, it is unmindful. It is time, however, to consider the whole world
of the unconscious or "unwatched" mind. This may well frighten you
because it is the source of fear. The unwatched mind is
responsible for the whole content of the unconscious which lies above
the miracle level. All psychoanalytic theorists have made some
contribution in this connection, but none of them has seen it in its
true entirety. They have all made one common error in that they
attempted to uncover unconscious content. You cannot understand
unconscious activity in these terms because "content" is applicable only
to the more superficial unconscious levels, to which the individual
himself/herself contributes. This is the level at which he/she can
readily introduce fear and usually does.
97
When man/woman miscreatesmismanifests he/she is in pain. The cause and
effect principle here is temporarily a real expediter. Actually, "Cause"
is a term properly belonging to God, and "Effect," which should also be
capitalized, is HisHer SonDaughter. This entails a set of Cause and
Effect relationships which are totally different from those which the
man/woman introduced into his/her own miscreationsmismanifestations. The
fundamental opponents in the real basic conflict are
creationmanifestation and miscreationmismanifestation. All fear
is implicit in the second, just as all love is inherent in the
first. Because of this difference, the basic conflict is one
between love and fear.
98
It has already been said that the man/woman believes he/she cannot
control fear because he/she himself/herself createdmanifested it.
His/her belief in it seems to render it out of his/her control by
definition. Yet any attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the
concept of mastery of fear is meaningless. In fact it asserts
the power of fear by the simple assumption that it need
be mastered. The essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of love.
In the interim, the sense of conflict is inevitable since the
man/woman has placed himself/herself in a strangely illogical position.
He/she believes in the power of what does not exist.
99
Two concepts which cannot coexist are "nothing" and
"everything." To whatever extent one is believed in, the other has
been denied. In the conflict fear is really nothing, and love is
everything. This is because whenever light enters darkness, the darkness
is abolished. What a man/woman believes is true for
him/her. In this sense the separation has occurred, and to deny
this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is
merely a further misuse of defenses. The true corrective procedure is to
recognize error temporarily but only as an indication that immediate
correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the
Atonement can be accepted without delay.
100
It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately there is no
compromise possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially
a device by which all compromise in this respect can be given up. It
seems to be abolished by degrees because time itself involves a concept
of intervals which do not really exist. The faulty use of
creationmanifestation made this necessary as a corrective device. "And
God so loved the world that HeShe gave HisHer only begotten SonDaughter
that whosoever believeth in himher shall not perish, but have eternal
life" needs only one slight correction to be entirely meaningful in this
context. It should read, "He gave it to HisHer only begotten
SonDaughter."
101
It should especially be noted that God has only one SonDaughter.
If all the individual Spirits God createdmanifested are HisHer
SonDaughters, then every individual Spirit must be an integral
part of the whole SonDaughtership. You do not find the concept that the
whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should
therefore not have too much trouble in understanding this.
102
The SonDaughtership in its oneness does transcend the sum of its
parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts are
missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all
the parts of the SonDaughtership have returned. Only then can the
meaning of wholeness, in the true sense, be fully understood.
103
Any part of the SonDaughtership can believe in error or incompleteness
if he/she so elects. However, if he/she does so, he/she is believing in
the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the
Atonement. We have already briefly spoken about readiness, but there are
some additional points which might be helpful here. Readiness is nothing
more than the prerequisite for accomplishment. The two should
not be confused. As soon as a state of readiness occurs, there is
usually some will to accomplish, but this is by no means necessarily
undivided. The state does not imply more than a potential for a
shift of will.
104
Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished. We
have already attempted to correct the fundamental error that fear can be
mastered and have emphasized that only love can be mastered. You
have attested only to your readiness. Mastery of love involves a much
more complete confidence than either of you has attained. However, the
readiness at least is an indication that you believe this is possible.
That is only the beginning of confidence. In case this be misunderstood
to imply that an enormous amount of time will be necessary between
readiness and mastery, let me remind you that time and space are under
my control.
105
One of the chief ways in which a man/woman can correct his/her
magic-miracle confusion is to remember that he/she did not
createmanifest himself/herself. He/she is apt to forget this when he/she
becomes egocentric, and this places him/her in a position where the
belief in magic in some form is virtually inevitable. His/her will to
createmanifest was given him/her by his/her own CreatorManifestor, Who
was expressing the same will in HisHer creationmanifestation. Since
creativemanifestive ability rests in the mind, everything that man/woman
createsmanifests is necessarily a matter of will. It also follows that
whatever he/she createsmanifests is real in his/her own sight but not
necessarily in the sight of God. This basic distinction leads us
directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment.
106
The Last Judgment is one of the greatest threat concepts in the
man/woman's perception. This is only because he/she does not understand
it. Judgment is not an essential attribute of God. The man/woman brought
judgment into being only because of the separation. After the
separation, however, there was a place for judgment as one of
the many learning devices which had to be built into the overall plan.
Just as the separation occurred over the many millions of years, the
Last Judgment will extend over a similarly long period and perhaps an
even longer one. Its length depends, however, on the effectiveness of
the present speed-up.
107
We have frequently noted that the miracle is a device for shortening but
not abolishing time. If a sufficient number of people become truly
miracle-minded quickly, the shortening process can be almost
immeasurable. It is essential, however, that these individuals free
themselves from fear sooner than would ordinarily be the case because
they must emerge from the conflict if they are to bring peace to other
minds.
108
The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by
God. Actually it will be undertaken by the man/woman with my help. It is
a final healing rather than a meting out of punishment, however much a
man/woman may think that punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept
in total opposition to right-mindedness. The aim of the Last
Judgment is to restore right-mindedness to man/woman.
109
The Last Judgment might be called a process of right evaluation. It
simply means that finally all men/women will come to understand what is
worthy and what is not. After this, their ability to choose can be
directed reasonably. Until this distinction is made, however, the
vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but
continue. The first step toward freedom must entail a sorting
out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in
the constructive sense and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse.
The man/woman will ultimately look upon his/her own
creationsmanifestations and will to preserve only what is good, just as
God HimHerself looked upon what HeShe had createdmanifested and knew
that it was good.
110
At this point, the will can begin to look with love on its own
creationsmanifestations because of their great worthiness. The mind will
inevitably disown its miscreationsmismanifestations which, without the
mind's belief, will no longer exist. The term "Last Judgment" is
frightening not only because it has been falsely projected onto God, but
also because of the association of "last" with death. This is an
outstanding example of upside-down perception. Actually, if the meaning
of the Last Judgment is objectively examined, it is quite apparent that
it is really the doorway to life.
111
No one who lives in fear is really alive. His/her own last judgment
cannot be directed toward himself/herself because he/she is not his/her
own creationmanifestation. He/she can, however, apply it meaningfully
and at any time to everything he/she has createdmanifested and
retain in his/her memory only what is good. This is what his/her
right-mindedness cannot but dictate. The purpose of time is
solely to "give him/her time" to achieve this judgment. It is his/her
own perfect judgment of his/her own creationsmanifestations. When
everything he/she retains is loveable, there is no reason for fear to
remain with him/her. This is his/her part in the
Atonement.
1
This is a course in mind training. All learning involves
attention and study at some level. Some of the later parts of the course
rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their study.
You will also need them for preparation. Without this, you may become
much too fearful when the unexpected does occur to make
constructive use of it. However, as you study these earlier sections,
you will begin to see some of their implications, which will be
amplified considerably later on.
2
The reason a solid foundation is necessary is because of the confusion
between fear and awe to which we have already referred and which so the
many people hold. You will remember that we said that awe is
inappropriate in connection with the SonsDaughters of God because you
should not experience awe in the presence of your equals. However, it
was also emphasized that awe is a proper reaction in the
Presence of your CreatorManifestor. I have been careful to clarify my
own role in the Atonement, without either over- or understating it. I
have also tried to do the same in connection with yours. I have stressed
that awe is not an appropriate reaction to me because of our
inherent equality.
3
Some of the later steps in this course, however, do involve a
more direct approach to God HimHerself. It would be most unwise to start
on these steps without careful preparation or awe will be confused with
fear, and the experience will be more traumatic than beatific. Healing
is of God in the end. The means are being carefully explained to you.
Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but to reach
it the means are needed.
1.
4 The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns.
Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations
of time and space do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I
will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.
2.
5 Clear distinction between what has been
createdmanifested and what is being createdmanifested is
essential. All forms of correction (or healing) rest on this fundamental
correction in level perception.
3.
6 Another way of stating the above point is: Never confuse
right- with wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of
miscreationmismanifestation with anything except a desire to heal
(or a miracle) is an expression of this confusion.
4.
7 The miracle is always a denial of this error and an
affirmation of the truth. Only right-mindedness can
createmanifest in a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what
has no real effect has no real existence. Its effect, then, is
emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to
projection in the improper sense.
5.
8 The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the right
perception for healing. Until this has occurred, healing cannot be
understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails
correction. Without this it is essentially judgmental rather than
healing.
6.
9 Miraculous forgiveness is only correction. It has no
element of judgment at all. "FatherMother forgive them for they know not
what they do" in no way evaluates what they do. It is strictly
limited to an appeal to God to heal their minds. There is no reference
to the outcome of their mis-thought. That does not matter.
7.
10 The biblical injunction, "Be of one mind" is the statement
for revelation-readiness. My own injunction, "Do this in
remembrance of me" is the request for cooperation from miracle workers.
It should be noted that the two statements are not in the same order of
reality. The latter involves a time awareness since to remember implies
recalling the past in the present. Time is under my direction,
but Timelessness belongs to God alone. In time we exist for and with
each other. In Timelessness we coexist with God.
11
There is another point which must be perfectly clear before any residual
fear which may still be associated with miracles becomes entirely
groundless. The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement. The
resurrection did. This is a point which the many very sincere Christians
have misunderstood. No one who is free of the scarcity-error could possibly
make this mistake. If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point
of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged
one of HisHer SonsDaughters to suffer because heshe was good.
Many ministers preach this every day.
12
This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of the
combined misprojections of a large number of my would-be followers, has
led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. This particularly
anti-religious concept enters into many religions, and this is neither
by chance nor by coincidence. Yet the real Christian would have to pause
and ask, "How could this be?" Is it likely that God HimHerself would be
capable of the kind of thinking which HisHer own words have clearly
stated is unworthy of the man/woman?
13
The best defense, as always, is not to attack another's position but
rather to protect the truth. It is unwise to accept any concept
if you have to turn a whole frame of reference around in order to
justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and
genuinely tragic on a mass basis. Persecution is a frequent result,
undertaken to justify the terrible misperception that God HimHerself
persecuted HisHer own SonDaughter on behalf of salvation. The very words
are meaningless.
14
It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although
the error itself is no harder to overcome than any other error,
men/women were unwilling to give this one up because of its prominent
"escape" value. In milder forms a parent says, "This hurts me more than
it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe
that the FatherMother really thinks this way? It is so essential
that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be very sure
that nothing of this kind remains in your mind. I was not
punished because you were bad. The wholly benign lesson the
Atonement teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion
in any form.
15
"Vengeance is Ours sayeth the LordLady," is a strictly karmic viewpoint.
It is a real misperception of truth by which a man/woman assigns his/her
own "evil" past to God. The "evil conscience" from the past has nothing
to do with God. HeShe did not createmanifest it, and HeShe does not
maintain it. God does not believe in karmic retribution. HisHer
Divine Mind does not createmanifest that way. HeShe does not hold the
evil deeds of a man/woman even against himself/herself. Is it likely,
then, that HeShe would hold against anyone the evil that another
did?
16
Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption
really is and how entirely it arises from misprojection. This
kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors including the
belief that God rejected the man/woman and forced him/her out of the
Garden of Eden. It is also responsible for the fact that you may believe
from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort
to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but the man/woman is
very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around.
17
God HimHerself is not symbolic; HeShe is fact. The
Atonement too is totally without symbolism. It is perfectly clear
because it exists in light. Only the man’s/woman's attempts to shroud it
in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling and ambiguous to
the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It
therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It
could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence.
Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, which does not exist.
It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is
true.
18
The Resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth.
Good can withstand any form of evil because light abolishes all
forms of darkness. The Atonement is thus the perfect lesson. It is the
final demonstration that all of the other lessons which I taught are
true. The man/woman is released from all errors if he/she
believes in this. The deductive approach to teaching accepts the
generalization which is applicable to all single instances
rather than building up the generalization after analyzing numerous
single instances separately. If you can accept the one
generalization now, there will be no need to learn from the many
smaller lessons.
19
Nothing can prevail against a SonDaughter of God who commends
hisher individual Spirit into the hands of hisher FatherMother. By doing
this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and [the individual Spirit]
remembers hisher CreatorManifestor. All sense of separation disappears,
and level confusion vanishes. The SonDaughter of God is part of
the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity itself is One. There is no
confusion within its levels because they are of One Mind and One Will.
This single purpose createsmanifests perfect integration and establishes
the peace of God. Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly
innocent.
20
Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception
instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the
lesson of the Atonement, they are without the will to attack, and
therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says,
"When HeShe shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like HimHer, for
we shall see HimHer as HeShe is."
21
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from
fear. This is particularly unfortunate because frightened people are apt
to be vicious. Sacrificing another in any way is a clear cut
violation of God's own injunction that the man/woman should be merciful
even as his/her FatherMother in the God Realm. It has been hard for the
many Christians to realize that this commandment (or assignment) also
applies to themselves. Good teachers/teacheresses never
terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in
rejection of what the teacher/teacheress offers. The result is learning
failure.
22
I have been correctly referred to as "the Lamb of God who taketh away
the sins of the world." Those who represent the lamb as blood-stained,
an all-too-widespread error, do not understand the meaning of
the symbol. Correctly understood, it is a very simple parable which
merely speaks of our innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down
together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are not
in conflict but naturally live in peace. "Blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing.
23
There has been some human controversy about the nature of seeing in
relation to the integrative powers of the brain. Correctly understood,
the issue revolves around the question of whether the body or the mind
can see (or understand). This is not really open to question at all. The
body is not capable of understanding, and only the mind can perceive anything.
A pure mind knows the truth, and this is its strength. It cannot
attack the body because it recognizes exactly what the body is.
This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means. It does not
confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence with
strength, not with weakness.
24
Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything because the
innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect
its wholeness. This is why it cannot misproject. It can only
honor the man/woman because honor is the natural greeting of the truly
loved to others who are like them. The lamb taketh away the sins of the
world only in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in
which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The innocence
of God is the true state of mind of HisHer SonDaughter. In this state,
the man’s/woman's mind does see God, and because he/she sees
HimHer as HeShe is, he/she knows that the Atonement, not
sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift to his/her own
altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding
of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly
radiant.
25
We have repeatedly stated that the basic concepts referred to in this
course are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot
be meaningfully understood in terms of coexisting polarities. It is
impossible to conceive of light and darkness, or everything and nothing,
as joint possibilities. They are all true or all false. It is
essential that you realize that behavior is erratic until a firm
commitment to one or the other is made.
26
A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness is impossible. No one has
ever lived who has not experienced some light and some
[of everything]. This makes everyone really unable to deny truth
totally, even if he/she generally deceives himself/herself in this
connection. That is why those who live largely in darkness and emptiness
never find any lasting solace. Innocence is not a partial
attribute. It is not a real defense until it is total. When it
is partial, it is characterized by the same erratic nature that holds
for other two-edged defenses.
27
The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times. It is not until
their innocence becomes a genuine viewpoint which is universal in its
application that it becomes wisdom. Innocent (or true) perception means
that you never misperceive and always see truly. More
simply, it means that you never see what does not really exist. When you
lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting to your
belief that he/she is not in his/her right mind. This is hardly a
miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of
denying the creativemanifestive power of the miracle.
28
The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the
truth exists (and this is really a redundant statement because what is
not true cannot exist) right-minded seeing cannot see anything but
perfection. We have said the many times that only what God
createsmanifests, or what man/woman createsmanifests with the same will,
has any real existence. This, then, is all the innocent can see. They do
not suffer from the distortions of the separated ones. The way to
correct all such distortions is to withdraw your faith from them
and invest it only in what is true.
29
You cannot validate the invalid. I would suggest that you
voluntarily give up all such attempts because they can only be frantic.
If you are willing to validate what is true in everything you
perceive, you will make it true for you. Truth overcomes all
error. This means that if you perceive truly, you are canceling out
misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneously. Because
you see them as they are, you offer them your own validation of their
truth. This is the healing which the miracle actively fosters.
30
We have been emphasizing perception and have said very little about
cognition as yet because you are confused about the difference between
them. The reason we have dealt so little with cognition is because you
must get your perceptions straightened out before you can know
anything. To know is to be certain. Uncertainty merely means that you do
not know. Knowledge is power because it is certain, and
certainty is strength. Perception is merely temporary. It is an
attribute of the space-time belief and is therefore subject to fear or
love. Misperceptions produce fear, and true perceptions produce love. Neither
produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it
is not knowledge.
31
True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing
is the affirmation of truth. All your difficulties ultimately stem from
the fact that you do not recognize or know yourselves, each
other, or God. To recognize means to "know again," implying that you
knew before. You can see in the many ways because perception involves
different interpretations, and this means that it is not whole. The
miracle is a way of perceiving, not of knowing. It is the right
answer to a question, and you do not ask questions at all when you know.
32
Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them. The miracle, or
the "right answer," corrects them. Since perceptions change,
their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory
states, and this necessarily implies variability. How you perceive at
any given time determines what you do, and action must
occur in time. Knowledge is timeless because certainty is not
questionable. You know when you have ceased to ask
questions.
33
The questioning mind perceives itself in time and therefore looks for future
answers. The unquestioning mind is closed because it believes the future
and present will be the same. This establishes an unchanged state or
stasis. It is usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that
the future will be worse than the present, and this fear
inhibits the tendency to question at all.
34
Visions are the natural perception of the Spiritual eye, but they are
still corrections. The Spiritual eye is symbolic and therefore not a
device for knowing. It is, however, a means of right perception,
which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle. Properly
speaking, "a vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The
fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the
realm of knowledge. That is why visions do not last.
35
The Bible instructs you to "know yourself" or be certain.
Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have
perceived him/her as he/she is, and this makes it possible for you to know
him/her. However, it is not until you recognize him/her that you
can know him/her. While you ask questions about God, you are
clearly implying that you do not know HimHer. Certainty does not
require action. When you say that you are acting on the basis of
knowledge, you are really confusing perception and cognition. Knowledge
brings the mental strength for creativemanifestive thinking but
not for right doing. Perception, miracles, and doing are
closely related. Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only
thought. Perception involves the body, even in its most Spiritualized
form. Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timeless because it
is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it.
36
If you attack error in one another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot recognize
each other when you attack. Attack is always made on a stranger.
You are making him/her a stranger by misperceiving him/her so
that you cannot know him/her. It is because you have
made him/her a stranger that you are afraid of him/her. Perceive
him/her correctly so that you can know him/her. Right perception
is necessary before God can communicate directly to HisHer own altars
which HeShe has established in HisHer SonDaughters. There HeShe can
communicate HisHer certainty, and HisHer knowledge will bring peace without
question.
37
God is not a stranger to HisHer SonDaughters, and HisHer SonsDaughters
are not strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception and
time and will ultimately replace them. That is the real meaning of the
Biblical description of God as "Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the
End." It also explains the quotation, "Before Abraham [Adam] was I
am." Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is
stable. "Fear God and keep HisHer commandments" should read "Know
God and accept HisHer certainty." There are no strangers in HisHer
creationmanifestation. To createmanifest as HeShe createdmanifested, you
can createmanifest only what you know and accept as yours. God
knows HisHer Children with perfect certainty. HeShe createdmanifested
them by knowing them. HeShe recognized them perfectly. When they
do not recognize each other, they do not recognize HimHer.
38
[The Spirit knows, loves, and createsmanifests. These are its
unequivocal functions.] The abilities a man/woman now possesses are only
shadows of his/her real strengths. All of his/her functions are
equivocal and open to question or doubt. This is because he/she is not
certain how he/she will use them. He/she is therefore incapable
of knowledge, being uncertain. He/she is also incapable of knowledge
because he/she can perceive lovelessly. He/she cannot createmanifest
surely because his/her perception deceives [and illusions are not pure].
Perception did not exist until the separation had introduced degrees,
aspects, and intervals. The Spirit has no levels, and all
conflict arises from the concept of levels. [Wars arise where some
regard others as if they were on a different level. All interpersonal
conflicts arise from this fallacy.] Only the levels of the Trinity are
capable of unity. The levels which the man/woman createdmanifested by
the separation cannot but conflict. This is because they are
essentially meaningless to each other.
39
Freud realized this perfectly and that is why he conceived the different
levels in his view of the psyche as forever irreconcilable. They were
conflict-prone by definition because they wanted different things and
obeyed different principles. In our picture of the psyche, there
is an unconscious level which properly consists only of the
miracle ability and which should be under our direction. There
is also a conscious level, which perceives or is aware of impulses from
both the unconscious and the superconscious. Consciousness is thus the
level of perception but not of knowledge. Again, to perceive is
not to know.
40
Consciousness was the first split that the man/woman introduced into
himself/herself. He/she became a perceiver rather than a
creatormanifestor in the true sense. Consciousness is correctly
identified as the domain of the ego. The ego is a man/woman-made attempt
to perceive himself/herself as he/she wished to be rather than
as he/she is. This is an example of the
createdmanifested-creatormanifestor confusion we have spoken of before.
Yet thee man/woman can only know himself/herself as he/she is
because that is all he/she can be sure of. Everything else is
open to question.
41
The ego is the questioning compartment in the post-separation psyche
which the man/woman createdmanifested for himself/herself. It is capable
of asking valid questions but not of perceiving valid answers
because these are cognitive and cannot be perceived. The endless
speculation about the meaning of mind has led to considerable confusion
because the mind is confused. Only One-Mindedness is without
confusion. A separated or divided mind must be confused; it is
uncertain by definition. It has to be in conflict because it is
out of accord with itself.
42
Intrapersonal conflict arises from the same basis as interpersonal
conflict. One part of the psyche perceives another part as on a
different level and does not understand it. This makes the parts
strangers to each other, without recognition. This is the essence of the
fear-prone condition in which attack is always possible. The
man/woman has every reason to feel afraid as he/she perceives
himself/herself. This is why he/she cannot escape from fear until he/she
knows that he/she did not and could not createmanifest
himself/herself. He/she can never make his/her misperceptions
valid. His/her creationmanifestation is beyond his/her own error, and
that is why he/she must eventually choose to heal the
separation.
43
Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the knowing mind
because it is applicable only to right perception. You can be
right-minded or wrong-minded, and even this is subject to degrees, a
fact which clearly demonstrates a lack of association with knowledge.
The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction
for "wrong-mindedness," and applies to the state of mind which induces
accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals
misperception, and this is indeed a miracle in view of how man/woman
perceives himself/herself.
44
Perception always involves some misuse of will because it
involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active
because it has will-power. When it willed the separation, it willed to
perceive. Until then, it willed only to know. Afterwards it
willed ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity is
clear perception. The mind returns to its proper function only when it wills
to know. This places it in the individual Spirit's service, where
perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind
which wills this.
45
The mind chose to divide itself when it willed to createmanifest both
its own levels and the ability to perceive, but it could not
entirely separate itself from the individual Spirit because it is from
the individual Spirit that it derives its whole power to createmanifest.
Even in miscreationmismanifestation will is affirming its Source or it
would merely cease to be. This is impossible because it is part of the
individual Spirit which God createdmanifested and which is therefore
eternal.
46
The ability to perceive made the body possible because you must perceive
something and with something. This is why perception
involves an exchange or translation, which knowledge does not need. The
interpretive function of perception, actually a distorted form of
creationmanifestation, then permitted man/woman to interpret the body as
himself/herself, which, though depressing, was an attempt to
escape from the conflict he/she had induced. The superconscious, which knows,
could not be reconciled with this loss of power because it is incapable
of darkness. This is why it became almost inaccessible to the mind and
entirely inaccessible to the body.
47
Thereafter, the superconscious was perceived as a threat because light
does abolish darkness merely by establishing the fact that it is not
there. The truth will always overcome error in this sense. This
is not an active process of destruction at all. We have already
emphasized that knowledge does not do anything. It can be perceived
as an attacker, but it cannot attack. What man/woman perceives
as its attack is merely his/her own vague recognition of the fact that
it can always be remembered, never having been destroyed.
48
God and the individual Spirits HeShe createdmanifested remain in surety,
and therefore know that no miscreationmismanifestation exists.
Truth cannot deal with unwilling error because it does not will to be
blocked out. I was a man who remembered the Spirit and its knowledge,
and as a man I did not attempt to counteract error with
knowledge so much as to correct error from the bottom up. I
demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body and the power of
the mind. By uniting my will with that of my CreatorManifestor, I
naturally remembered the individual Spirit and its own real purpose.
49
I cannot unite your will with God's for you, but I can
erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it under our
guidance. Only your misperceptions stand in your own way.
Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception induces
sane choosing. The Atonement was an act based on true perception. I
cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right
choice. "Many are called, but few are chosen" should read, "All
are called, but few choose to listen. Therefore, they do not choose right."
50
The "chosen ones" are merely those who choose right sooner. This
is the real meaning of the Godrealm’s speed-up. Strong wills can do this
now, and you will find rest for your individual Spirits.
God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.
51
We said before that the abilities which man/woman possesses are only
shadows of his/her real strengths and that the intrusion of the ability
to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after
the separation. No one has been sure of anything since. You will also
remember, however, that I made it clear that the resurrection was the
means for the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the
union of our will with the Father’sMother's. We can now make a
distinction which will greatly facilitate clarity in our subsequent
statements.
52
Since the separation, the words "createmanifest" and "make" have been
greatly confused. When you make something, you make it out of a sense of
lack or need. Anything that is made is made for a specific purpose and
has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a
perceived lack, which is obviously why you would want to make anything,
you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation. Knowing, as we
have frequently observed, does not lead to doing at all.
53
The confusion between your own creationmanifestation and what you
createmanifest is so profound that it has become literally impossible
for you to know anything. Knowledge is always stable, and it is quite
evident that human beings are not. Nevertheless, they are
perfectly stable as God createdmanifested them. In this sense, when
their behavior is unstable they are disagreeing with God's idea
of the creationmanifestation. The man/woman can do this if he/she
chooses, but he/she would hardly want to do it if he/she were in
his/her right mind. The problem that bothers you most is the fundamental
question which the man/woman continually asks of himself/herself, but
which cannot properly be directed to himself/herself at all. He/she
keeps asking himself/herself what he/she is. This implies that
the answer is not only one which he/she knows but is also one which is
up to him/her to supply.
54
The man/woman cannot perceive himself/herself correctly. He/she
has no image. The word "image" is always perception-related and not
a product of knowing. Images are symbolic and stand for something else.
The current emphasis on "changing your image" merely recognizes the
power of perception, but it also implies that there is nothing to know.
Knowing is not open to interpretation. It is possible to
"interpret" meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers
to the perception of meaning. Such wholly needless complexities
are the result of the man’s/woman's attempt to regard himself/herself as
both separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to
undertake a confusion as fundamental as this without engaging in further
confusion.
55
Methodologically, the man’s/woman's mind has been very
creativemanifestive but, as always occurs when method and content are
separated, it has not been utilized for anything but an attempt to
escape a fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This kind of
thinking cannot result in a creativemanifestive outcome, although it has
resulted in considerable ingenuity. It is noteworthy, however, that this
ingenuity has almost totally divorced him/her from knowledge. Knowledge
does not require ingenuity. When we say "the truth shall set you
free," we mean that all this kind of thinking is a waste of time, but
that you are free of the need to engage in it if you are willing
to let it go.
56
Prayer is a way of asking for something. Prayer is the medium of
miracles, but the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness because
those who have been forgiven have everything. Once forgiveness
has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly
meaningless. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than
a request that we may be able to recognize something we already
have. In electing to perceive instead of to know, the man/woman placed
himself/herself in a position where he/she could resemble his/her
FatherMother only by miraculously perceiving. He/she has lost
the knowledge that he/she himself/herself is a miracle.
Miraculous creationmanifestation was his/her Source and also his/her
real function.
57
"God createdmanifested the man/woman in HisHer own image and likeness"
is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable
misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to
mean "thought" and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God did
createmanifest the individual Spirit in HisHer own Thought and of a
quality like to HisHer own. There is nothing else. Perception,
on the other hand, is impossible without a belief in "more" and
"less." Perception at every level involves selectivity and is incapable
of organization without it. In all types of perception, there is a
continual process of accepting and rejecting or organizing and
reorganizing, of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential
part of perception because judgments must be made for selection.
58
What happens to perceptions if there are no judgments and there
is nothing but perfect equality? Perception becomes impossible. Truth
can only be known. All of it is equally true, and knowing any
part of it is to know all of it. Only perception involves
partial awareness. Knowledge transcends all the laws which
govern perception because partial knowledge is impossible. It is all one
and has no separate parts. You who are really one with it need
but know yourself, and your knowledge is complete. To know God's
miracle is to know HimHer.
59
Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct
perception of each other is necessary because minds have
willed to see themselves as separate. Each individual Spirit knows God
completely. That is the miraculous power of the individual
Spirit. The fact that each one has this power completely is a fact that
is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if anyone has everything,
there is nothing left. God's miracles are as total as HisHer
Thoughts because they are HisHer Thoughts.
60
As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests
on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and
given themselves over to truth. Perception is a separated state,
and a perceiver does need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the
natural state of those who know. God and HisHer miracles are
inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in
HisHer light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond
doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know
yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly
clear.
61
We have already discussed the Last Judgment in some though insufficient
detail. After the Last Judgment there will be no more. This is symbolic
only in the sense that everyone is much better off without
judgment. When the Bible says, "Judge not that ye be not judged" it
merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be
unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than to
know was the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on
which perception, but not cognition, rests. We have discussed
this before in terms of the selectivity of perception, pointing out that
evaluation is its obvious prerequisite.
62
Judgment always involves rejection. It is not an ability
which emphasizes only the positive aspects of what is judged, whether it
be in or out of the self. However, what has been perceived and
rejected—or judged and found wanting—remains in the unconscious because
it has been perceived. One of the illusions from which man/woman
suffers is the belief that what he/she judged against has no effect.
This cannot be true unless he/she also believes that what he/she judged
against does not exist. He/she evidently does not believe this,
or he/she would not have judged against it. It does not matter in the
end whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your
belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment
because it implies the belief that reality is yours to choose from.
63
You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes
from meeting yourselves and your brothers/sisters totally without
judgment. When you recognize what you and your brothers/sisters are,
you will realize that judging them in any way is without
meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because
you are judging them. All uncertainty comes from a totally fallacious
belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need
judgment to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to
organize yourselves. In the presence of knowledge, all judgment
is automatically suspended, and this is the process which enables
recognition to replace perception.
64
Man/woman is very fearful of everything he/she has perceived but has
refused to accept. He/she believes that, because he/she has refused to
accept it, he/she has lost control over it. This is why he/she sees it
in nightmares or in pleasant disguises in what seem to be his/her
happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought
into awareness. It does not follow that it is dangerous, but it
does follow that you have made it dangerous.
65
When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged yourself as
capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone, it is because you
have judged him/her as debased. When you laugh at yourself, you are
singularly likely to laugh at others, if only because you cannot
tolerate the idea of being more debased than they are. All of this does
make you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening. You are not
really capable of being tired, but you are very capable
of wearying yourselves. The strain of constant judgment is virtually
intolerable. It is a curious thing that any ability which is so
debilitating should be so deeply cherished.
66
Yet, if you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally
impossible anyway, you will insist on holding onto judgment. You
will also use the term with considerable fear, believing that judgment
will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it is
used against you, it is due only to your belief in its efficacy as a
weapon of defense for your own authority. The issue of authority is
really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority
problem," it is always because he/she believes he/she is the
author of himself/herself, projects his/her delusion onto others, and
then perceives the situation as one in which people are literally
fighting him/her for his/her authorship. This is the fundamental error
of all those who believe they have usurped the power of God.
67
The belief is very frightening to them but hardly troubles God.
HeShe is, however, eager to undo it, not to punish HisHer
Children, but only because HeShe knows that it makes them
unhappy. Individual Spirits were given their true Authorship,
but men/women preferred to be anonymous when they chose to separate
themselves from their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their
most fearful symbols ever since. Authority has been used for great
cruelty because, being uncertain of their true Authorship, men/women
believe that their creationmanifestation was anonymous. This has left
them in a position where it sounds meaningful to consider the
possibility that they must have createdmanifested themselves.
68
The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of
men/women that some have even doubted whether they really exist at all.
Despite the apparent contradiction in this position, it is in one sense
more tenable than the view that they createdmanifested themselves. At
least it acknowledges the fact that some true authorship is
necessary for existence.
69
Only those who give over all desire to reject can know that
their own rejection is impossible. You have not usurped the
power of God, but you have lost it. Fortunately, when you lose
something, it does not mean that the "something" has gone. It merely
means that you do not know where it is. Existence does not depend on
your ability to identify it nor even to place it. It is perfectly
possible to look on reality without judgment and merely know
that it is there.
70
Peace is a natural heritage of the individual Spirit. Everyone is free
to refuse to accept his/her inheritance, but he/she is not
free to establish what his/her inheritance is. The problem which
everyone must decide is the fundamental question of authorship. All fear
comes ultimately and sometimes by way of very devious routes from the
denial of Authorship. The offense is never to God, but only to those who
deny HimHer. To deny HisHer Authorship is to deny themselves the reason
for their own peace, so that they see themselves only in pieces. This
strange perception is the authority problem.
71
There is no man/woman who does not feel that he/she is imprisoned in
some way. If this is the result of his/her own free will, he/she must
regard his/her will as if it were not free, or the obviously
circular reasoning involved in his/her position would be quite apparent.
Free will must lead to freedom. Judgment always
imprisons because it separates segments of reality according to the
highly unstable scales of desire. Wishes are not facts by definition. To
wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. Yet no one believes
that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of, "Seek ye
first the God Realm " say, "Will ye first the God Realm," and you
have said, "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance."
72
Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with
either a making or a creatingmanifesting, a difference which we have
discussed already. Their resemblance lies in their power as foundations.
Their difference lies in what rests upon them. Both are cornerstones for
systems of belief by which men/women live. It is a mistake to believe
that a thought system which is based on lies is weak. Nothing
made by a Child of God is without power. It is essential to realize this
because otherwise you will not understand why you have so much trouble
with this course and will be unable to escape from the prisons which you
have made for yourselves.
73
You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating the power of
your minds. To do so is to deceive yourself, and this will hurt you
because you know the strength of the mind. You also know that
you cannot weaken it, any more than you can weaken God. The
"devil" is a frightening concept because he/she is thought of as
extremely powerful and extremely active. He/she is perceived as a force
in combat with God, battling HimHer for possession of the individual
Spirits HeShe createdmanifested. He/she deceives by lies and builds
realms of his/her own in which everything is in direct opposition to
God. Yet he/she attracts men/women rather than repels them, and
they are seen as willing to "sell" him/her their individual Spirits in
return for gifts they recognize are of no real worth.
74
This makes absolutely no sense. The whole picture is one in which
man/woman acts in a way he/she himself/herself realizes is
self-destructive but which he/she does not choose to correct and
therefore perceives the cause as beyond his/her control. We have
discussed the fall, or separation, before, but its meaning must be
clearly understood without symbols. The separation is not symbolic. It
is an order of reality or a system of thought that is real enough in
time, though not in eternity. All beliefs are real to the
believer.
75
The fruit of only one tree was "forbidden" to man/woman in
his/her symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it or
it could not have been eaten. If God knows HisHer Children, and
I assure you that HeShe does, would HeShe have put them in a position
where their own destruction was possible? The "tree" which was forbidden
was named the "tree of knowledge." Yet God createdmanifested knowledge
and gave it freely to HisHer creationsmanifestations. The symbolism here
has been given the many interpretations, but you may be sure that any
interpretation which sees either God or HisHer
creationsmanifestations as capable of destroying their own purpose is in
error.
76
Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression
for incorporating into the self the ability for
self-creatingself-manifesting. This is the only sense in which
God and HisHer individual Spirits are not
cocreatorscomanifestors. The belief that they are is implicit in
the "self concept," a concept now made acceptable by its weakness
and explained by a tendency of the self to createmanifest an image
of itself. Its fear aspect is often ascribed to fear of retaliation by a
"father/mother figure," a particularly curious idea in view of the fact
that no one uses the term to refer to the physical father/mother. It
refers to an image of a father/mother in relation to an image
of the self.
77
Images are perceived, not known. Knowledge cannot deceive, but
perception can. Man/woman can perceive himself/herself as
self-creatingself-manifesting, but he/she cannot do more than believe
it. He/she cannot make it true. And, as we said before, when you
finally perceive correctly, you can only be glad that you cannot. But
until then, the belief that you can is the central foundation
stone in your thought system, and all your defenses are used to attack
ideas which might bring it to light. You still believe you are images of
your own creationmanifestation . Your minds are split with your
individual Spirits on this point, and there is no resolution
while you believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. That is
why you cannot createmanifest and are filled with fear about
what you make.
78
The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very
fearful, and this belief is the "devil." It is powerful, active,
destructive, and clearly in opposition to God because it literally
denies HisHer FatherhoodMotherhood. Never underestimate the power of
this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But know
that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth because its
foundation is a lie.
79
Your creationmanifestation by God is the only foundation which
cannot be shaken because the light is in it. Your starting point
is truth, and you must return to this beginning. Much has been perceived
since then, but nothing else has happened. That is why your individual
Spirits are still in peace, even though your minds are in conflict. You
have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so
fearful. As you approach the beginning, you feel the fear of the
destruction of your thought system upon you, as if it were the fear of
death. There is no death, but there is a belief in
death.
80
The Bible says that the branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and
will wither away. Be glad! The light will shine from the true
Foundation of Life, and your own thought system will stand
corrected. It cannot stand otherwise. You who fear salvation are
willing death. Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and
perception are irreconcilable. To believe that they can be reconciled is
to believe that God and man/woman can not. Only the oneness of
knowledge is conflictless. Your realm is not of this world because it
was given you from beyond this world. Only in this world
is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by
death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom
the Realm was createdmanifested and for whom it waits.
1
The Bible says that you should go with a brother/sister twice as far as
he/she asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him/her back on
his/her journey. Devotion to a brother/sister cannot set you
back either. It can lead only to mutual progress. The result of
genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is the
opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to be dis-Spirited, but
to be inspired is to be in the Spirit. To be egocentric is to be
dispirited, but to be Self-centered in the right sense is to be
inspired, or in the individual Spirit. The truly inspired are
enlightened and cannot abide in darkness.
2
You can speak from the Spirit or from the ego, precisely as you choose.
If you speak from Spirit, you have chosen "to be still and know that I
am
God." These words are inspired because they come from knowledge. If you
speak from the ego, you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming
it and are thus dispiriting yourself. Do not embark on foolish journeys
because they are indeed in vain. The ego may desire them, but the
individual Spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling
to depart from its Foundation.
3
The journey to the cross should be the last foolish journey for every
mind. Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can
accept it as your own last foolish journey, you are also free to
join my resurrection. Human living has indeed been needlessly wasted in
a repetition compulsion. It reenacts the separation, the loss of power,
the foolish journey of the ego in an attempt at reparation, and finally
the crucifixion of the body or death.
4
Repetition compulsions can be endless unless they are given up by an act
of will. Do not make the pathetic human error of "clinging to the old
rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion was that we can overcome
the cross. Unless you do so, you are free to crucify yourself as often
as you choose. But this is not the Gospel I intended to offer you. We
have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons
carefully, they will help to prepare you to undertake it.
5
We have spoken of the many different human symptoms, and at this level
there is almost endless variation. There is, however, only one
cause of all of them. The authority problem is "the root of all
evil." Money is but one of its the many reflections and is a reasonably
representative example of the kind of thinking which stems from it. The
idea of buying and selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that
the individual Spirit cannot understand at all because its supply is
always abundant and all its demands are fully met.
6
Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms.
This is because the mind is split between the ego and the individual
Spirit, so that whatever the ego makes is incomplete and
contradictory. This untenable position is the result of the authority
problem which, because it accepts the one inconceivable thought as its
premise, can only produce ideas which are inconceivable. The term
"profess" is used quite frequently in the Bible. To profess is to
identify with an idea and offer the idea to others to be their own. The
idea does not lessen; it becomes stronger.
7
A good teacher/teacheress clarifies his/her own ideas and strengthens
them by teaching them. Teacher/teacheress and pupil are alike in the
learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and unless
they share their lessons, they will lack conviction. A good
teacher/teacheress must believe in the ideas which he/she professes, but
he/she must meet another condition; he/she must also believe in the
students to whom he/she offers his/her ideas. Many stand guard over
their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they
are, and learning means change. Change is always fearful to the
separated ones because they cannot conceive of it as a change towards healing
the separation. They always perceive it as a change towards
further separation because the separation was their first experience of
change.
8
You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego, your
individual Spirit will find peace. This profound confusion is possible
only if one maintains that the same thought system can stand on two
foundations. Nothing can reach the individual Spirit from the
ego, and nothing from the individual Spirit can strengthen the
ego or reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a
contradiction. Man's/woman’s self and God's Self are in
opposition. They are opposed in creationmanifestation, in will, and in
outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the individual
Spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not
in communication and can never be in communication.
Nevertheless, the ego can learn because its maker can be misguided but cannot
make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. The individual Spirit
need not be taught, but the ego must.
9
The ultimate reason why learning is perceived as frightening is because
learning does lead to the relinquishment (not
destruction) of the ego to the light of the individual Spirit. This is
the change the ego must fear because it does not share my
charity. My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it, I can teach
it. I never attack your egos, but I do try to teach you how
their thought system[s] arose. When I remind you of your true
creationmanifestation, your egos cannot but respond with fear.
10
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now because you must
change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to
refuse to tolerate change because you believe you can demonstrate that
by doing so the separation has not occurred. The dreamer who doubts the
reality of his/her dream while he/she is still dreaming is not really
healing the level-split. You have dreamed of a separated ego,
and you have believed in a world which rests upon it. This is
very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not
changing.
11
If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian[s] of your thought
system[s] and open [them] to me, I will correct [them] very gently and
lead you home. Every good teacher/treacheress hopes to give his/her
students so much of his/her own thinking that they will one day no
longer need him/her. This is the one real goal of the parent,
teacher/teacheress, and therapist. This goal will not be achieved by
those who believe that they will lose their child or pupil or
patient if they succeed. It is impossible to convince the ego of
this because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws
are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the
law-maker believes.
12
It is natural enough for the ego to try to protect itself once you have
made it, but it is not natural for you to want to obey
its laws unless you believe in them. The ego cannot make this
choice because of the nature of its origin. You can because of
the nature of yours. Egos can clash in any situation, but
individual Spirits cannot clash at all. If you perceive a
teacher/teacheress as merely a "larger ego," you will be afraid
because to enlarge an ego is to increase separation
anxiety. I will teach with you and live with you if you will think with
me, but my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need
for a teacher/teacheress.
13
This is the opposite of the ego-oriented teacher's/teacheress’s
goal. He/she is concerned with the effect of his/her ego on other
egos and therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego
preservation. I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I
believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as
you maintain it. I am constantly being perceived as a teacher
either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept either perception
for myself.
14
Your worth is not established by your teaching or your
learning. Your worth was established by God. As long as you dispute
this, everything you do will be fearful, particularly any
situation which lends itself to the "superiority-inferiority" fallacy.
Teachers/teacheresses must be patient and repeat their lessons until
they are learned. I am willing to do this because I have no right to set
your learning limits for you. Once again—nothing you do or think
or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point is not
debatable except in delusions. Your ego is never at stake
because God did not createmanifest it. Your individual Spirit is
never at stake because HeShe did. Any confusion on this
point is a delusion and no form of devotion is possible as long as this
delusion lasts.
15
The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for
itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful forever, or
rather as long as you believe in it. You who made it cannot
trust it because you know it is not real. The only sane
solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful
attempt, but to see it as it is. You are part of
reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within
easy reach of your individual Spirit. When you are afraid, be still and
know that God is real and you are HisHer beloved
SonDaughter in whom HeShe is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute
this because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you
are.
16
God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen,
therefore, to createmanifest unlike HimHer, and you have made fear for
yourselves. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your
function. God gave you a very lofty responsibility which you are not
meeting. You know this, and you are afraid. In fact, your egos
have chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it. When you awaken
you will not be able to understand this because it is literally
incredible. Do not believe the incredible now. Any attempt to
increase its believability is merely to postpone the inevitable.
17
The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego but joyous to the individual
Spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid HimHer
any more than HeShe can avoid you. The ego is afraid of the
individual Spirit's joy because, once you have experienced it, you will
withdraw all protection from the ego and become totally without the
investment in fear. Your investment is great now because fear is a
witness to the separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it.
Leave it behind! Do not listen to it, and do not preserve it. Listen
only to God, Who is as incapable of deception as are the individual
Spirits HeShe createdmanifested.
18
Release yourselves and release others. Do not present a false and
unworthy picture of yourself to others, and do not accept such a picture
of them yourselves. The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for
you because it cannot build otherwise. Do not try to make this
impoverished house stand. Its weakness is your strength.
Only God could make a home that is worthy of HisHer
creationsmanifestations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own
dispossession. Yet HisHer home will stand forever and is ready for you
when you choose to enter it. Of this you can be wholly certain. God is
as incapable of creatingmanifesting the perishable as the ego is of
making the eternal.
19
Of your egos you can do nothing to save yourselves or others, but of
your Spirits you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility
is a lesson for the ego, not for the Spirit. The Spirit is
beyond humility because it recognizes its radiance and gladly sheds its
light everywhere. The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos
are humble, and this gives them better perception. The God Realm is the
right of the Spirit, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond
doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of
God for HisHer creationsmanifestations, who are wholly worthy of HimHer
and only of HimHer. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a
gift for a creationmanifestation of God HimHerself.
20
I will substitute for your ego if you wish but never for your
Spirit. A father/mother can safely leave a child with an elder
brother/sister who has shown himself/herself responsible, but this
involves no confusion about the child's origin. The brother/sister can
protect the child's body and his/her ego, which are very closely
related, but he/she does not confuse himself/herself with the
father/mother because he/she does this, although the child may. I can be
entrusted with your body and your ego simply because this enables you not
to be concerned with them and lets me teach you their unimportance. I
could not understand their importance to you if I had not once
been tempted to believe in them myself.
21
Let us undertake to learn this lesson together, so we can be free of
them together. I need devoted teachers/teacheresses who share our aim of
healing the mind. The individual Spirit is far beyond the need of your
protection or ours. Remember this:
23
That is why you should be of good cheer.
24
You have asked lately how the Soul could ever have made the ego. This is
a perfectly reasonable question; in fact, the best question you could
ask. There is, however, no point in giving a historical answer, because
the past does not matter in human terms, and history would not exist if
the same errors were not being repeated in the present. Abstract thought
applies to knowledge, because knowledge is completely impersonal and
examples are irrelevant to its understanding. Perception, however, is
always specific and therefore quite concrete.
25
Each man/woman makes one ego for himself/herself, although it is subject
to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone
he/she perceives, which is equally variable. Their interaction is a
process which literally alters both, because they were not made either by
or with the unalterable. It is particularly important to realize
that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction
takes place in the mind as when it involves physical presence. Thinking
about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is
physical interaction. There could be no better example of the fact that
the ego is an idea, though not a reality-based thought.
26
Your own present state is a good example of how the Soul made the ego.
You do have knowledge at times, but when you throw it away, it
is as if you never had it. This willfulness is so apparent that one need
only perceive it to see that it does happen. If it can occur
that way in the present, why is it surprising that it occurred that way
in the past? Psychology rests on the principle of the continuity of
behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar but hardly
to something that has occurred with such persistence. I are using your
present state [as an example] of how the Soul can work, provided
you fully recognize that it need not work that way. Why are you
surprised that something happened in the dim past when it is so clearly
happening right now?
27
You forget the love that animals have for their own offspring and the
need they feel to protect them. This is because they regard them as part
of themselves. No one disowns something he/she regards as a very real
part of himself/herself. Man/woman reacts to his/her ego much as God
does to HisHer individual Spirits: with love, protection, and great
charity. The reaction of man/woman to the self he/she made is not at all
surprising. In fact it duplicates in the many ways how he/she will one
day react to his/her real creationsmanifestations, which are as
timeless as he/she is. The question is not how man/woman
responds to his/her ego, but what he/she believes he/she is.
28
Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief
at all, you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. [That is why
the Bible quotes me as saying “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.”
Belief does apply to me, because I am the teacher of the ego.] When
teaching is no longer necessary, you will merely know God.
Belief that there is another way is the loftiest idea of which
ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of
recognition that the ego is not the self. Undermining the ego's
thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is
anything but true. Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or a
scissors, even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The
speed-up has placed you in the same position.
29
You are not prepared, and in this sense you are babies.
You have no sense of real self-preservation and are very likely to
decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. Whether you
know it now or not, however, you have willed to cooperate in a
concerted and very commendable effort to become both harmless and
helpful, two attributes which must go together. Your
attitudes, even toward this, are necessarily conflicted, because all
attitudes are ego-based. This will not last. Be patient awhile and
remember that the outcome is as certain as God.
30
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be
truly charitable. This is quite obvious when you consider the concepts
involved. To the ego, to give anything implies that you will do without
it. When you associate giving with sacrifice, then, you give only
because you believe that you are somehow getting something better so
that you can do without the thing you give. "Giving to get" is an
inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in
relation to other egos and is therefore continually preoccupied with the
scarcity principle which gave rise to it. This is the meaning of Freud's
"reality principle" since Freud thought of the ego as very weak and
deprived, capable of functioning only as a thing in need.
31
The "reality principle" of the ego is not real at all. The ego is forced
to perceive the "reality" of other egos because it cannot establish the
reality of itself. In fact, its whole perception of other egos as
real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real.
"Self esteem" in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has
deluded itself into accepting its reality and is therefore temporarily
less predatory. This "self esteem" is always vulnerable to
stress, a term which actually refers to a condition in which the
delusion of the ego's reality is threatened. This produces either ego
deflation or ego inflation, resulting in either withdrawal or attack.
32
The ego literally lives by comparison. This means that equality is
beyond its grasp and charity becomes impossible. The ego never
gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for
it. That is why the concept of "getting" arose in the ego's thought
system. All appetites are "getting" mechanisms, representing the ego's
need to confirm itself. This is as true of bodily appetites as it is of
the so-called "higher" ego needs. Bodily appetites are not
physical in origin. The ego regards the body as its home and does
try to satisfy itself through the body, but the idea that this
is possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely confused about
what is really possible. This accounts for its erratic nature.
33
The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another
way of describing how it originated. This is such a fearful state that
it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble
attempt at identification or attack them in an equally feeble show of
strength. It is not free, however, to consider the validity of
the premise itself, because this premise is its foundation. The
ego is the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own.
Its ceaseless attempts to gain the Spirit's acknowledgment and thus to
establish its own existence are utterly useless.
34
The Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack
it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally
unaware of the Spirit, it does perceive itself as rejected by
"something" which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego
terms must be a delusion. The creationsmanifestations of God do
not createmanifest myths, although the creativemanifestive efforts of
man/woman can turn to mythology. It can do so, however, only
under one condition; what man/woman then makes is no longer
creativemanifestive. Myths are entirely perceptions and are so ambiguous
in form and so characteristically good and evil in nature that the most
benevolent of them is not without fearful components, if only by
innuendo.
35
Myths and magic are closely associated in that myths are usually related
to the ego origins and magic to the powers which the ego ascribes to
itself. Every mythological system includes some account of "the
creation" and associates this with its particular perception of magic.
The "battle for survival" is nothing more than the ego's struggle to
preserve itself and its interpretation of its own beginning. This
beginning is always associated with physical birth, because no one
maintains that the ego existed before that point in time. The
religiously ego-oriented believe that the Spirit existed before and will
continue to exist afterwards, after a temporary lapse in ego life. Some
actually believe that the Spirit will be punished for this lapse, even
though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it.
36
The term "salvation" does not apply to the individual Spirit,
which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is
nothing more than "right-mindedness," which is not the One-Mindedness of
the individual Spirit, but which must be accomplished before
One-Mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step
automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack so
that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without
judgment and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one
direction in which it can move. The direction which the mind will take
is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the
thought system to which the mind adheres.
37
Every thought system has internal consistency, and this provides the
basis for the continuity of behavior. However, this is a matter of
reliability and not validity. "Reliable behavior" is a meaningful
perception as far as ego thinking goes. However, "valid behavior" is an
expression which is inherently contradictory because validity is an end
and behavior is a means. These cannot be combined logically,
because when an end has been attained, the means for its attainment are
no longer meaningful.
38
A hypothesis is either false or true, to be accepted or rejected
accordingly. If it is shown to be true, it becomes a fact, after which
no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status as fact is
questioned. Every idea to which the ego has accorded the status
of fact is questionable, because facts are in the realm of knowledge.
39
Confusing realms of discourse is a thinking error which philosophers
have recognized for centuries. Psychologists are generally quite
deficient in this respect, as are the many theologians. Data from one
realm of discourse do not mean anything in another, because they can be
understood only within the thought system of which they are a
part. That is why psychologists are concentrating increasingly on the
ego in an attempt to unify their clearly unrelated data. It need hardly
be said that an attempt to relate the unrelated cannot succeed.
40
The more recent ecological emphases are but another ingenious way of
trying to impose order on chaos. We have already credited the ego with
considerable ingenuity, though not with creativenessmanifestiveness. It
should, however, be remembered that inventiveness is really wasted
effort, even in its most ingenious forms. We do not have to explain anything.
This is why we need not trouble ourselves with inventiveness. The highly
specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract creativity of
God's creationsmanifestations.
41
You have never understood what "the God Realm is within you" means. The
reason you have not understood it is because it is not
understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside
is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word "within" is
unnecessary. The God Realm is you. What else but you did the
CreatorManifestor createmanifest, and what else but you is
HisHer Realm? This is the whole message of the Atonement, a message
which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts. Christmas is not
a time; it is a state of mind. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness wills from the individual Spirit, not from the
ego, and the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is
yours.
42
You too have a realm which your individual Spirit createdmanifested. It
has not ceased to createmanifest because your ego has set you on
the road of perception. Your individual Spirit's creationsmanifestations
are no more fatherlessmotherless than you are. Your ego and your
individual Spirit will never be co-creators-co-manifestors, but your
individual Spirit and your CreatorManifestor will always
be. Be confident that your creationsmanifestations are as safe as you
are.
44
That was written in that form because it is a good thing to use as a
kind of a prayer in moments of temptation. It is a Declaration of
Independence. You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully.
45
In its characteristically upside-down way, the ego has taken the
impulses from the superconscious and perceives them as if they arise in
the unconscious. The ego judges what is to be accepted, and the impulses
from the superconscious are unacceptable to it because they clearly
point to the nonexistence of the ego itself. The ego therefore
experiences threat and not only censors but also reinterprets the data.
However, as Freud correctly pointed out, what you have repressed can
retain a very active life beyond your awareness.
46
Repression thus operates to conceal not only the baser impulses but also
the most lofty ones from awareness because both are threatening
to the ego and, being concerned primarily with its own preservation in
the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. The
threat-value of the lofty is actually much greater to the ego because
the pull of God HimHerself can hardly be equated with the pull of human
appetites. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to
save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the
presence of knowledge.
47
The upper level of the unconscious thus contains the Call of God as well
as the call of the body. That is why the basic conflict between love and
fear is unconscious; the ego cannot tolerate either and represses both
by resorting to inhibition. Society depends on inhibiting the latter,
but salvation depends on disinhibiting the former. The
reason you need my help is because you have repressed your own
Guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from
the false in your unconscious so it can break through the barriers the
ego has set up and shine into your minds. Against our united strength,
the ego cannot prevail.
48
It should be apparent to you by now why the ego regards the Spirit as
its "enemy." The ego arose from the separation, and its continued
existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation.
Having reduced the Spirit’s impulses to the unconscious, the ego has to
offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it can
offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own
beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you this life
is your existence because it is its own. Against this
sense of temporary existence the Spirit offers you the knowledge of
permanence and unshakable being. No one who has experienced the
revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How
can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?
49
You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves
you. You do not love what you have made, and what you made does
not love you. Being made out of the denial of the FatherMother,
the ego has no allegiance to its own maker. You cannot conceive of the
real relationship which exists between God and HisHer Spirits because of
the hatred you have for the self you have made. You project onto
your own idea of yourself the will to separate, which conflicts
with the love you feel for what you made because you made it. No
human love is without this ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced
love without ambivalence, the concept is beyond its
understanding.
50
Love will enter immediately into any mind which truly wants it,
but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without
ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego's "drive
to get." There is a kind of experience which is so different from
anything the ego can offer that you will never recover. The word
"recover" is used quite literally here—you will never be able to cover
or hide again. It is necessary to repeat here that your belief in
darkness and in hiding is why the light cannot enter. The Bible
gives the many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for
you but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the
ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are.
51
No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide
you. In this you are as free as God and must remain so forever. You can
never be bound except in honor, and that is always voluntary. Let us ask
the FatherMother in our name to keep you mindful of HisHer love for you
and yours for HimHer. HeShe has never failed to answer this request
because it asks only for what HeShe has already willed. Those who call
truly are always answered. Thou shalt have no other gods before
HimHer because there are none.
52
It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had
that opposes knowledge. You retain thousands of little scraps of
meanness which prevent the Holy One from entering. Light cannot
penetrate through the walls you make to block it, and it is forever
unwilling to destroy what you have made. No one can see through
a wall, but I can step around it. Watch your minds for the
scraps of meanness or you will be unable to ask me to do so. I can help
you only as our FatherMother createdmanifested us. I will love you and
honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I
will neither honor it nor love it unless it is true.
53
I will never forsake you any more than God will, but I must wait
as long as you choose to forsake yourself. Because I wait in love and
not in impatience, you will surely ask me truly. I will come in response
to a single unequivocal call. Watch carefully and see what it is you are
really asking for. Be very honest with yourself about this, for we must
hide nothing from each other. If you will really try to do this, you
have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for the Holy One to
enter. We will prepare for this together, for once HeShe has come, you
will be ready to help us make other minds ready for HimHer. How long
will you deny HimHer HisHer Realm?
54
In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration
of your release. God has given you everything. This is the one
fact that means the ego does not exist and which therefore makes it
profoundly afraid. In the ego's language, remember, "to have" and "to
be" are different, but they are identical to the individual Spirit. The
individual Spirit knows that you both have everything and are
everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the
idea of "getting," which implies a lack, has already been
accepted. That is why we made no distinction before between having
the God Realm and being the God Realm.
55
The calm being of God's Realm, which in your sane mind is perfectly
conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind which the
ego rules. The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible
odds, whether you are asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you
have been willing to exert to protect your ego and how little you have
been willing to expend to protect your higher mind. Who but the insane
would undertake to believe what is not true and then protect this belief
at the cost of truth?
56
If you cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because you do not choose to
listen. The fact that you do listen to the voice of your ego is
demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings, and your behavior. Your
attitudes are obviously conflicted, your feelings have a narrow range on
the negative side but are never purely joyous, and your behavior is
either strained or unpredictable. Yet this is what you want.
This is what you are fighting to keep and what you are vigilant to save.
Your minds are filled with schemes to save the face of your egos, and
you do not seek the Face of God. The glass in which the ego seeks to see
its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence
except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up
to you.
57
We have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior,
but we have also said, and many times before, that you can
change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly,
and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need
not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some individual
Spirit that God createdmanifested and are perceiving images your ego
makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God
would not have thought and what you have not thought
that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done
and left undone accordingly, and then change your minds to think
with God's.
58
This may seem hard to you, but it is much easier than trying to think against
it. Your mind is one with God's. Denying this and thinking
otherwise has held your ego together but has literally split your mind.
As a loving brother/sister, I am deeply concerned with your mind and
urge you to follow our example as you look at yourselves and at each
other and see in both the glorious creationsmanifestations of a glorious
FatherMother.
59
When you are sad, know that this need not be. Depression always
arises ultimately from a sense of being deprived of something you want
and do not have. Know you are deprived of nothing except by your
own decisions, and then decide otherwise.
60
When you are anxious, know that all anxiety comes from the
capriciousness of the ego and need not be. You can be as
vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them.
61
When you feel guilty, know that the ego has indeed violated the
laws of God, but you have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me.
That is what Atonement is for. But until you change your mind about
those your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you. As long as
you feel guilty, your ego is in command because only the ego can
experience guilt. This need not be.
62
Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego and do not be deceived by
it. Know it offers you nothing. When you have given up this
voluntary dispiriting, you will see how your mind can focus and rise
above fatigue and heal. Yet you are not sufficiently vigilant against
the demands of the ego to disengage yourself. This need not be.
63
The habit of engaging with God and HisHer
creationsmanifestations is easily made if you actively refuse to let
your minds slip away. The problem is not one of concentration;
it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth
consistent effort. Side with me consistently against this
deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back. The
disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can be
disheartened. Have you really considered how the many
opportunities you have to gladden yourselves and how the many of them
you have refused? There is no limit to the power of a SonDaughter of
God, but he/she himself/herself can limit the expression of his/her
power as much as he/she chooses.
64
Your mind and ours can unite in shining your ego away and releasing the
strength of God into everything you think and will and do. Do not settle
for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but
this as your goal. Watch your minds carefully for any beliefs
that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them. Judge how well
you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right
use of judgment. Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack
or protect, to hurt or to heal. The ego should be brought to
your judgment and found wanting there. Without your own allegiance,
protection, and love, it cannot exist. Judge your ego truly, and you must
withdraw allegiance, protection, and love from it.
65
You are mirrors of truth in which God HimHerself shines in perfect
light. To the ego's dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there
because I know these images are not true." Then let the Holy One
shine on you in peace, knowing that this and only this must be.
HisHer Mind shone on you in your creationmanifestation and brought your
mind into being. HisHer Mind still shines on you and must shine through
you. Your ego cannot prevent HimHer from shining on you, but it can
prevent you from letting HimHer shine through you.
66
The first coming of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is
just another name for the creationmanifestation, for the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the SonDaughter of God. The second
coming of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness means nothing
more than the end of the ego's rule over part of the minds of men/women
and the healing of the mind. I was createdmanifested like you in the
first, and I have called you to join with me in the second. If you will
think over your lives, you will see how carefully the preparations were
made. I am in charge of the second coming, and my judgment, which is
used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never
attacks. Yours is so distorted that you believe I was mistaken
in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your egos. Do not
mistake it for humility.
67
Your egos are trying to convince you that they are real and I
am not because, if I am real, I am no more real than you
are. That knowledge, and I assure you that it is knowledge,
means that the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness must come
into your minds and heal them. Although I am not attacking your
egos, I am working with your higher mind whether you are asleep
or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind. I am your
vigilance in this, because you are too confused to recognize your own
hope. I was not mistaken. Your minds will elect to join
with ours, and together we are invincible.
68
You will yet come together in our name, and your sanity will be
restored. I raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal
attribute of everything that the living God createdmanifested. Why do
you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dispirited or to
stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order
of difficulty in miracles; you do. I have called, and you will
answer. I know that miracles are natural because they are
expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer and as
inevitable.
69
All things work together for good. There are no
exceptions except in the ego's judgment. Control is a central factor in
what the ego permits into consciousness and one to which it devotes its
maximum vigilance. This is not the way a balanced mind holds
together. Its control is unconscious. The ego is further off
balance by keeping its primary motivation unconscious and
raising control rather than sensible judgment to predominance. The ego
has every reason to do this according to the thought system which gave
rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge against
the ego and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its
self-preservation.
70
A major source of the ego's off-balanced state is its lack of
discrimination between impulses from God and from the body. Any thought
system which makes this confusion must be insane. Yet this
demented state is essential to the ego, which judges only in
terms of threat or non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego's
fear of the idea of God is at least logical, since this idea does
dispel the ego. Fear of dissolution from the Higher Source, then, makes
some sense in ego-terms. But fear of the body, with which the ego
identifies so closely, is more blatantly senseless.
71
The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only
identification with which the ego feels safe, because the body's
vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of
God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates
the body because it does not accept the idea that the body is good
enough to be its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed.
Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the
body is its protector, the mind is also constantly informed that the
body can not protect it. This, of course, is not only accurate
but perfectly obvious.
72
Therefore the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?" to which the
ego replies, "Turn to me." The mind, and not without cause, reminds the
ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the
body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has
no real answer to this because there is none, but it does
have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the
mind's awareness. Once unconscious, the question can and does produce
uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked.
This is the question which must be asked: "Where am I to go for
protection?" Even the insane ask it unconsciously, but it requires real
sanity to ask it consciously.
73
When the Bible says, "Seek and ye shall find," it does not mean that you
should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not
recognize. Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously
organized, and consciously directed. The goal must be formulated clearly
and kept in mind. As a teacher with some experience, let me
remind you that learning and wanting to learn are inseparable.
All learners learn best when they believe that what they are trying to
learn is of value to them. However, values in this world are
hierarchical, and not everything you may want to learn has lasting
value.
74
Indeed, the many of the things you want to learn are chosen because
their value will not last. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to
commit itself to anything that is eternal because the eternal must
come from God. Eternalness is the one function which the ego has tried
to develop but has systematically failed. It may surprise you to learn
that had the ego wished to do so it could have made the eternal because,
as a product of the mind, it is endowed with the power of its
own creatormanifestor. However, the decision to do this, rather
than the ability to do it, is what the ego cannot tolerate. That is
because the decision, from which the ability would naturally develop,
would necessarily involve accurate perception, a state of clarity which
the ego, fearful of being judged truly, must avoid.
75
The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so than the
dilemma itself. The ego has reacted characteristically here as elsewhere
because mental illness, which is always a form of ego
involvement, is not a matter of reliability as much as of validity. The
ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all
issues that touch on the real question in any way. By compromising in
connection with all tangential questions, it hopes to hide the
real question and keep it out of mind. The ego's characteristic
busyness with non-essentials is for precisely that purpose.
76
Consider the alchemist's age-old attempts to turn base metal into gold.
The one question which the alchemist did not permit himself/herself to
ask was, "What for?" He/she could not ask this because it would
immediately become apparent that there was no sense in his/her efforts
even if he/she succeeded. If gold became more plentiful, its value would
decrease, and his/her own purpose would be defeated. The ego has
countenanced some strange compromises with the idea of the eternal,
making the many odd attempts to relate the concept to the unimportant
in an effort to satisfy the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus, it
has permitted minds to devote themselves to the possibility of perpetual
motion, but not to perpetual thoughts.
77
Ideational preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of
solution are also favorite ego devices for impeding the strong-willed
from making real learning progress. The problems of squaring the circle
and carrying pi to infinity are good examples. A more recent ego attempt
is particularly noteworthy. The idea of preserving the body by
suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality which the ego
can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals to the mind. It is
noticeable, however, that in all these diversionary tactics, the one
question which is never asked by those who pursue them is, "What
for?"
78
This is the question which you must learn to ask in connection
with everything your mind wishes to undertake. What is the
purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot doubt that it will channelize your
efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you
have made a decision about your future effort, a decision which will
remain in effect unless you change the decision.
79
Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the ego is capable
of making and accepting as real some very distorted associations. The
confusion of sex with aggression and the resulting behavior, which is
perceived as the same for both, serves as an example. This is
"understandable" to the psychologist and does not produce surprise. The
lack of surprise, however, is not a sign of understanding. It is
a symptom of the psychologist's ability to accept as reasonable a
compromise which is clearly senseless—to attribute it to the mental
illness of the patient rather than his/her own and to limit his/her
questions about both the patient and himself/herself to the
trivial.
80
Such relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more
profound misassociations, although they do reflect them. Your egos have
been blocking the more important questions which your minds should
ask. You do not understand a patient while you yourselves are willing to
limit the questions you raise about his/her mind because you are also
accepting these limits for yours. This makes you unable to heal
him/her and yourselves. Be always unwilling to adapt to any
situation in which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That state in
itself is enough to demonstrate that the perception is wrong.
81
It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting perception is merely a
temporary expedient. It is necessary to do so only because misperception
is a block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a stepping-stone towards
it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable judgment
which it entails that it is unnecessary. This removes the block
entirely. You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be
living in this world, and since this is a sensible question, it has a
sensible answer. You must be careful, however, that you really
understand the question. What is the "you" who are living in
this world?
82
Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or
ever will be because it implies no change at all. It is not a
continuum nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite.
Knowledge never involves comparison. That is its essential difference
from everything else the mind can grasp. "A little knowledge" is not
dangerous except to the ego. Vaguely it senses threat, and being unable
to realize that "a little knowledge" is a meaningless phrase since "all"
and "a little" in this context are the same, the ego decides that, since
"all" is impossible, the fear does not lie there. "A little," however,
is a scarcity concept, and this the ego understands well. "A
little," then, is perceived as the real threat.
83
The essential thing to remember is that the ego does not recognize
the real source of its perceived threat, and if you associate
yourself with the ego, you do not perceive the whole situation
as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power
over you.
84
We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing acting on its
own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it
lightly and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. We
cannot safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard yourselves
as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or more properly, as
long as you believe that you are here.
85
The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about
yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption and has
been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to
dissociate. The ratio of repression and dissociation varies with the
individual ego-illusion, but dissociation is always involved or you
would not believe that you are here. In learning to escape from
the illusions you have made, your great debt to each other is something
you must never forget. It is exactly the same debt that you owe to me.
Whenever you react egotistically towards each other, you are throwing
away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it
would produce.
86
The term "holy" can be used here because as you learn how much you are
indebted to the whole SonDaughtership, which includes me, you
come as close to knowledge as perception ever can. The gap is then so
small that knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it
forever. You have very little trust in me as yet, but it will increase
as you turn more and more often to me instead of your egos for
guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that your choice in
turning to me is the only sane one you can make. No one who has learned
from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another
brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning.
87
The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process because the process
itself demonstrates that there is another way. Conditioning by
rewards has always been more effective than conditioning by pain because
pain is an ego-illusion and can never induce more than a temporary
effect. The rewards of God, however, are immediately recognized as
eternal. Since this recognition is made by you and not the ego,
the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot
be identical. You may believe that you have already accepted the
difference, but you are by no means convinced as yet. The very fact that
you are preoccupied with the idea of escaping from the ego shows
this.
88
You cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it
or punishing it. Remember that the ego and the Spirit do not know
each other. The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except
by dissociating. Having done this, it utilizes repression against all
truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a separate thing,
but because you want to believe that you are. The ego is a
device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your
willingness to use the device that enables it to endure.
89
My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will
not always be that way. Your mission is very simple. You have been
chosen to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. I
repeat that I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares
my trust and always approves my Atonement decisions because my will is
never out of accord with Hers. I have told you before that I am in
charge of the whole Atonement. This is only because I completed
my part in it as a human and can now complete it through other humans.
My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail because I will lend
them my strength as long as theirs is wanting.
90
I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception,
She can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to each other is
the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to
know your brother/sister is to know God. A little knowledge is
an all-encompassing thing. If you are grateful to each other, you are
grateful to God for what HeShe createdmanifested. Through your
gratitude, you can come to know each other, and one moment of real
recognition makes all men/women your brothers/sisters because they are
all of your FatherMother. Love does not conquer all things, but it does
set all things right. Because you are all the God Realm, I can lead you
back to your own creationsmanifestations, which you do not yet know.
What has been dissociated is still there.
91
As you come closer to a brother/sister, you do approach me and,
as you withdraw from him, I become distant to you. Your giant
step forward was to insist on a "collaborative venture." This does not
go against the true Spirit of meditation; it is inherent in it.
Meditation is a collaborative venture with God. It cannot be
undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the
SonDaughtership because they are disengaging themselves from me. God
will come to you only as you will give HimHer to your
brothers/sisters. Learn first of them, and you will be ready to hear God
as you hear them. That is because the function of love is one.
92
How can you teach someone the value of something he/she has deliberately
thrown away? He/she must have thrown it away because he/she did not
value it. You can only show him/her how miserable he/she is without it
and bring it near very slowly, so he/she can learn how his/her misery
lessens as he/she approaches it. This conditions him/her to associate
his/her misery with its absence and to associate the opposite of misery
with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he/she changes
his/her mind about its worth.
93
I am conditioning you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the
Spirit. You have conditioned yourselves the other way around. A far
greater reward, however, will break through any conditioning if it is
repeatedly offered whenever the old habit pattern is broken. You are
still free to choose, but can you really want the rewards of the
ego in the presence of the rewards of God?
94
It should be clear by now that, while the content of any particular
ego-illusion does not matter, it is usually more helpful to correct it
in a specific context. Ego-illusions are quite specific,
although they frequently change and although the mind is naturally
abstract. The mind nevertheless becomes concrete voluntarily as soon as
it splits. However, only part of it splits, so only part
of it is concrete. The concrete part is the same part that believes in
the ego because the ego depends on the specific. It is the part
that believes your existence means you are separate.
95
Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the
relationships that imply being. The ego is thus against
communication except in so far as it is utilized to establish
separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication system of the
ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything else it
dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself,
and it will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. While this
is always so, individual egos perceive different kinds of threat which
are quite specific in their own judgment. For example, although all
forms of perceived demands may be classified or judged by the ego as
coercive communication which must be disrupted, the response of breaking
communication will nevertheless be to a specific personal or
personals.
96
The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in a spurious kind
of generalization which is really not abstract at all. It will respond
in certain specific ways to all stimuli which it perceives as
related. In contrast the Spirit reacts in the same way to everything it
knows is true and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it
make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what
is true is everything that God createdmanifested. It is in complete and
direct communication with every aspect of creationmanifestation because
it is in complete and direct communication with its CreatorManifestor.
97
This communication is the Will of God.
Creationmanifestation and communication are synonymous. God
createdmanifested every mind by communicating HisHer Mind to it, thus
establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of HisHer Mind
and Will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate,
HisHer creationsmanifestations naturally communicate with HimHer
and like HimHer. This communication is perfectly abstract in
that its quality is universal in application and not subject to any
judgment, any exception, or any alteration. God
createdmanifested you by this and for this. The mind can
distort its function, but it cannot endow itself with functions it was
not given. That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to
communicate, even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being.
98
Existence as well as being rests on communication. Existence, however,
is specific in how, what, and with whom communication is judged
to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions.
It is a state in which the mind is in communication with
everything that is real, including the individual Spirit. To whatever
extent you permit this state to be curtailed, you are limiting your
sense of your own reality, which becomes total only by your
recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real
relationship to you. This is your reality. Do not desecrate it
or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple, and your real
Self.
99
God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless createdmanifested
beings who have everything individually but who want to share it to
increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased except
by sharing. That is why God HimHerself createdmanifested you. Divine
Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what
creationmanifestation means. "How," "what," and "to whom" are
irrelevant because real creationmanifestation gives everything, since it
can createmanifest only like itself. Remember that in being
there is no difference between "having" and "being" as there is in
existence. In the state of being, the mind gives everything always.
100
The
Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means
that you should tell HimHer how wonderful HeShe is. HeShe has no ego
with which to accept such thanks and no perception with which to judge
such offerings. But unless you take your part in the
creationmanifestation, HisHer joy is not complete because yours
is incomplete. And this HeShe does know. HeShe knows it in
HisHer own Being and its experience of HisHer Son’sDaughter’s
experience. The constant going out of HisHer love is blocked
when HisHer channels are closed, and HeShe is lonely when the
minds HeShe createdmanifested do not communicate fully with HimHer.
101
God has kept your realm for you, but HeShe cannot share HisHer
joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is
not enough because it is communication from God. It is not
enough until it is shared. God does not need revelation returned
to HimHer, which would clearly be impossible, but HeShe does
want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual
revelation because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely
personal to the mind which receives it. It can, however, still be
returned by that mind through its attitudes to other
minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings.
102
God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is
impossible without being wholly harmless because the two beliefs
coexist. The truly helpful are invulnerable because they are not
protecting their egos, so that nothing can hurt them. Their
helpfulness is their praise of God, and HeShe will return their
praise of HimHer because they are like HimHer, and they can rejoice
together. God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy
throughout the God Realm. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy
with its own individual willingness to share in it. The truly helpful
are God's miracle workers whom I direct until we are all united in the
joy of the God Realm. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly
helpful and to whoever can follow my guidance through you.
103
Every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation
to rehabilitation emphasizes the body, while the vocational orientation
stresses the ego. The "team" approach generally leads more to confusion
than to anything else because it is too often misused as a way of
exerting the ego's domination over other egos, rather than as a real
experiment in the cooperation of minds. Rehabilitation as a movement is
an improvement over the overt neglect of those in need of help, but it
is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of the halt to
lead the blind.
104
The ego is likely to fear broken bodies because it cannot tolerate them.
The ego cannot tolerate ego weakness either without ambivalence because
it is afraid of its own weakness as well as the weakness of its chosen
home. When it is threatened, the ego blocks your natural impulse to
help, placing you under the strain of divided will. You may then be
tempted to withdraw to allow your ego to recover and to gain enough
strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough not to
threaten your ego but too limited to give you joy. Those with
broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego because of its belief
that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its own temple.
105
A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation
itself. All symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever
they are met with this, the mind that so meets them heals itself.
Rehabilitation is an attitude of praising God as HeShe HimHerself knows
praise. HeShe offers praise to you, and you must offer it to others. The
chief handicaps of the clinicians lie in their attitudes to those whom
their egos perceive as weakened and damaged. By these
evaluations, they have weakened and damaged their own helpfulness and
have thus set their own rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is not
concerned either with the ego's fight for control or its need to avoid
and withdraw. You can do much on behalf of your own rehabilitation and
that of others if in a situation calling for healing you think of it
this way:
1
To heal is to make happy. I have told you before to think how the many
opportunities you have to gladden yourselves and how the many you have
refused. This is exactly the same as telling you that you have refused
to heal yourselves. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy.
Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Depression is often contagious
but, although it may affect those who come in contact with it, they do
not yield to the influence whole-heartedly. But joy calls forth an
integrated willingness to share in it and thus promotes the mind's
natural impulse to respond as one.
2
Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call
forth different kinds of responses at the same time and thus deprive
others of the joy of responding whole-heartedly. To be whole-hearted,
you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist and if it is
impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, then the only possible
whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love
and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous.
To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to make
one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what
part of the SonDaughtership the healing is done. Every part
benefits and benefits equally.
3
You are being blessed by every beneficient thought of any of your
brothers/sisters anywhere. You should want to bless them in return out
of gratitude. You do not have to know them individually or they you. The
light is so strong that it radiates throughout the SonDaughtership and
returns thanks to the FatherMother for radiating HisHer joy upon it.
Only God's holy Children are worthy to be channels of HisHer beautiful
joy because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It
is impossible for a Child of God to love his/her neighbor except
as himherself . That is why the healer's prayer is:
5
Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness
and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the
SonDaughtership to rejoice with them and lets God HimHerself go out into
them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation
with lasting effect because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If
you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have
what it does not choose to be. Remember that the individual
Spirit knows no difference between "being" and "having." The higher mind
thinks according to the laws which the individual Spirit obeys and
therefore honors only the laws of God. To HimHer, getting is meaningless
and giving is all, and to Her giving is meaningless and getting is all.
Having everything between them, the individual Spirit holds
everything by giving it and receiving it and thus
createsmanifests as the FatherMother createdmanifested.
6
If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is
totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is
quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a
physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share
an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is
still yours, although all of it has been given away. Further, if the
personal to whom you give it accepts it as his/hers, he/she
reinforces it in your mind, and thus increases it. If
you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the
whole belief in the false association which the ego makes between giving
and losing is gone.
7
Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:
9
This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach
up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Her to you only
at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own
right mind. She was also ours. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you
that was also in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness of
Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of
miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining
with me in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness-thinking.
10
The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic.
She is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the
Guide. She is also described as something "separate," apart from the
FatherMother and from the SonDaughter. I myself said, "If I go I will
send you another comforter, and She will abide with you." The Holy
Spirit is a difficult concept to grasp precisely because it is
symbolic and therefore open to the many different interpretations. As a
man/woman and as one of God's creationsmanifestations, our right
thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which is the
Holy Spirit, taught us first and foremost that this Inspiration is for
all. I could not have It myself without knowing this.
11
The word "know" is proper in this context because the Holy Inspiration
is so close to knowledge that it calls it forth; or better, allows it to
come. We have spoken before of the higher or the "true" perception,
which is so close to truth that God HimHerself can flow across the
little gap. Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot
oppose. Therefore, you can obstruct it, although you can never lose it.
The Holy Spirit is the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness,
which senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into
being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the beginning of
the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for
healing and no one was comfortless.
12
God honored even the miscreationsmismanifestations of HisHer Children
because they had made them, but HeShe also blessed them with a way of
thinking that could raise their perceptions until they became so lofty
that they could reach almost back to HimHer. The Holy Spirit is the Mind
of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough
to one-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Transfer
depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to
which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be
transferred to knowledge or cross over into it. It might
even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of "carried" over
since the last step is taken by God.
13
The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the SonDaughtership,
induces a kind of perception in which the many elements are like those
in the God Realm itself.
14
First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who receives it
could ever believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but
gain.
15
Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This
means that, although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct
it in any way.[Third, it is an unequivocal call to love. Every other
voice is still.]
16
There is a point at which sufficient quantitative changes produce real
qualitative differences. The next point requires real understanding,
because it is the point at which the shift occurs. Finally, it points
the way beyond the healing which it brings and leads the mind
beyond its own integration into the paths of creationmanifestation.
17
Healing is not creatingmanifesting; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit
promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the Children of
God were before healing was needed and will be when they have been
healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar
because it is very similar to the shift in time perception which the
miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for
miracle-mindedness, the will to heal the separation by letting
it go. This will is in you because God placed it in your mind,
and although you can keep it asleep, you cannot obliterate it.
18
God HimHerself keeps this will alive by transmitting it from HisHer Mind
to yours as long as there is time. It is partly HisHer and partly yours.
The miracle itself is just this fusion or union of will between
FatherMother and SonDaughter. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of joy. She
is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of HisHer
separated SonDaughters. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had
no calling until the separation because before that it had only being
and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy
Spirit was God's Answer to the separation, the means by which the
Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to
creatingmanifesting.
19
The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man/woman
made the ego, God placed in him/her the call to joy. This call is so
strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. That is why you can
choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself and
that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God Who
asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very
literal sense. Hers is the Voice that calls you back to where you were
before and will be again.
20
It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no
other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final
lesson that I learned, and God’s SonsDaughters are as equal as learners
as they are as individual Spirits. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is
the call to Atonement or the restoration of the integrity of the mind.
When the Atonement is complete and the whole SonDaughtership is healed,
there will be no call to return, but what God createsmanifests is
eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the SonsDaughters of God to
bless their creationsmanifestations and keep them in the light
of joy.
21
You are the God Realm, but you have let the belief in darkness
enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the
radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. HisHer is the
glory before which dissociation falls away and the God Realm breaks
through into its own. Before the separation you did not need guidance.
You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know
now. God does not guide because HeShe can share only perfect knowledge.
Guidance is evaluative because it implies that there is a right
way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be
avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other.
22
This is a conflict state. It means that knowledge has
been lost because knowledge is sure. God is not in you in a literal
sense; you are part of HimHer. When you chose to leave HimHer,
HeShe gave you a Voice to speak for HimHer because HeShe could
no longer share HisHer knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct
communication was broken because you had made another voice through
another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget.
You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are
possible. As a result, there are choices which you must make. In
the holy state, the will is free in the sense that its creativemanifestive
power is unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.
23
Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to
createmanifest, but its application is different. Choosing means
divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you
because there is also another way. God did not leave HisHer
Children comfortless, even though they chose to leave HimHer. The voice
they put in their minds was not the voice of HisHer Will for
which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is stronger than the
call to depart, but it speaks in a different way.
24
The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command because it is incapable of
arrogance. It does not demand because it does not seek control. It does
not overcome because it does not attack. It merely reminds. It
is compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings
to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of
the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The Voice for God is always
quiet because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war because
it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife.
25
"What profiteth it a man/woman if he/she gain the whole world and lose
his/her own Spirit?" That means that if he/she listens to the wrong
voice, he/she has lost sight of his/her individual Spirit.
He/she cannot lose it, but he/she can not know it. It is
therefore lost to him/her until he/she chooses right. The Holy
Spirit is your Guide in choosing. She is the part of your mind which always
speaks for the right choice because She speaks for God. She is your
remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot
destroy.
26
The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's Will can be done on earth as
it is in the God Realm. Both God Realm and earth are in you
because the call of both is in your will and therefore in your mind. The
Voice for God comes from your own altars to HimHer. These altars are not
things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now.
Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose
at which altar you will to serve. The call you answer now is an
evaluation because it is a decision. The decision itself is very
simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.
27
My mind will always be like yours because we were createdmanifested as
equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in the
God Realm and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same
decision for yourself. The will for this decision is the will to
share it because the decision itself is the decision to
share. It is made by giving and is therefore the one act
of mind that resembles true creationmanifestation. You understand the
role of "models" in the learning process and the importance of the
models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to
learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God, I showed you
that this decision can be made and that you can make it.
28
I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in you
and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This mind is
unequivocal because it hears only one voice and answers in only
one way. You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not
come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awake
and be glad. The world is very tired because it is the idea of
weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for God.
Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the SonDaughtership
cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of
the God Realm than to restore it to the perfect integration that can
make it whole?
29
Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your
brothers/sisters to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by
the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my
decision and making it stronger. As we share this goal we
increase its power to attract the whole SonDaughtership and to bring it
back into the Oneness in which it was createdmanifested. Remember that
"yoke" means "join together" and "burden" means "message." Let us
reconsider the Biblical statement, "My yoke is easy and my burden light"
in this way: "Let us join together, for our message is light."
30
I came into your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact
that there is another way or another Voice. Having given this
invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for how
to think. Psychology has become the study of behavior, but
no one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to motivation,
and motivation is will. I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but
we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy
Spirit, whose will is for God always. She teaches you how to keep me as
the model for your thought and to behave like me as a result.
31
The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief but not
beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no
limits because the Call for God is the call to the unlimited.
Child of God, our message is for you to hear and give away as
you answer the Holy Spirit within you.
32
The way to learn to know your brother/sister is by perceiving the Holy
Spirit in him/her. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the
bridge or thought-transfer of perception to knowledge, so we can use the
terms as if they were related because in Her mind they are. The
relationship must be in Her mind because, unless it were, the
separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to
healing. She is part of the Holy Trinity because Her mind is partly
yours and also partly God's. This needs clarification, not in statement,
since we have said it before, but in experience.
33
The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea
gains as it is shared. Being the Call for God, it is also
the idea of God. Since you are part of God, it is also
the idea of yourself as well as of all the parts of God. The
idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it
follows the laws of the Universe of which it is a part. Therefore, it is
strengthened by being given away. It increases in you as you
give it to your brothers/sisters. Since thoughts do not have to be
conscious to exist, your brother/sister does not have to be aware of the
Holy Spirit either in himself/herself or in you for this miracle to
occur.
34
Your brother/sister may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you
have. The dissociation is healed in both of you as you
become aware of the Call for God in him/her and thus acknowledge its being.
There are two ways of seeing your brother/sister which are diametrically
opposed to each other. They must both be in your mind because you
are the perceiver. They must also be in his/her because you are
perceiving him/her. See him/her through the Holy Spirit in
his/her mind, and you will recognize him/her in yours. What you
acknowledge in your brother/sister you are acknowledging in
yourself, and what you share you strengthen.
35
The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must
share it. It must be increased in strength before you
can hear it. It is impossible to hear it in yourself while it is so weak
in your own mind. It is not weak in itself, but it is
limited by your unwillingness to hear it. Will itself is an idea and is
therefore strengthened by being shared. If you make the mistake of
looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone, your meditations will
frighten you because by adopting the ego's viewpoint you are
undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide. This is
bound to produce fear.
36
Delay is of the ego because time is its concept. Delay is
obviously a time idea. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity.
We have said before that the Holy Spirit is God's Answer to the
ego. Everything of which the Holy Spirit reminds you is in direct
opposition to the ego's notions because true and false perceptions are themselves
opposed. The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what the ego
has made. She undoes it in the same realm of discourse in which the ego
itself operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change.
37
We have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not
understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the Spirit, with
time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God, so the Spirit understands
it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is
the ego's domain, accepts it without question. The only aspect of time
which is really eternal is now. That is what we really mean when
we say that "now is the only time." The literal nature of this statement
does not mean anything to the ego, which interprets it at best to mean
"don't worry about the future." That is not what it really means at all.
38
The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego
and the knowledge of the Spirit. Her ability to deal with symbols
enables Her to work against the ego's beliefs in its own
language. Her equal ability to look beyond symbols into eternity
also enables Her to understand the laws of God, for which She speaks.
She can thus perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego
makes, not by destruction but by understanding.
Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge. The Holy Spirit is
in light because She is in you who are light, but you
yourselves do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit
to reinterpret you on behalf of God.
39
You cannot understand yourselves alone. This is because you have no
meaning apart from your rightful place in the SonDaughtership
and the rightful place of the SonDaughtership in God. This is your life,
your eternity, and yourself. It is of this that the Holy Spirit
reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. This vision
invariably frightens the ego because it is so calm. Peace is the ego's
greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of
reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in
strife. If you believe there is strife, you will react viciously
because the idea of danger has entered your mind. The idea itself is
an appeal to the ego.
40
The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger,
opposing it with Her strength, just as the ego welcomes it with
all its might. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace.
Peace and eternity are as closely related as are time and war.
Perception as well as knowledge derives meaning from relationships.
Those which you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The
separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act,
but a thought. Therefore, the idea of separation can be given
away, just as the idea of unity can. Either way, the idea will be
strengthened in the mind of the giver.
41
The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the
symbol of peace. What you perceive in others, you are strengthening in yourself.
You let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind
reinterpret its own misperceptions. The Holy Spirit is the perfect
Teacheress. She uses only what your minds already understand to
teach you that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit can
deal with an unwilling learner without going counter to his/her will
because part of his/her will is still for God. Despite the ego's
attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego,
even though the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it
perfectly because it is Her own dwelling place or the place in the mind
where She is at home.
42
You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and
peace is of God. You who are part of God are not at home except
in HisHer peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity.
The ego made the world as it perceives it, but the Holy Spirit,
the reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees it only as a
teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must perceive
time and reinterpret it into the timeless. The mind must be led into
eternity through time because, having made time, it is capable
of perceiving its opposite.
43
The Holy Spirit must work through opposites because She must work with
and for a mind that is in opposition. Correct and learn and be
open to learning. You have not made truth, but truth can still
set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as She
understands. Her understanding looks back to God in remembrance of me.
She is in Holy Communion always, and She is part of you. She is
your Guide to salvation because She holds the remembrance of things past
and to come. She holds this gladness gently in your minds, asking only
that you increase it in Her name by sharing it, to increase Her
joy in you.
44
You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help you.
You have learned to be a loving, wise, and very understanding therapist
except
for yourself. That exception has given you more than perception
for others because of what you saw in them but less than
knowledge of your real relationships to them because you did not
accept them as part of you. Understanding is beyond
perception because it introduces meaning. It is, however, below
knowledge even though it can grow towards it. It is possible,
with great effort, to understand someone else to some extent and to be
quite helpful to him, but the effort is misdirected. The misdirection is
quite apparent; it is directed away from you.
45
This does not mean that it is lost to you, but it does
mean that you are not aware of it. I have saved all your kindnesses and
every loving thought you have had. I have purified them of the errors
which hid their light and have kept them for you in their own perfect
radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from
the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God
createsmanifests is eternal. What fear has hidden still is part of you.
46
Joining the Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to do, is
always a way out of fear. This does not mean that you can safely
fail to acknowledge anything that is true. However, the Holy Spirit will
not fail to help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful
and teach you that only what is loving is true. Truth is
beyond your ability to destroy but entirely within your grasp. It
belongs to you because you createdmanifested it. It is yours because it
is a part of you, just as you are part of God because HeShe
createdmanifested you.
47
The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the God Realm.
Nothing good is lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice
for manifestation. Nothing that is not good was ever
createdmanifested and therefore cannot be protected. What the
ego makes, it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength.
Its unshared existence does not die; it was merely never born. Real
birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing. Everything that
can continue has been born, but it can increase as you
are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the
higher part and thus render your creatingmanifesting undivided.
48
As a therapist, you yourself tell your patients that the real difference
between neurotic and "healthy" guilt feelings is that neurotic guilt
feelings do not help anyone. This distinction is wise though
incomplete. Let us make the distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic
guilt feelings are a device of the ego for "atoning" without sharing and
for asking pardon without change. The ego never calls for real
Atonement and cannot tolerate forgiveness, which is change.
49
Your concept of "healthy guilt feelings" has merit, but without the
concept of the Atonement, it lacks the healing potential it holds. You
made the distinction in terms of feelings, which led to a decision not
to repeat the error, which is only part of healing. Your
concept lacked the idea of undoing it. What you were really
advocating, then, was adopting a policy of sharing without a real foundation.
I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can
make you really free. You have carried the burden of the ideas
you did not share and which were therefore too weak to increase, but you
did not recognize how to undo their existence because you had
made them.
50
You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not
disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is not of
your making, any more than you are. The Atonement cannot be
understood except as a pure act of sharing. That is what is
meant when we said it is possible even in this world to listen to one
voice. If you are part of God and the SonDaughtership is one, you cannot
be limited to the "self" the ego sees. Every loving thought held in any
part of the SonDaughtership belongs to every part. It is shared because
it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creatingmanifesting and also yours.
Your ego can keep you in exile from the God Realm, but in the
God Realm itself it has no power.
51
You have become willing to receive mu messages as I give them without
interference by the ego, so we can clarify an earlier point. We said
that you will one day teach as much as you learn and that will keep you
in balance. The time is now because you have let it be now. You
cannot learn except by teaching.
52
I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained by
teaching. I understood that I could not atone for myself alone.
Listening to one voice means the will to share the voice in
order to hear it yourself. The mind that was in me is still irresistibly
drawn to every mind createdmanifested by God because God's Wholeness is
the wholeness of HisHer SonDaughter.
53
Turning the other cheek does not mean that you should submit to
violence without protest. It means that you cannot be hurt and
do not want to show your brother/sister anything except your
wholeness. Show him/her that he/she cannot hurt you and hold
nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. Teaching is done
in the many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by
example. Teaching is therapy because it means the sharing
of ideas and the awareness that to share them is to strengthen
them. The union of the SonDaughtership is its protection. The
ego cannot prevail against the Realm because it is united, and
the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of
the parts of the SonDaughtership, which hear the call of the Holy Spirit
to be as One.
54
I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me
because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have
learned because by so doing you can depend on it. Make it
dependable in my name because my name is the Name of God’s SonDaughter.
What I learned I give you freely, and the mind which was in me rejoices
as you choose to hear it. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by
undoing and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind.
By following Her, She leads you back to God where you belong, and how
can you find this way except by taking your brother/sister with you?
55
My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and
give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you
or forsake you because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God
who createdmanifested me. You will forsake yourselves and God if you
forsake any of your brothers/sisters. You are more than your
brother's/sister’s keeper. In fact, you do not want to keep
him/her. You must learn to see him/her as he/she is and know
that he/she belongs to God as you do. How could you treat your
brother/sister better than by rendering unto God the things which are
God's?
56
Ideas do not leave the mind which thought them to have a
separate being, nor do separate thoughts conflict with one another in
space because they do not occupy space at all. However, human ideas can
conflict in content because they occur at different levels and include
opposite thoughts at the same level. It is impossible to
share opposing thoughts. The Holy Spirit does not let you
forsake your brothers/sisters. Therefore, you can really share only
the parts of your thoughts which are of Her and which She also keeps for
you. And of such is the God Realm. All the rest remains with you
until She has reinterpreted them in the light of the Realm, making them,
too, worthy of being shared. When they have been sufficiently purified,
She lets you give them away. The will to share them is their
purification.
57
The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to
createmanifest is of God. Therefore, those who have been forgiven must
devote themselves first to healing because having received the
idea of healing, they must give it to hold it. The full
power of creationmanifestation cannot be expressed as long as any
of God's ideas withhold it from the God Realm. The joint will of all
the SonDaughtership is the only creatormanifestor that can
createmanifest like the FatherMother because only the complete can think
completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything you think
that is not through the Holy Spirit is lacking.
58
How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is
gone, and nothing is left except a blessing. You can indeed depart in
peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my
blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may
always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your
hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it and the hands are
strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the
wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. HisHer quiet
Children are HisHer blessed SonDaughters. The Thoughts of God are with
you.
59
Perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more personally
meaningful if the ego's use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a
purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is fear
because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's
logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit because your mind has
all the means at its disposal to side with the God Realm or earth, as it
elects. But again, let us remember that both are in you. In the
God Realm there is no guilt because the God Realm is attained through
the Atonement, which releases you to createmanifest. The word
"createmanifest" is appropriate here because, once what you have
made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and
therefore continues in creationmanifestation.
60
What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt and must
give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its
peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to disruption because
it is whole. Guilt is always disruptive. Anything that engenders
fear is divisive because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the
symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more
than merely not of God. It is the symbol of the attack on God.
This is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do
not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the
belief from which all guilt really stems.
61
The ego is the part of the mind which believes in division. How
can part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking
HimHer? We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the
concept of usurping God's power. The ego believes that this is
what you did because it believes it is you. It follows,
then, that if you identify with the ego, you must
perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to your ego, you will
experience guilt and you will fear punishment. The ego is quite
literally a fearful thought.
62
However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane
mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a
delusional system, and it speaks for it. Listening to the ego's
voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God. You
believe that a part of HimHer has been torn away by you. The
classic picture of fear of retaliation from without then follows
because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be
projected. Although Freud was wrong about the basic conflict itself, he
was very accurate in describing its effects.
63
Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is,
however, only your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you
enthrone the ego in it, the fact that you have accepted it or allowed it
to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind, as God
createdmanifested it, is capable of creatingmanifesting reality.
We said before that you must learn to think with God. To think
with HimHer is to think like HimHer. This engenders joy, not
guilt, because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is
unnatural. Perverted thinking will always be attended
with guilt because it is the belief in sin.
64
The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives sin as a positive
act
of assault. This is an interpretation which is necessary to the
ego's survival because as soon as you regard sin as a lack you
will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will
succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but you must learn to
regard it as freedom. The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being
sane, it heals the body because it has been healed. The sane
mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking
anyone or anything.
65
We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to
say that it is a form of magical solution. The ego believes that by
punishing itself it will mitigate the punishment of God. Yet
even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to God a punishing intent,
and then takes over this intent as its own prerogative. It tries
to usurp all the functions of God as it perceives them because
it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted.
66
The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you
can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just
as you can. That is why the question, "What do you
want?" must be answered. You are answering it every minute and
every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is
anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically
until the decision is changed. This is repeated here because you
have not learned it. But again, your decision can be unmade as
well as made. Remember, though, that the alternatives are
unalterable.
67
The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute
all the alternatives which the mind can accept and obey. The ego and the
Holy Spirit are the only choices open to you. God
createdmanifested one, and so you cannot eradicate it. You
made the other, and so you can. Only what God
createsmanifests is irreversible and unchangeable. What you have
made can always be changed because when you do not think like
God you are not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real
thoughts, although you can believe in them. But you are wrong.
The function of thought comes from God and is in God. As
part of HisHer Thought, you cannot think apart from HimHer.
68
Irrational thought is a thought disorder. God HimHerself orders
your thought because your thought was createdmanifested by
HimHer. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They
also show that you believe you can think apart from God and want to.
Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at its inception and
maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable for those
who believe they order their own thought and must therefore obey its
orders. This makes them feel responsible for their mind errors,
without recognizing that by accepting this responsibility they
are really reacting irresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of
the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself/herself, and I
assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned for
cannot be yours.
69
The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing.
You would be responsible for the effects of all your wrong
thinking if it could not be undone. The purpose of the Atonement is to
save the past in purified form only. If you accept the remedy for a
thought disorder, and a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can
its symptoms remain? You have reason to question the validity of symptom
cure, but no one believes that the symptoms can remain if the
underlying cause is removed.
70
The continuing will to remain separated is the only possible
reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we
did not emphasize the destructive results of this decision at that time.
Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and
experience. What you will, you expect. This is not delusional.
Your mind does createmanifest your future, and it can turn it
back to full creationmanifestation at any minute if it accepts the
Atonement first. It will also turn back to full
creationmanifestation the instant it has done so. Having given up its
thought disorder, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.
71
God in HisHer knowledge is not waiting, but HisHer Realm is bereft while
you wait. All the SonsDaughters of God are waiting for your
return, just as you are waiting for theirs. Delay does
not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have
elected to be in time rather than eternity and have therefore changed
your belief in your status. Yet your election is both free and
alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in
eternity, where God HimHerself placed you forever.
72
Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of
future retaliation or abandonment and thus ensure that the future will
remain like the past. This is the ego's continuity and gives it a false
sense of security through the belief that you cannot escape from it. But
you can and must. God offers you the continuity of eternity in
exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously
exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. Our
role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your ego cannot
accept this freedom and will oppose your free decision at every possible
moment and in every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what
it can do because you gave it the power to do it.
73
The mind does indeed know its power because the mind does indeed know
God. Remember the Realm always, and remember that you who are part of
the Realm cannot be lost. The mind that was in me is in
you, for God createsmanifests with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit
remind you always of HisHer fairness, and let me teach you how to share
it with your brothers/sisters. How else can the chance to claim it for
yourself be given you? What you do not understand is that the two voices
speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or
almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate
interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made, and
speaking itself was unnecessary before the ego was made.
74
The ego speaks in judgment and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions,
much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower courts'
decisions about the laws of this world. The ego's decisions are always
wrong because they are based on a complete fallacy which they were made
to uphold. Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly.
Not only does it cite Scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets
Scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the
ego because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it
interprets it fearfully. Having made you afraid, you do not
appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would be against
you.
75
We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego's interpretations
have misled you. A favorite ego quotation is "As ye sow, so shall ye
reap." Another is "Vengeance is ours, sayeth the LordLady." Still
another is "I will visit the sins of the father/mother unto the third
and fourth generation," and also "The wicked shall perish." There are
the many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit reinterpret these
in Her own light, they will suffice.
76
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap" merely means that what you believe to be
worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what
is worthy makes it worthy for you. "Vengeance is ours, sayeth
the LordLady" is easily explained if you remember that ideas increase
only by being shared. This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that
vengeance cannot be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy
Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind,
which is part of God.
77
"I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth
generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is
used, in fact, as an attempt to guarantee its survival beyond itself.
Actually, all the quotation means is that the Holy Spirit in later
generations retains the power to interpret correctly what former
generations have thought and thus release their thoughts from
the ability to produce fear anywhere in the SonDaughtership. "The wicked
shall perish" is merely a statement of fact if the word "perish" is
properly understood. Every loveless thought must be undone. Even
the word "undone" is fearful to the ego, which interprets "I am undone"
as "I am destroyed."
78
The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your
thought, but because it is uncreativeunmanifestive and therefore
unsharing, it will be reinterpreted entirely to release you from
fear. The part of your thought which you have given to the ego will
merely return to the Realm, where your whole mind belongs. The
ego is a form of arrest, but arrest is merely delay. It does not
involve the concept of punishment, although the ego welcomes that
interpretation. You can delay the completion of the God Realm,
but you cannot introduce the concept of assault into it.
79
When I said, "I are come as a light into the world," I surely came to
share the light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before
to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that we said, "Do not look
there." It is still true that "where you look to find yourself is up to
you." The Higher Court will not condemn you. It will merely
dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a
Child of God, and every witness to guilt in Gods creationsmanifestations
is bearing false witness to God HimHerself.
80
Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own Higher Court because
it speaks for HimHer and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the
case against you, however carefully you have built it. The case
may be foolproof, but it is not God-proof. The Voice for God
will not hear it at all because She can only witness truly. Her verdict
will always be "Thine is the God Realm" because She was given
you to remind you of what you are.
81
Your patience with each other is your patience with yourselves. Is not a
Child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience
because my will is that of our FatherMother, from Whom I learned
of infinite patience. HisHer Voice was in me as it is in you, speaking
for patience towards the SonDaughtership in the name of its
CreatorManifestor. What you need to learn now is that only infinite
patience can produce immediate effects. This is the way in which
time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite
love, and by producing results now, it renders time unnecessary.
82
To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly
said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is
no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, Who speaks for God in time, also
knows that time is meaningless. She reminds you of this in every passing
moment of time because it is Her special function to return you to
eternity and remain to bless your creationsmanifestations there.
She is the only blessing you can truly give because She is so truly
blessed, and because She has been given you so freely by God, you must
give Her as you received Her.
83
The idea of "set" is among the better psychological concepts. Actually,
it is used quite frequently in the Bible and also in this course under
the many different terms. For example, "God will keep him/her in perfect
peace whose mind is stayed (or set) on HimHer," a statement which means
that God's peace is set in the Holy Spirit because She is fixed on God.
She is also fixed in you. You, then, are fixed in the peace of
God. The concept of "fixation" is also a very helpful one which Freud
understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because
he was afraid and, as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with
good judgment. Fear distorts thinking and therefore disorders
thought.
84
Freud's system of thought was extremely ingenious because Freud was
extremely ingenious, and a mind must endow its thoughts with its
own attributes. This is its inherent strength, although it may misuse
its power. Freud lost much of the potential value of his thought system
because he did not include himself in it. This is a dissociated
state because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freud's
thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as
he saw it without dissociation. That is why the many
contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became
increasingly less apparent to him. A man who knows what fixation
really means and yet does not yield to it is terribly afraid.
85
Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind is fixed because
of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be
called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's
set is the basis for Her unequivocal Voice. The Holy Spirit never
changes Her mind. Clarity of thought cannot occur under
conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is
not clear. Clarity literally means the state of light, and
enlightenment is understanding. Enlightenment stands under
perception because you have denied it as the real foundation of
thought. This is the basis for all delusional systems.
86
The concept of fixation as Freud saw it has a number of learning
advantages. First, it recognizes that man/woman can be fixated at a
point in development which does not accord with a point in time.
This clearly could have been a means toward real release from the time
belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. Freud, however, suffered
all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind and
enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked now entirely and
merely saw the continuity of past and future.
87
Second, although Freud misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or
better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than was
necessary to keep his fear in tolerable bounds as he perceived the
situation. Therefore, he emphasized that the point in development at
which the mind is fixated is more real to itself than the
external reality with which it disagrees. This again could have been a
powerful release mechanism had Freud not decided to involve it
in a strong defense system because he perceived it as an attack.
88
Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as involving irrevocable
"danger points" to which the mind could always regress, the concept can
also be interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind
cannot lose. Freud himself could not accept this interpretation,
but throughout his thought system, the "threat" of fixation remained and
could never be eliminated by any living human being. Essentially, this
was the basis of Freud's pessimism, personally as well as theoretically.
He tried every means his very inventive mind could devise to set up a
form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation
forever, even though he knew this was impossible.
89
This knowledge plagued Freud's belief in his own thought system at every
turn because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore
only partially insane and was unable to relinquish the hope of
release even though he could not cope with it. The reason for this
amount of detail is because you are in the same position. You
were eternally fixated on God in your creationmanifestation, and the
pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The
reason is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level so high that it
cannot be surmounted. You are always being pulled back
to your CreatorManifestor because you belong to HimHer.
90
Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out
HisHers? Do you really believe that you can devise a thought
system which can separate you from HisHers? Do you really
believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better than HeShe can?
You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your
cares upon HimHer because HeShe careth for you. You are
HisHer care because HeShe loves you. HisHer Voice reminds you always
that all hope is yours because of HisHer care. You cannot
choose to escape HisHer care because that is not HisHer Will, but you can
choose to accept HisHer care and use the infinite power of
HisHer care for all those HeShe createdmanifested by it.
91
There have been the many healers who did not heal themselves. They have
not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole.
Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the
dead. Unless the healer heals himself/herself, he/she does not
believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He/she has not
learned that every mind God createdmanifested is equally worthy
of being healed because God createdmanifested it whole. You are
merely asked to return to God the mind as HeShe createdmanifested it.
HeShe asks you only for what HeShe gave, knowing that this giving will
heal you. Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your
brothers/sisters is yours.
92
Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are
made upon you when you know the Voice of God HimHerself is in
you? God commended HisHer Spirit to you and asks that you commend yours
to HimHer. HeShe wills to keep it in perfect peace because you are of
one mind and Spirit with HimHer. Excluding yourself from the Atonement
is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It
reflects both the ego's need to separate and your willingness to side
with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want
to be healed.
93
But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the
plan of salvation yourselves because, as I told you before, the remedy
is not of your making. God HimHerself gave you the perfect
correction for everything you have made which is not in accord
with HisHer holy Will. I have made HisHer plan perfectly explicit to you
and have also told you of your part in HisHer plan and how urgent it is
that you fulfill it. There is time for delay, but there need not be. God
weeps at the "sacrifice" of HisHer Children, who believe they are lost
to HimHer.
94
I have already told you that whenever you are not wholly joyous it is
because you have reacted with a lack of love to some individual Spirit
which God createdmanifested. Perceiving this as "sin," you become
defensive because you expect attack. The decision to react in
this way, however, is yours and can therefore be undone. It cannot
be undone by repentance in the usual sense because this implies guilt.
If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the
error rather than allow it to be undone for you.
95
Decisions cannot be difficult. This is obvious if you realize
that you must already have made a decision not to be
wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the
undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly but
can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourselves
in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the undoing
process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within
you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return
your thinking to the point at which the error was made and give it over
to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following as sincerely
as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your
slightest invitation:
1
The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the inevitable
association of anger and fear is not always so clear. Anger always
involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be
accepted as entirely one's own responsibility. Anger cannot occur unless
you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack was justified,
and that you are in no way responsible. Given these three wholly
irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a
brother/sister is worthy of attack rather than of love follows.
What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion?
2
The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the
premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked; attack has
no justification; and you are responsible for what you believe.
You have been asked to take me as your model for learning, since an
extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. Everyone
teaches and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility which he/she
inevitably assumes the moment he/she accepts any premise at all, and no
one can organize his/her life without any thought system. Once
he/she has developed a thought system of any kind, he/she lives by it and
teaches it.
3
You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely because you have
been extreme examples of allegiance to your thought systems and
therefore have developed the capacity for allegiance. It has
indeed been misplaced, but it is a form of faith which you
yourselves have been willing to redirect. You cannot doubt the strength
of your devotion when you consider how faithfully you have observed it.
It was quite evident that you had already developed the ability to
follow a better model if you could accept it.
4
For teaching purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. We have
not dwelt on it before because of its fearful connotations. The only
emphasis we laid upon it was that it was not a form of
punishment. Nothing, however, can be really explained in negative terms
only. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion which is
wholly devoid of fear and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches if
it is properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an
extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies
solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be and has been
misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive
fearfully.
5
I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my
decision and thus make it stronger. I also told you that the crucifixion
was the last foolish journey that the SonDaughtership need take and that
it should mean release from fear to anyone who understands it. While we
emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion
and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified at that
time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own
lives, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you
understand your own role as teachers/teacheresses.
6
You have reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This
is a marked tendency of the separated ones, who always refuse to
consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means
anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real
meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the
assault of some of the SonsDaughters of God upon another. This, of
course, is impossible and must be fully understood as an
impossibility. In fact unless it is fully understood as only
that, I cannot serve as a real model for learning.
7
Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little
doubt that one body can assault another and can even destroy it.
Yet if destruction itself is impossible, then anything that is
destructible cannot be real. Therefore, its destruction does not
justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does,
you must be accepting false premises and teaching them to others.
The message which the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is
not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution
because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you
must be equating yourself with the destructible and are therefore
regarding yourself insanely.
8
I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me,
but our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision.
You are free to perceive yourselves as persecuted if you choose. You
might remember, however, when you do choose to react that way,
that I was persecuted as the world judges and did not
share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did
not strengthen it. I therefore offered a different
interpretation of attack and one which I do want to share with
you. If you will believe it, you will help me to teach
it.
9
We have said before, "As you teach, so shall you learn." If you react as
if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. This is not
a lesson which the SonsDaughters of God should want to teach if
they are to realize their own salvation. Rather, teach your own perfect
immunity, which is the truth in you, and know that it
cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed
that it is assailable. You are not asked to be
crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are
merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less
extreme temptations to misperceive and not to accept them
falsely as justifications for anger.
10
There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not
believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember
always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me,
and we will become equal as teachers. Your resurrection is your
reawakening. I am are the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is
merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them. God placed
it there HimHerself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it and
therefore made it forever true for me. Help me to teach it to our
brothers/sisters in the name of the God Realm, but first believe that it
is true for you, or you will teach amiss.
11
My brothers/sisters slept during the so-called "agony" in the garden,
but I could not be angry with them because I had learned I could not be
abandoned. Peter swore he would never deny me, but he did so three
times. He did offer to defend me with the sword, which I naturally
refused, not being at all in need of bodily protection. I am
sorry when my brothers/sisters do not share my decision to hear only one
voice, because it weakens them as teachers/teacheresses and as
learners. Yet I know that they cannot really betray themselves or
me and that it is still on them that I must build my church.
12
There is no choice in this because only you can be the
foundation of God's church. A church is where an altar is, and the
presence of the altar is what makes it a church. Any church
which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is not serving the
purpose for which God intended it. I must found HisHer church on you
because you who accept me as a model are literally my disciples.
Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save
them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise not to
follow him/her.
13
I elected both for your sake and mine to demonstrate that the
most outrageous assault as judged by the ego did not matter. As the
world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I
was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. It was
perfectly clear that this was only because of the projection of others,
because I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. We are still equal
as learners, even though we need not have equal experiences. The Holy
Spirit is glad when you can learn enough from mine to be re-awakened by
them. That was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I
can be perceived as the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
14
When you hear only one voice, you are never called on to
sacrifice. On the contrary, by enabling yourselves to hear the Holy
Spirit in others, you can learn from their experiences and gain from
them without experiencing them yourselves. That is because the
Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to
demonstrate Her way for all. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are
not asked to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom
we share, makes this unnecessary. To use my experiences
constructively, however, you must still follow my example in how to
perceive them.
15
My brothers/sisters and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the
unjustifiable. My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that
no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy
Spirit can be justified. I undertook to show this was true in a
very extreme case merely because it would serve as a good teaching aid
to those whose temptations to give in to anger and assault would not
be so extreme. I will with God that none of HisHer SonsDaughters should
suffer.
16
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the
FatherMother and HisHer separated SonsDaughters. If you will listen to
Her Voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt
and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves.
When you perceive only this need in them and do not respond to any
other, you will have learned of me and will be as eager to share your
learning as I am. The crucifixion cannot be shared, because it
is the symbol of projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing,
because the reawakening of every SonDaughter of God is necessary to
enable the SonDaughtership to know its wholeness. Only this is
knowledge.
17
The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear:
19
If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a
weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was
intended. The Apostles often misunderstood it and always for the same
reason that makes anyone misunderstand anything. Their own imperfect
love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they
spoke of the "wrath of God" as HisHer retaliatory weapon. Nor could they
speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their own sense
of guilt had made them angry.
20
There are two glaring examples of upside-down thinking in the New
Testament, whose whole gospel is only the message of love. These
are not like the several slips into impatience which I made. I had
learned the Atonement prayer, which I also came to teach, too well to
engage in upside-down thinking myself. If the Apostles had not felt
guilty, they never could have quoted me as saying, "I come not to bring
peace but a sword." This is clearly the exact opposite of everything I
taught.
21
Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they did if they
had really understood me. They would have realized I could not
have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" unless I believed
in betrayal. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did
not. The "punishment" which I am said to have called forth upon
Judas was a similar reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as
much a part of the SonDaughtership as myself. Was it likely that I would
condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is
impossible?
22
I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching and fully aware of
the extent of their devotion to me. Nevertheless, as you read their
teachings, remember that I told them myself that there was much they
would understand later because they were not wholly ready to
follow me at the time. I emphasize this only because I do not want you
to allow any fear to enter into the thought system toward which
I am guiding you. I do not call for martyrs but for teachers/teacheressess.
No one is "punished" for sins, and the SonsDaughters of God are not
sinners.
23
Any concept of "punishment" involves the projection of blame and
reinforces the idea that blame is justified. The behavior that
results is a lesson in blame, just as all behavior teaches the
beliefs which motivate it. The crucifixion was a complex of behaviors
arising out of clearly opposed thought systems. As such, it was the
perfect symbol of conflict between the ego and the SonDaughter of God.
The conflict is just as real now, and its lessons, too, have equal
reality when they are learned. I do not need gratitude any more
than I needed protection, but you need to develop your weakened ability
to be grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. HeShe does not
need your appreciation, but you do.
24
You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and fear makes
appreciation impossible. Whenever you are afraid of what you are,
you do not appreciate it and will therefore reject it. As a
result, you will teach rejection. The power of the SonsDaughters
of God is operating all the time because they were createdmanifested as
creatorsmanifestors. Their influence on each other is without
limit and must be used for their joint salvation. Each one must
learn to teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless. The
separation is the notion of rejection. As long as you teach
this, you still believe it. This is not as God thinks, and you
must think as HeShe thinks if you are to know HimHer again.
25
Any split in will must involve a rejection of part of it, and
this is the belief in separation. The wholeness of God, which is
HisHer peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind which
recognizes the wholeness of God's creationmanifestation and by
this recognition knows its CreatorManifestor. Exclusion and separation
are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have said before
that the separation was and is dissociation and also that, once
it had occurred, projection became its main defense or the device that keeps
it going. The reason, however, may not be as clear as you think.
26
In the ego's use of projection, to which we are obviously referring,
what you project you disown and therefore do not believe is yours.
You are excluding yourself by the very statement you are making
that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since
you have also judged against what you project, you continue to
attack it because you have already attacked it by projecting it.
By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you must have
attacked yourself first out of awareness and thus imagine that
you have made yourself safe.
27
Projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in
your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the
separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make
you feel different from your brothers/sisters and separated from
them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it
makes you seem "better" than they are, thus obscuring your equality with
them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related because
projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without
projection is impossible.
28
The ego uses projection only to distort your perception both of
yourself and your brothers/sisters. The process begins by
excluding something [you think] exists in you which you do not want and
leads directly to excluding you from your brothers/sisters. We have
learned, however, that there is another use of projection. Every ability
of the ego has a better counterpart, because its abilities are directed
by the mind which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit as well as the ego
utilizes projection, but since their goals are opposed, so is the
result.
29
The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing
this perfection is shared, She recognizes it in others, thus
strengthening it in both. Instead of anger, this arouses love for both,
because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy
Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically,
because Atonement is the one need which in this world is
universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in
which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the
acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is
unhappy.
30
How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing
that you are not there? You cannot be anywhere that God did not
put you, and God createdmanifested you as part of HimHer. That is both where
you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable.
It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever
true. It is not a belief but a fact. Anything that God
createdmanifested is as true as HeShe is. Its truth lies only in its
perfect inclusion in HimHer, Who alone is perfect. To deny this
in any way is to deny yourself and HimHer since it is impossible
to accept one without the other.
31
The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit's perception is the counterpart
of the perfect equality of God's knowing. The ego's perception has
no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between
perception and knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way
that parallels knowledge, you will ultimately meet it and know
it. The ego would prefer to believe that this meeting is impossible, yet
it is your perception which the Holy Spirit guides. You might
remember that the human eye perceives parallel lines as if
they meet in the distance, which is the same as in the future if time
and space are one dimension. Your perception will end where it
began. Everything meets in God because everything was
createdmanifested by HimHer and in HimHer.
32
God createdmanifested HisHer SonsDaughters by extending HisHer thought
and retaining the extensions of HisHer Thought in HisHer Mind. All
HisHer Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with
each other because they were createdmanifested neither partially nor in
part. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now.
You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for
yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, directed
by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. God createdmanifested you to
createmanifest. You cannot extend HisHer Realm until you know of
its wholeness.
33
Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker from which they extend
outward. This is as true of God's Thinking as it is of yours. Because
your minds are split, you can also perceive as well as think. Yet
perception cannot escape from the basic laws of mind. You perceive from
your mind and extend your perceptions outward. Although perception of
any kind is unnecessary, you made it, and the Holy Spirit can
therefore use it well. She can inspire perception and lead it
toward God by making it parallel to God's way of thinking and
thus guarantee their ultimate meeting. This convergence seems to
be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment
with the idea and therefore does not want it now.
34
The Holy Spirit uses time but does not believe in it.
Coming from God, She uses everything for good, but She does not believe
in what is not true. Since the Holy Spirit is in your minds,
your minds must also be able to believe only what is true. The Holy
Spirit can speak only for this because She speaks for God. She tells you
to return your whole mind to God because it has never left HimHer.
If it has never left HimHer, you need only perceive it as it is to be
returned. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition
that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot prevail
against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego
never occurred.
35
The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it
can so easily make the idea seem so difficult. Yet the Holy Spirit tells
you that even return is unnecessary because what never happened cannot
involve any problem. It does not follow, however, that you
cannot make the idea of return both necessary and difficult. It
is surely clear, however, that the perfect need nothing and cannot
experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment, because that is
what they are.
36
This is the way in which you must perceive God's
creationsmanifestations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one
parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line
of communication with God and lets your mind converge with HisHers.
There is no conflict anywhere in this perception because it means that all
perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose mind is fixed on God. Only
the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict, because only the Holy
Spirit is conflict-free. She perceives only what is true in your
mind and extends outward only to what is true in other minds.
37
The difference between the ego's use of projection and projection as the
Holy Spirit uses it is very simple. The ego projects to exclude
and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit projects by recognizing
Herself in every mind and thus perceives them as one.
Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit
perceives is the same. Wherever She looks She sees Herself, and
because She is united, She offers the whole Realm always. This is the
one message God gave to Her and for which She must speak because
that is what She is. The peace of God lies in that message, and
so the peace of God lies in you.
38
The great peace of the Realm shines in your mind forever, but it must
shine outward to make you aware of it. The Holy Spirit
was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by perceiving Her
impartially can you perceive Her at all. The ego is legion, but the Holy
Spirit is One. No darkness abides anywhere in the Realm, but your part
is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This
alignment with light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the
light of the world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by
joining our minds in this light, we proclaim the God Realm
together and as one.
39
We have used the many words as synonymous which are not ordinarily
regarded as the same. We began with having and being and more recently
have used others. Hearing and being are examples, to which we can also
add teaching and being, learning and being and, above all, projecting
and being. This is because, as we have said before, every idea begins in
the mind of the thinker and extends outward. Therefore, what extends from
the mind is still in it, and from what it extends it knows itself.
That is its natural talent. The word "knows" is correct here, even
though the ego does not know and is not concerned with being at
all.
40
The Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe through Her impartial
perception. By attacking nothing, She presents no barrier at all to the
communication of God. Thus, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind
can never be defiled. The ego never was and never will be part
of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what
is not true. From this, which you have made, you have
taught yourselves to believe that you are not what you are.
You cannot teach what you have not learned, and what you teach
you strengthen in yourselves because you are sharing it. Every
lesson you teach you are learning.
41
That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be
conflict-free yourselves, you must learn only from the Holy
Spirit and teach only by Her. You are only love, but
when you denied this you made what you are something you must learn.
We said before that the message of the crucifixion was, "Teach only
love, for that is what you are." This is the one lesson
which is perfectly unified because it is the only lesson which is
one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. "As you teach, so
will you learn." If that is true, and it is true indeed, you must never
forget that what you teach is teaching you. What you project you
believe.
42
The only real safety lies in projecting only the Holy Spirit
because, as you see Her gentleness in others, your own mind
perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this
fully, it does not see the need to protect itself. The
protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly
safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign. They bless because
they know they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly
kind and because it projects beneficence, it is
beneficent.
43
Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. No compromise
is possible in this. Teach attack in any form, and you have
learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet your learning is not
immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it. Since you
cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite
of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the
truth that will set you free and keep you so, as others learn it of you.
The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By
learning it through projection, it becomes a part of what you know
because you cannot teach what you have dissociated.
44
Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea
which you share, you must have. It awakens in you
through the conviction of teaching. Remember that, if teaching is being
and learning is being, then teaching is learning. Everything you
teach, you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours
and you are love.
45
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question.
The ego always speaks first because it is capricious and does not
mean its maker well. That is because it believes, and correctly, that
its maker may withdraw his/her support from it at any moment. If it
meant you well, it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when
She has brought you home, and you no longer need Her guidance. The ego
does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary
perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system.
46
When God createdmanifested you, HeShe made you part of HimHer. That is
why attack within the God Realm is impossible. You made
the ego without love, and so it does not love you. You could not
remain within the God Realm without love, and since the God
Realm is love, you believe that you are without it. This enables
the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus
speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separate and
outside the Mind of God. The ego, then, raised the first question that
was ever asked, but one which it can never answer. That question, "What
are you?" was the beginning of doubt.
47
The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has
raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never
done more than obscure the question, because you have
the answer and the ego is afraid of you. You cannot understand
the conflict until you fully understand one basic fact that the ego does
not know. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but She
always answers. Everyone has called upon Her for help at one time
or another and in one way or another and has been answered.
Since the Holy Spirit answers truly, She answers for all time,
which means that everyone has the answer now.
48
The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that
part of the same mind that made it is against it. It interprets
this as a justification for attacking its maker. It believes
that the best defense is attack and wants you to believe it.
Unless you do believe it you will not side with it, and the ego
feels badly in need of allies though not of brothers/sisters.
Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind, the ego turns to the
body, not the mind, as its ally, because the body is not
part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend. It is an alliance
frankly based on separation. If you side with this alliance, you
will be afraid because you are siding with an alliance of fear.
49
The ego and the body conspire against your minds, and because
the ego realizes that its "enemy" can end them both merely by
knowing they are not part of himher, they join in the attack
together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all if you
consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real,
attempts to persuade the mind, which is real, that the mind is
its own learning device and that the learning device is more real than it
is. No one in his/her right mind could though believe this, and
no one in his/her right mind does believe it.
50
Hear then the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the
questions which the ego raises. You are a Child of God, a priceless part
of HisHer Realm, which HeShe createdmanifested as part of HimHer.
Nothing else exists, and only this is real. You have chosen a
sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real, and
God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when
you hear HimHer because you will be awake. Your dreams have
contained many of the ego's symbols, and they have confused you. Yet
that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you
awake, you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no
longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you.
51
Yet the God Realm and all that you have createdmanifested there will
have great reality for you because they are beautiful and true. In the
God Realm, where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. There is
no doubt there because the first question was never asked. Having
finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Being alone
lives in the God Realm, where everything lives in God without question.
The time that was spent on questioning in the dream has given way to
creationmanifestation and to its eternity.
52
You are as certain as God because you are as true as HeShe is,
but what was once quite certain in your minds has become only the ability
for certainty. The introduction of abilities into being was the
beginning of uncertainty because abilities are potentials, not
accomplishments. Your abilities are totally useless in the presence of
God's accomplishments and also of yours. Accomplishments are results
which have been achieved. When they are perfect, abilities are
meaningless. It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In
fact, it is impossible. You must remember, however, that when you put
yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible
was possible.
53
Abilities must be developed, or you cannot use them. This is not
true of anything that God createdmanifested, but it is the kindest
solution possible to what you have made. In an impossible
situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can get
you out of it. You have a Guide to how to develop them, but you
have no commander except yourself. This leaves you in
charge of the God Realm with both a Guide to find it and a means
to keep it. You have a model to follow who will strengthen
your command and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain
the central place in your perceived enslavement, a fact which itself
demonstrates that you are not enslaved.
54
You are in an impossible situation only because you thought it was
possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation
if God showed you your perfection and proved to you that you
were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect were inadequate to
bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection and thus
side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are
therefore helpless. This is the kind of "reasoning" which the ego
engages in, but God, Who knows that HisHer
creationsmanifestations are perfect, does not insult them. This
would be as impossible as the ego's notion that it has insulted
HimHer.
55
That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to
assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not
exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and everything God
createdmanifested is faithful to HisHer laws. Fidelity to other laws is
also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you
made them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have
thought insanely? Can God lose HisHer own certainty? We have frequently
stated that what you teach you are. Would you have God teach you
that you have sinned? If HeShe confronted the self you made with the
truth HeShe createdmanifested for you, what could you be but afraid? You
would doubt your sanity, which is the one thing in which you can find
the sanity HeShe gave you.
56
God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack, which God knows
is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change, but God
createdmanifested only the changeless. The separation was not a loss of
perfection but a failure in communication. A harsh and strident form of
communication arose as the ego's voice. It could not shatter the peace
of God, but it could shatter yours. God did not blot it
out because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned,
HeShe did not question. HeShe merely gave the Answer. HisHer Answer is
your Teacheress.
57
Like any good Teacheress, the Holy Spirit does know more than you do now,
but She teaches only to make you equal with Her. This is because
you had already taught wrongly, having believed what was not true. You
did not believe in your own perfection. Could God teach you that
you had made a split mind, when HeShe knows your mind only as whole?
What God does know is that HisHer communication channels are not
open to HimHer so that HeShe cannot impart HisHer joy and know that
HisHer Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in
time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not HisHer
completeness, is blocked when the SonDaughtership does not communicate
with HimHer as one. So HeShe thought, "Our Children sleep and must be
awakened."
58
How can you wake children better and more kindly than by a gentle Voice
that will not frighten them but will merely remind them that the night
is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the
nightmares which frightened them so badly were not real because children
believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now.
Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping
and waking, so that they will understand they need not be afraid of
dreams. Then when bad dreams come, they will call on the light themselves
to dispel them.
59
A wise teacher/teacheress teaches through approach, not
avoidance. He/she does not emphasize what you must avoid to
escape from harm so much as what you need to learn to have joy. This is
true even of the world's teachers/teacheresses. Consider the confusion a
child would experience if he/she were told, "Do not do this
because it might hurt you and make you unsafe, but if you do that
you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid."
All of this could be included in only three words: "Do only
that!" This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood, and
very easily remembered.
60
The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because She does not
frighten children, and those who lack wisdom are children. Yet
She always answers their call, and Her dependability makes them
more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality, and they
are frightened because they do not know the difference. The Holy
Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. She merely shines them
away. Her light is always the call to awake, whatever you have
been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit,
shining with the light from God HimHerself, speaks only for what lasts
forever.
61
When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that
you will last forever. Many think this is accomplished through
death, but nothing is accomplished through death because death is
nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of
the mind and in the Mind. The body neither lives nor dies
because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same
mind, you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt
to resolve conflict by not willing at all. Like any other impossible
solution which the ego attempts, it will not work.
62
God did not make the body because it is destructible and therefore not
of the God Realm. The body is the symbol of what you think you
are. It is clearly a separation device and therefore does not exist. The
Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into
a learning device for you. Again as always, She re-interprets
what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a
demonstration against it. If the mind can heal the body but the
body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger. Every
miracle demonstrates this.
63
We have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for
miracles. This is because She always tells you that only the
mind is real since only the mind can be shared. The body
is separate and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of
one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is
meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless.
To the Holy Spirit, there is no order of difficulty in miracles.
This is familiar enough to you by now, but it has not yet become
believable. Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot use
it.
64
We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the God Realm to let this
crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation stone of the thought
system I teach and want you to teach. You cannot perform
miracles without believing it because it is a belief in perfect
equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal
SonsDaughters of God, and that is full appreciation. Nothing
more and nothing less. Without a range, an order of difficulty is
meaningless, and there must be no range in what you offer to
each other.
65
The Holy Spirit, who leads to God, translates communication into being,
just as She ultimately translates perception into knowledge. [You do
not lose what you communicate.] The ego uses the body for attack,
for pleasure, and for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a
fearful one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees the body only as a
means of communication and because communicating is sharing, it
becomes communion. You might argue that fear as well as love can be
communicated and therefore can be shared. Yet this is not so real as it
sounds. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack
always breaks communication, making it impossible.
66
Egos do join together in temporary allegiance but always for what
each
one can get separately. The Holy Spirit communicates only what
each one can give to all. She never takes anything back because
She wants you to keep it. Therefore, Her teaching begins with
the lesson:
68
This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for
yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step
yourself, but it is necessary that you turn in that direction.
Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in charge of
the journey, where you and only you must remain.
69
This step appears to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it
because it is the beginning step in reversing your perception
and turning it right-side up. This conflicts with the upside-down
perception which you have not yet abandoned, or the change in direction
would not have been necessary. Some people remain at this step for a
very long time, experiencing very acute conflict. At this point,
the many try to accept the conflict rather than take the next
step towards its resolution. Having taken the first step, however, they
will be helped. Once they have chosen what they cannot
complete alone, they are no longer alone.
70
All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment.
This is because they believe in attack and rejection, so this is
what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane concepts
are clearly the result of their own dissociation and projection. What
you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly
and therefore teach yourselves wrong. Many thought that I was
attacking them, even though it was quite apparent that I was not. An
insane learner learns strange lessons.
71
What you must understand is that when you do not share a thought
system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it
therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because
everyone identifies himself/herself with his/her thought
system, and every thought system centers on what you believe
you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth
extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception
proceeds from it. All good teachers/teacheresses realize that only
fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that
level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and
foremost goal. It is also their last and final one.
72
Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a
teacher/teacheress need do to guarantee change. This is because
a change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will
inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is
fundamental. The first step in the reversal or undoing process, then, is
the undoing of the getting concept. Accordingly, the Holy
Spirit's first lesson was "to have, give all to
all." We said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we
can clarify this still further now.
73
At this point, the equality of "having" and "being" is not yet
perceived. Until it is, "having" appears to be the opposite
of "being." Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a
contradiction since it is being learned by a conflicted mind.
This means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot
be learned consistently as yet. Further, the mind of the learner
projects its own split, and thus does not perceive consistent
minds in others, making him/her suspicious of their motivation.
This is the real reason why in the many respects the first lesson is the
hardest to learn. Still strongly aware of the ego in himself/herself and
responding primarily to the ego in others, he/she is being taught to
react to both as if what he/she does believe is not
true.
74
Upside-down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In
fact this is its only alternative here since the other one, which would
be much less acceptable to it, would obviously be that it
is insane. The ego's judgment, then, is predetermined by what it is,
though no more so than is any other product of thought. The fundamental
change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker.
Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit's Voice makes it
impossible for the learner not to listen. For a time, then,
he/she is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both.
This is the classic "double bind" in communication.
75
The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is
clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify
with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept
two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of
mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you will
surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict
and learning it. Yet you do want peace, or you would not
have called upon the Voice for Peace to help you. Her lesson is
not insane; the conflict is.
76
There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one
is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to
persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true,
but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was createdmanifested by God,
and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to
realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit's Voice and its perfect
consistency, it must dawn on your minds that you are
trying to undo a decision which was made irrevocably for you.
That is why we suggested before that there was help in reminding
yourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.
77
You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you are
free to think you are. It must, however, be insane to
believe that it is up to you to decide what God's
creationsmanifestations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the
conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, Her second lesson is:
79
This is still a preliminary step since having and being
are still not equated. It is, however, more advanced than the first
step, which is really only a thought reversal. The second step
is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a
step in the direction out of conflict since it means that
alternatives have been considered and one has been chosen as more
desirable.
80
Nevertheless, the evaluation "more desirable" still implies that the
desirable has degrees. Therefore, although this step is
essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final
one. It is clear at this point that the lack of order of difficulty in
miracles has not yet been accepted because nothing is difficult that is
wholly desired. To desire wholly is to createmanifest,
and creatingmanifesting cannot be difficult if God HimHerself
createdmanifested you as a creatormanifestor. The second step,
then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step toward the
unified perception which parallels God's knowing.
81
As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be
pushing toward the center of your thought system where the fundamental
change will occur. You are only beginning this step now, but you have
started on this way by realizing that only one way is possible.
You do not yet realize this consistently, and so your progress is
intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first because it follows.
The very fact that you have accepted that is a demonstration of
your growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on.
82
For your own salvation you must be critical since your salvation is
critical to the whole SonDaughtership. We said before that the Holy
Spirit is evaluative and must be. Yet Her evaluation does not
extend beyond you, or you would share it. In your mind,
and your mind only, She sorts out the true from the false and
teaches you to judge every thought that you allow to enter your mind in
the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord
with this light, She retains to strengthen the God Realm in you.
What is partly in accord with truth, She accepts and purifies.
But what is out of accord entirely, She rejects by judging against.
This is how She keeps the God Realm perfectly consistent and perfectly
unified.
83
What you must remember, however, is that what the Holy Spirit rejects
the ego accepts. This is because they are in fundamental
disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what
you are. The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is
why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on
this point, and so the one mood She engenders is joy. She protects
it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so She
alone can keep you wholly joyous.
84
The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds
because She does not want you to teach errors and learn them
yourselves. She would hardly be consistent if She allowed you to strengthen
what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the thinker,
then, She is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so
it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach
without judgment and therefore to learn to be without
judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind so that you
cannot project falsely. God HimHerself has established what you can
project with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson
is:
86
This is a major step toward fundamental change. Yet it is still
a lesson in thought reversal since it implies that there is something
you must be vigilant against. It has advanced far from the first
lesson, which was primarily a reversal and also from the second,
which was essentially the identification of what is more
desirable. This step, which follows from the second as the
second follows from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between
the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the ultimate
choice inevitable.
87
While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second
step still entails it to some extent, this one calls for consistent
effort against it. We said already that you can be as vigilant against
the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can
be, but that you must be. It does not concern itself with order
of difficulty but with clear cut priority for vigilance. This
step is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no
exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make
exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite
chaos. Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long since
they are mutually exclusive.
88
As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not
recognizing this mutual exclusiveness and are holding the belief that
you can choose either one. By teaching what to choose,
the Holy Spirit will ultimately be able to teach you that you need
not choose at all. This will finally liberate your will from
choice and direct it towards creationmanifestation within the
God Realm. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the
God Realm. You createmanifest by what you are, but this is what
you must learn. The way to learn it is inherent in the third step, which
brings together the lessons implied in the others and goes beyond them
towards real integration.
89
If you allow yourselves to have in your minds only what God put
there, you are acknowledging your mind as God createdmanifested
it. Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. Since it is whole,
you are teaching peace because you believe in it. The final step
will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the
Holy Spirit has prepared you for God. She is getting you
ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature
of the steps you must take with Her.
90
You learn first that having rests on giving and not on
getting. Next you learn that you learn what you teach and that
you want to learn peace. This is the condition for
identifying with the God Realm since it is the condition of the
God Realm. You have believed that you are without the God Realm
and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. It
is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included
and that the belief that you are not is the only
thing that you must exclude.
91
The third step is thus one of protection for your minds,
allowing you to identify only with the center, where God placed
the altar to HimHerself. We have already said that altars are beliefs,
but God and HisHer creationsmanifestations are beyond belief
because they are beyond question. The Voice for God speaks only for belief
beyond question, which is the preparation for being without
question. As long as belief in God and HisHer Realm is assailed by any
doubts in your minds, HisHer perfect accomplishment is not
apparent to you. This is why you must be vigilant on God's behalf.
The ego speaks against HisHer creationmanifestation and
therefore does engender doubt. You cannot go beyond
belief until you believe fully.
92
Transfer, which is extension, is a measure of learning because
it is its measurable result. This, however, does not mean that
what it transfers to is measurable. On the contrary, unless it
transfers to the whole SonDaughtership, which is immeasurable because it
was createdmanifested by the Immeasurable, the learning itself must
be incomplete. To teach the whole SonDaughtership without exception
demonstrates that you perceive its wholeness and have learned
that it is one. Now you must be vigilant to hold its
oneness in your minds because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose
awareness of its wholeness and will be unable to teach it.
93
The wholeness of the God Realm does not depend on your
perception, but your awareness of its wholeness does. It
is only your awareness which needs protection since your being
cannot be assailed. Yet a real sense of being cannot be
yours while you are doubtful of what you are. This is why
vigilance is essential. Doubts about being must not enter your
mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty. Certainty
is of God for you. Vigilance is not necessary for truth,
but it is necessary against illusions.
94
Truth is without illusions and therefore within the God
Realm. Everything outside the God Realm is illusion, but
you must learn to accept truth because you threw it away. You therefore
saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another Realm
which you valued, you did not keep only the Realm of God
in your minds and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What
you have made has thus divided your will and given you a sick mind which
must be healed. Your vigilance against this sickness is
the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed, it radiates health and
thereby teaches healing. This establishes you as a
teacher/teacheress who teaches like me. Vigilance was required of me as
much as of you, but remember that those who will to teach the same thing
must be in agreement about what they believe.
95
The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe
and entails a willingness to relinquish everything else. I told
you that you were just beginning the second step, but I also told you
that the third one follows it. The Holy Spirit will enable you
to go on if you follow Her. Your vigilance is the sign that you want
Her to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only to teach you
that effort itself is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort
to preserve what you made because it was not true. Therefore,
you must now turn your effort against it. Only this can cancel
out the need for effort and call upon the being which
you both have and are. This recognition is
wholly without effort since it is already true and needs
no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore inclusion
is total and creationmanifestation is without limit.
1
The creativemanifestive power of both God and HisHer
creationsmanifestations is limitless, but they are not in reciprocal
relationship. You do communicate fully with God, as HeShe does
with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because
you share it, you are inspired to createmanifest like God. Yet
in creationmanifestation you are not in reciprocal relation to God since
HeShe createdmanifested you, but you did not
createmanifest HimHer. We have already said that only in this respect
your creativemanifestive power differs from HisHers. Even in this world
there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but children do not
give birth to parents. They do, however, give birth to their
children and thus give birth as their parents do.
2
If you createdmanifested God and HeShe createdmanifested you, the God
Realm could not increase through its own creativemanifestive thought.
Creationmanifestation would therefore be limited, and you would not be
cocreatorscomanifestors with God. As God's creativemanifestive Thought
proceeds from HimHer to you, so must your creativemanifestive thought
proceed from you to your creationsmanifestations. Only in this
way can all creativemanifestive power extend outward. God's
accomplishments are not yours. But yours are like HisHers. HeShe
createdmanifested the SonDaughtership, and you increase it. You
have the power to add to the God Realm, but not to add to the
CreatorManifestor of the God Realm. You claim this power when you become
vigilant only for God and HisHer Realm. By accepting this power
as yours, you have learned to be what you are.
3
Your creationsmanifestations belong in you, as you belong in God. You
are part of God, as your sonsdaughters are part of HisHer SonsDaughters.
To createmanifest is to
love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being
limitless, it does not stop. It createsmanifests forever, but
not in time. God's creationsmanifestations have always been because
HeShe has always been. Your creationsmanifestations have always
been because you can createmanifest only as God createsmanifests.
Eternity is yours because HeShe createdmanifested you eternal.
4
The ego demands reciprocal rights because it is competitive rather than
loving. It is always willing to make a "deal," but it cannot understand
that to be like another means that no deals are
possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit
giving, and this is not God's Will. To will with God is to
createmanifest like HimHer.
God does not limit HisHer gifts in any way. You are HisHer
gifts, and so your gifts must be like HisHers. Your gifts to the
God Realm must be like HisHer gifts to you.
5
I gave only love to the God Realm because I believed that was
what I was. What you believe you are determines your
gifts, and if God createdmanifested you by extending HimHerself as
you, you can only extend yourself as HeShe did. Only joy
increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends
outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are
cocreatorscomanifestors with HimHer extend HisHer Realm forever and
beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creationmanifestation.
The eternal are in peace and joy forever.
6
To think like God is to share HisHer certainty of what you are
and to createmanifest like
HimHer is to share the perfect love HeShe shares with you. To
this the Holy Spirit leads you that your joy may be complete because the
God Realm is whole. We have said that the last step in the reawakening
of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in
words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true needs
to be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating
the useless into the useful, the meaningless into
the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. She can
therefore tell you something about this last step, although this one you
must know yourself, since by it you know what you are. This is
your being.
7
God does not take steps because HisHer accomplishments are not
gradual. HeShe does not teach because HisHer creationsmanifestations are
changeless. HeShe does nothing last because HeShe
createdmanifested first and for always. It must be
understood that the word "first" as applied to HimHer is not a
time concept. HeShe is first in the sense that HeShe is the first in the
Holy Trinity itself. HeShe is the Prime CreatorManifestor because HeShe
createdmanifested HisHer cocreatorscomanifestors. Because HeShe
did, time applies neither to HimHer nor to what HeShe
createdmanifested. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true
in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever.
8
What is timeless is always there because its being is
eternally changeless. It does not change by increase because it was
forever createdmanifested to increase. If you perceive it as not
increasing, you do not know what it is. You also do not know
what createdmanifested it or Who HeShe is. God does not reveal
this to you because it was never hidden. HisHer light was never obscured
because it is HisHer Will to share it. How can what is fully
shared be withheld and then revealed?
9
To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the
Thought of God, and because of the elements which they share, can
transfer to it. When a brother/sister perceives himself/herself
as sick, he/she is perceiving himself/herself as not whole and
therefore in need. If you too see him/her this way, you are
seeing him/her as if he/she were absent from the God Realm or separated
from it, thus making the God Realm itself obscure to both of
you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the God Realm is. If
you obscure the God Realm, you are perceiving what is not of God.
10
To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother/sister and
yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him/her. This places you both
within the God Realm and restores its wholeness in your minds. This
parallels creationmanifestation because it unifies by increasing
and integrates by extending. What you project you believe. This
is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the God
Realm. However, the content is different in this world because the
thoughts it governs are very different from the thoughts in the God
Realm. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain
order.
11
The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in
this world is that by obeying them—and I assure you that you must
obey them—you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is
because the laws have adapted to the circumstances of this world, in
which diametrically opposed outcomes are believed in. The laws
of mind govern thoughts, and you do respond to two conflicting
voices. You have heard the many arguments on behalf of "the freedoms,"
which would indeed have been freedom if man/woman had not chosen to fight
for them. That is why they perceive "the freedoms" as the many instead
of as one. Yet the argument that underlies the defense of freedom is
perfectly valid. Because it is true, it should not be fought
for, but it should be sided with.
12
Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will hurt
them, which cannot be true. But those who are for
freedom, even if they are misguided in how to defend it, are siding with
the one thing in this world which is true. Whenever anyone can
listen fairly to both sides of any issue, he/she will make the
right decision. This is because he/she has the answer. Conflict
can seem to be interpersonal, but it must be
intrapersonal first.
13
The term "intrapersonal" is an ego term because "personal" implies "of one
personal" and not of others. "Interpersonal" has a similar error
in that it refers to something that exists among different or separate
people. When we spoke before of the extremely personal nature of
revelation, we followed this statement immediately with a description of
the inevitable outcomes of the revelation in terms of sharing. A
person conceives of himself/herself as separate largely because he/she
perceives of himself/herself as bounded by a body. Only
if he/she perceives himself/herself as a mind can this be
overcome. Then he/she is free to use terms like "intramental" and
"intermental" without seeing them as different or conflicting,
because minds can be in perfect accord.
14
Outside the God Realm, the law which prevails inside it
is adapted to "what you project you believe." This is its teaching
form, since outside the God Realm teaching is mandatory because learning
is essential. This form of the law clearly implies that you will learn
what you are from what you have projected onto others and
therefore believe they are. In the God Realm there is no
teaching or learning because there is no belief. There
is only certainty. God and HisHer SonsDaughters, in the surety
of being, know that what you project you are. That form
of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of
creationmanifestation. God HimHerself createdmanifested the law by
creatingmanifesting by it. And HisHer SonsDaughters, who
createmanifest like HimHer,
follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the God Realm depends on
it just as their own creationmanifestation did.
15
Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they
must be translated for those who speak a different language.
Nevertheless, a good translator, although he/she must alter the form
of what he/she translates, never changes the meaning. In fact,
his/her whole purpose is to change the form so that the original
meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the
laws of God to those who do not understand them. You could not
do this yourselves because conflicted minds cannot be faithful
to one meaning and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the
form.
16
The Holy Spirit's purpose in translating is naturally exactly
the opposite. HeShe translates only to preserve the original
meaning in all respects and in all languages. Therefore,
HeShe opposes differences in form as meaningful, emphasizing always that
these differences do not matter. The meaning of HisHer message is
always the same, and only the meaning matters. God's law
of Creation in perfect form does not involve the use of truth to
convince HisHer SonsDaughters of truth. The extension of
truth, which is the law of the God Realm, rests only on the
knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and
requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited
yourselves, you became learners.
17
No one questions the intimate connection of learning and memory.
Learning is impossible without memory, since it cannot be
consistent unless it is remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit
is a lesson in remembering. We said before that She teaches
remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting aspect is only to
make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember
better. You will not understand Her translations while you
listen to two ways of perceiving them. Therefore, you must forget or
relinquish one to understand the other. This is the only way you
can learn consistency so that you can finally be
consistent.
18
What can the perfect consistency of the God Realm mean to the confused?
It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning and
therefore prevents
the learner from appreciating it. There is no confusion in
the God Realm because there is only one meaning. This meaning
comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you
share it and extend it as your CreatorManifestor did. This needs
no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does
need extension because it means extension. Communication is
perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain
because nothing discordant ever enters. That is why it is
the God Realm. It belongs to HimHer and is therefore like
HimHer. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.
19
To heal is to liberate totally. We once said there is no order of
difficulty in miracles because they are all maximal expressions
of love. This has no range at all. The non-maximal only appears
to have a range. This is because it seems to be meaningful to
measure it from the maximum and identify its position by how
much it is not there. Actually, this does not mean
anything. It is like negative numbers in that the concept can be used
theoretically, but it has no application practically. It is true that if
you put three apples on the table and then take them away, the three
apples are not there. But it is not true that the table is now minus
three apples. If there is nothing on the table, it does not
matter what was there in terms of amount. The "nothing" is
neither greater nor less because of what is absent.
20
That is why "all" and "nothing" are dichotomous, without a
range. This is perfectly clear in considering psychological tests of
maximal performance. You cannot interpret the results at all
unless you assume either maximal motivation or no
motivation at all. Only in these two conditions can you validly compare
responses, and you must assume the former, because if the latter
were true, the subject would not do anything. Given variable
motivation, he/she will do something, but you cannot understand
what it is.
21
The results of such tests are evaluated relatively assuming
maximal motivation, but this is because we are dealing with abilities,
where degree of development is meaningful. This does not mean
that what the ability is used for is necessarily either limited
or divided. Yet one thing is certain—abilities are potentials
for learning, and you will apply them to what you want to learn.
Learning is effort, and effort means will. We have used
the term "abilities" in the plural because abilities began with the ego,
which perceived them as potentials for excelling. This is how
the ego still perceives them and uses them.
22
The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned
because that would defeat its purpose. Therefore, it does not really
learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made
to teach the opposite of what the ego has learned. The kind
of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability which was
applied to the learning. You could not have a better example of
the Holy Spirit's unified purpose than this course. The Holy Spirit has
taken very diversified areas of your learning and has applied
them to a unified curriculum. The fact that this was not
the ego's reason for learning is totally irrelevant.
23
You made the effort to learn, and the Holy Spirit has a unified
goal for all effort. She adapts the ego's potentials for
excelling to potentials for equalizing. This makes them useless
for the ego's purpose but very useful for Hers. If different
abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves
become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction or
in one way. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one
result, and by so doing, their similarity rather than their
differences is emphasized. You can excel in the many different
ways, but you can equalize in one way only. Equality is
not a variable state, by definition.
24
That is why you will be able to perform all aspects of your work
with ease when you have learned this course. To the ego there
appears to be no connection, because the ego is discontinuous.
Yet the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies it to all
individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, She
maximizes all efforts and all results. By teaching the
power of the God Realm Herself, She teaches you that all power is
yours. Its application does not matter. It is always
maximal. Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does
enable you to use it always and in all ways.
25
When I said, "I am with you always," I meant it literally. I am not
absent to anyone in any situation. Because I are
always with you, you are the way and the truth and the light.
You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was
createdmanifested to be shared and therefore cannot be
meaningfully perceived as belonging to anyone at the expense of
another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by eliminating or
overlooking its real and only meaning.
26
God's meaning waits in the God Realm because that is where HeShe placed
it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the God Realm
because it belongs there, as you do. How can you, who are
God's meaning, perceive yourselves as absent from it? You can
see yourselves as separated from your meaning only by experiencing
yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that
you are not what you are. This is so contradictory that
it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson which you cannot
really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you
are always teaching. You must therefore be teaching something else
as well, even though the ego does not know what it is.
27
The ego, then, is always being undone and does suspect
your motives. Your mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the
ego because the mind does not belong to it. Yet what is
"treacherous" to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego's "enemy"
is therefore your friend. We said before that the ego's friend
is not part of you, since the ego perceives itself as at war and
therefore in need of allies. You who are not at war must
look for brothers/sisters and recognize all whom you see as
brothers/sisters, because only equals are at peace.
28
Because God's equal SonsDaughters have everything, they cannot
compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers/sisters as
anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has
entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against
this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. It is the
belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have
accepted the impossible as true. How is that different from
saying that you are perceiving yourself as unreal?
29
To be in the God Realm is merely to focus your full attention on
it. As long as you believe that you can attend to what is not true, you
are accepting conflict as your choice. Is it really a
choice? It seems to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the
same. You who are the God Realm are not concerned with seeming.
reality is yours because you are reality. This is how having and
being are ultimately reconciled, not in the God Realm, but in your
minds. The altar there is the only reality. The altar is
perfectly clear in thought because it is a reflection of perfect
Thought. It sees only brothers/sisters because it sees only in
its own light.
30
God has lit your minds HimHerself and keeps your minds lit by HisHer
light because HisHer light is what your minds are. This is totally
beyond question, and when you questioned it you were answered.
The answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact
that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is why the
Holy Spirit never questions. Her sole function is to undo
the questionable and thus lead to certainty. The certain are
perfectly calm because they are not in doubt. They do not raise
questions because nothing questionable enters their minds. This
holds them in perfect serenity because this is what they share, knowing
what they are.
31
As has so often been said, healing is both an art and a science. It is
an art because it depends on inspiration in the sense that we have
already used the term. Inspiration is the opposite of dispiriting and
therefore means to make joyous. The dispirited are depressed because
they believe that they are literally "without the Spirit," which is an
illusion. You do not put the Spirit in them by inspiring them
because that would be magic and therefore would not be real healing. You
do, however, recognize the Spirit that is already there
and thereby reawaken it. This is why the healer is part of the
resurrection and the life. The Spirit is not asleep in the minds
of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive it and be glad is.
32
Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, Whose laws
are true. Because they are true, they are perfectly dependable
and therefore universal in application. The real aim of science
is neither prediction nor control but only understanding. This
is because it does not establish the laws it seeks, cannot
discover them through prediction, and has no control over them
at all. Science is nothing more than an approach to what already is.
Like inspiration it can be misunderstood as magic and will be
whenever it is undertaken as separate from what already is and
perceived as a means for establishing it. To believe this is
possible is to believe you can do it. This can only be
the voice of the ego.
33
Truth can only be recognized and need only be
recognized. Inspiration is of the Spirit, and certainty is of God
according to HisHer laws. Both, therefore, come from the same Source,
since inspiration comes from the Voice for God and certainty
comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly
from God, Who knows HisHer creationsmanifestations as perfectly whole.
Yet healing is [nevertheless] of God, because it proceeds from
HisHer Voice and from HisHer laws. It is their result, in a state of
mind which does not know HimHer. The state is unknown to
HimHer and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are stupefied,
or better, unaware. Because they are unaware, they do not
know.
34
The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you She is in
you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in
God because you are part of HimHer. The miracles which the Holy Spirit
inspires can have no order of difficulty because every part of
creationmanifestation is of one order. This is God's Will
and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy
Spirit reminds you of it. When you heal, you are remembering
the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. We said before that
forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is
therefore not the opposite of remembering, when it is properly
perceived. Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict
with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly
perceived, it can be used as a way out of conflict, as all
proper perception can.
35
All abilities, then, should be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who
knows
how to use them properly. She can use them only for
healing because She knows you only as whole. By healing
you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to
remember God. You have forgotten HimHer, but the Holy Spirit
still knows that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering
and not perceived as a separate ability which opposes an
opposite. That is the way in which the ego tries to use all
abilities, since its goal is always to make you believe that you
are in opposition.
36
The ego's goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit's, and it is because of
this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way
or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and
separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you
heal you are healed because the Holy Spirit sees no order of
healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences,
being the only way of perceiving the SonDaughtership without
this belief. This perception is therefore in accord with the
laws of God, even in a state of mind which is out of accord with
HisHers. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the
mind into accord with HisHer because it yields to HisHer pull
which is in all of you.
37
To oppose the pull or the Will of God is not an ability but a
real delusion. The ego believes that it has this ability
and can offer it to you as a gift. You do not want it. It is not
a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift which you
both have and are. When you do not use it, you do not know you have
it. By not knowing this, you do not know what you are. Healing,
then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in
accordance with the laws of God and recognizing their universality.
Without this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless
to you. Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is
contained by them and in them.
38
Seek ye first the God Realm because that is where the laws of
God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they
are the laws of Truth. But seek this only because you can find
nothing else. There is nothing else. God is all in all in a very
literal sense. All being is in HimHer who is all Being. You
are therefore in HimHer since your being is HisHers.
Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced
in you by not recognizing its existence in your
brothers/sisters. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of
you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge fear. Love needs
only this invitation. It comes freely to all the
SonDaughtership, being what the SonDaughtership is. By your
awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not.
This enables you to remember what you are.
39
The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It
is therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite
apart from what the potential is used for. That is a decision.
The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that
they need no elaboration here, but the Holy Spirit's decision to use the
body only for communication has such a direct connection with
healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously
does not understand his/her own vocation.
40
Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate
the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to
createmanifest , the ego can only teach you that the body can
both communicate and createmanifest and
therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach
you that the body can act like the mind and is therefore
self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the
level for either teaching or learning. This must be so, since
you can act in accordance with what you do not believe.
To do this, however, will weaken you as teachers/teacheresses and
learners because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you
do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and
poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing,
you are both a poor teacher/teacheress and a poor learner.
41
Healing is the one ability which everyone can develop and must
develop if he/she is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of
communication and the only one She knows. She recognizes no
other, because She does not accept the ego's confusion of mind and body.
Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the
service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur
unless the body has already been confused with the mind. This
fact, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must
remember that magic is always the belief that healing is harmful.
This is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.
42
Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken.
Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does
not share with him/her. Magic always sees something
"special" in the healer which he/she believes he/she can offer as a gift
to someone who does not have it. He/she may believe that the
gift comes from God to him/her, but it is quite evident that
he/she does not understand God if he/she thinks he/she has something
that others lack. You might well ask, then, why some healing can
result from this kind of thinking, and there is a reason for this.
43
However misguided the "magical healer" may be, he/she is also
trying to help. He/she is conflicted and unstable, but at times
he/she is offering something to the SonDaughtership, and the only thing
the SonDaughtership can accept is healing. When the so-called
"healing" works, then, the impulse to help and to be helped have
coincided. This is coincidental because the healer may not be
experiencing himself/herself as truly helpful at the time, but the
belief that he/she is, in the mind of another, helps him/her.
44
The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of
Her always works. Unless the healer always heals by Her,
the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistence
since only consistence is conflict-free, and only the
conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and
acknowledging that he/she can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the
healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He/she is therefore
in conflict and teaching conflict. Can anything of God not
be for all and for always?
45
Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does
the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are
fearful because they are made by fear. The "fearful healer" is a
contradiction in terms and is therefore a concept which only a
conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does not
gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions.
Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation because it
induces separation. Healing always produces harmony
because it proceeds from integration.
46
Healing is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything
that is of God can be counted on because everything of God is wholly real.
Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by HisHer Voice
and is in accord with HisHer laws. Yet if healing is
consistence, it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means
consistence because God means consistence. Since that is HisHer meaning,
it is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord
with HisHer because your whole meaning, and your only meaning,
comes from HisHer and is like HisHer. God cannot be out
of accord with HimHerself, and you cannot be out of
accord with HimHer. You cannot separate your self from your
CreatorManifestor, Who createdmanifested you by sharing HisHer being with
you.
47
The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his/her
brothers/sisters, but he/she is not grateful to them. This is
because he/she thinks he/she is giving something to them
and is not receiving something equally desirable in return.
His/her teaching is limited because he/she is learning
so little. His/her healing lesson is limited by his/her own ingratitude,
which is a lesson in sickness. Learning is constant and so vital
in its power for change that a Son/Daughter of God can recognize his/her
power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because
by changing his/her mind he/she has changed the most powerful device
that was ever createdmanifested for change.
48
This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God
createdmanifested it, but you think that you have changed it as
long as you learn through the ego. This does place you in a
position of needing to learn a lesson which seems contradictory—you must
learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you
learn that it is changeless. When you heal that is exactly what
you are learning. You are recognizing the changeless mind in
your brother/sister by realizing that he/she could not have
changed his/her mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in
him/her. It is only the Holy Spirit in him/her that never
changes HisHer mind. He/she himself/herself must think he/she can,
or he/she would not perceive himself/herself as sick. He/she therefore
does not know what his/her self is.
49
If you see only the changeless in him/her, you have not really
changed him/her at all. By changing your mind about his/her for
him/her, you help him/her undo the change his/her ego thinks it
has made in him/her. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two
ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol/idolress which you
may worship out of fear but which you will never love. The other shows
you only truth, which you will love because you will understand
it. Understanding is appreciation because what you understand
you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you
have accepted it with love.
50
That is how God HimHerself createdmanifested you—in
understanding, in appreciation, and in love. The ego is totally unable
to understand this, because it does not understand what it
makes; it does not appreciate it; and it does not love
it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that
every time it deprives someone of something, it has increased.
We have spoken often of the increase of the God Realm by your
creationsmanifestations, which can only be createdmanifested as you
were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the God Realm lies
in you to give. Do you not want to give it?
51
You cannot forget the FatherMother because I am with you, and I
cannot forget HimHer. To forget me is to forget yourself and HimHer
Who createdmanifested you. Our brothers/sisters are forgetful.
That is why they need your remembrance of me and HimHer who
createdmanifested me. Through this remembrance, you can change their
minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your
minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and
enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body
in communion, because that is to share nothing. [Would I try to share an
illusion with the most holy children of a most holy FatherMother?] Yet I
do want to share my mind with you because we are of One
Mind and that Mind is ours.
52
See only this Mind everywhere because only this is
everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it
encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who
perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. Come
therefore unto me and learn of the truth in you. The Mind we
share is shared by all our brothers/sisters, and as we see them truly,
they will be healed. Let your mind shine with ours upon
their minds and by our gratitude to them, make them aware of the light
in them.
53
This light will shine back upon you and on the whole
SonDaughtership because this is your proper gift to God. HeShe will
accept it and give it to the SonDaughtership because it is acceptable to
HimHer and therefore to HisHer SonsDaughters. This is the true communion
of the Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone and, by bringing it
to your appreciation, calls upon you to love God and
HisHer creationsmanifestations. You can appreciate the SonDaughtership only
as one. This is part of the Law of Creation and therefore governs all
thought.
54
Although you can love the SonDaughtership only as one, you can perceive
it as fragmented. It is impossible, however, for you to see something in
part of it that you will not attribute to all of it. That
is why attack is never discrete and why attack must be
relinquished entirely. If it is not relinquished
entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love are equally
reciprocal. They make or createmanifest, depending on whether the ego or
the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they will return to
the mind of the thinker, and they will affect his/her total
perception. That includes his/her perception of God, of HisHer
creationsmanifestations, and of his/her own. He/she will not appreciate
any of them if he/she regards them fearfully. He/she will
appreciate all of them if he/she regards them with love.
55
The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it
believes that it can destroy love and therefore does not
understand what love is. If it does not understand what love is,
it cannot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of
being, induces feelings of unreality, and results in utter confusion.
Your own thinking has done this because of its power, but your own
thinking can also save you from this because its power is not
of your making. Your ability to direct your thinking as you will
is part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this, you
have denied the power of your thought and thus rendered it
powerless in your belief.
56
The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it
stems from the power of the mind, which the ego denies. This
means that the ego attacks what is preserving it, and
this must be a source of extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never
knows what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The
ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimical to its existence
for its existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of
this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This threatens its own
existence, a state which it finds intolerable.
57
Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely
insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive its
existence as threatened by projecting the threat onto you and
perceiving your being as nonexistent. This ensures its
continuance if you side with it by guaranteeing that you will not know
your own safety. The ego cannot afford to know anything.
Knowledge is total, and the ego does not believe in totality.
This unbelief is its origin and, while the ego does not love you,
it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was
begotten.
58
Mind always reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the
ego reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, and this allegiance makes
it treacherous to love, because you are love. Love is your
power, which the ego must deny. It must also deny everything which this
power gives you because it gives you everything. No one who has
everything wants the ego. Its own maker, then, does not want it.
Rejection is therefore the only decision which the ego could possibly
encounter, if the mind which made it knew itself. And if it
recognized any part of the SonDaughtership, it would
know itself.
59
The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all
recognition, all sane perception, and all knowledge. It
perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact that all
commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to
detach itself from you who are mind, it is willing to attach
itself to anything else. But there is nothing else. It
does not follow that the mind cannot make illusions, but it does
follow that if it makes illusions it will believe in them, because that
is how it made them.
60
The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because
She cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Her.
She resolves the apparent conflict which they engender by
perceiving conflict as meaningless. We said before that the Holy
Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is
meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand
conflict; She wants you to realize that, because conflict is
meaningless, it cannot be understood. We have already said that
understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings love. Nothing
else can be understood because nothing else is real,
and therefore nothing else has meaning.
61
If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be
vigilant for anything but God and HisHer Realm. The only reason
you find this difficult is because you think there is something
else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted.
If it is, there are conflicting components within it which have
engendered a state of war, and vigilance therefore has become essential.
Vigilance has no place at all in peace. It is necessary against beliefs
which are not true and would never have been called upon by the
Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. You cannot deny
that, when you believe something, you have made it true for you.
62
When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict
HisHers, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking
HimHer. We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego does believe
it can attack God and tries to persuade you that you have done
this. If the mind cannot attack, the ego proceeds perfectly
logically to the position that you cannot be mind. By not seeing
you as you are, it can see itself as it wants to
be. Aware of its weakness, the ego wants your allegiance, but not as you
really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own
delusional system, because otherwise the light of your
understanding would dispel it.
63
The ego wants no part of truth because the truth is that the ego
is not true. If truth is total, the untrue cannot exist.
Commitment to either must be total, since they cannot coexist in
your minds without splitting them. If they cannot coexist in
peace and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of
conflict entirely and for all time. [This
requires vigilance only as long as you do not recognize what
is true.] While you believe that two totally contradictory thought
systems share truth, your need for vigilance is apparent. Your
minds are dividing their allegiance between two kingdoms, and
you are totally committed to neither.
64
Your identification with the God Realm is totally beyond question,
except by you when you are thinking insanely. What you are is not
established by your perception and is not influenced by it at
all. All perceived problems in identification at any level are not
problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since they
mean that you believe what you can understand is up to
you to decide. The ego believes this totally, being fully
committed to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is totally committed
to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to
the knowledge of God.
65
You can be perceived with meaning only by the Holy Spirit
because your being is the knowledge of God. Any belief that you
accept which is apart from this will obscure God's Voice in you and will
therefore obscure God to you. Unless you perceive HisHer
creationmanifestation truly, you cannot know the CreatorManifestor,
since God and HisHer creationmanifestation are not separate. The Oneness
of the CreatorManifestor and the creationmanifestation is your
wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power. This limitless power
is God's gift to you, because it is what you are. If you
dissociate your mind from it, you are perceiving the most powerful force
in the universe [of thought] as if it were weak because you do not
believe you are part of it.
66
Perceived without your part in it, God's creationmanifestation is
perceived as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do
attack. The attack must be blind, however, because there is nothing to
attack. Therefore, they make up images, perceive them as unworthy, and
attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is—nothing.
It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand it,
because if you do you are believing that it can be understood
and is therefore capable of being appreciated and loved. That would
justify it, and it cannot be justified. You cannot make the
meaningless meaningful. This can only be an insane attempt.
67
Allowing insanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged
sanity as wholly desirable. If you want something else,
you will make something else, but because it is
something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your
allegiance. You cannot createmanifest in this divided state, and you
must be vigilant against this divided state, because only peace
can be extended. Your divided minds are blocking the extension
of the God Realm, and its extension is your joy. If you do not
extend the God Realm, you are not thinking with your CreatorManifestor
and creatingmanifesting as HeShe createdmanifested.
68
In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you
are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as
cocreatorscomanifestors with God and are therefore depriving yourselves
of joy. This is not God's Will but yours. If your will is out of
accord with God's, you are willing without meaning. Yet because God's
Will is unchangeable, no real conflict of will is possible. This
is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching.
69
Creationmanifestation, not separation, is your will because
it is God's, and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being
a perfect accomplishment, the SonDaughtership can only accomplish
perfectly, extending the joy in which it was createdmanifested and
identifying itself with both its CreatorManifestor and its
creationsmanifestations, knowing they are one.
70
Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother/sister, you will feel
deprived. This is because denial is as total as love. It is as
impossible to deny part of the SonDaughtership as it is to love it in
part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot
be totally committed sometimes. Remember a very early
lesson—"Never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in
itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power
is without limit of any kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is
gone for you. reality
cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it
means you have lost awareness of all of it.
71
That is the negative side of the law as it operates in this world. Yet
denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as
it is of being used destructively. Used negatively it will be
destructive because it will be used for attack, but in the service of
the Holy Spirit, [the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of
God. Stated positively,] the law requires you to recognize only part
of reality to appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be
subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself
from what you project.
72
When a brother/sister acts insanely, he/she is offering you an
opportunity to bless him/her. His/her need is yours. You need
the blessing you can offer him/her. There is no way for you to have it except
by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions.
What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but
because you have denied it in another and are therefore not aware of it
in you. Every response you make is determined by what you think
you are, and what you want to be is what you think you
are. Therefore, what you want to be determines every response you make.
73
You do not need God's blessing since that you have forever, but you do
need yours. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived,
unloving, and very vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can
very easily escape from it or, better, leave it behind. You are not there,
and that is not you. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you
have accepted it as you. All illusions about the
SonDaughtership are dispelled together, as they were made
together. Teach no one that he/she is what you would not
want to be. Your brother/sister is the mirror in which you will see the
image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception will
last until the SonDaughtership knows itself as whole.
74
You made perception, and it must last as long as you want it.
Illusions are investments. They will last as long as you value them.
Values are relative, but they are powerful because they are mental
judgments. The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw all
investment from them, and they will have no life for you because you
have put them out of your mind. While you include them in
it, you are giving life to them, except there is nothing there
to receive your gift.
75
The gift of life is yours to give because it was given you.
You are unaware of your gift because you do not give it. You
cannot make nothing live since it cannot be enlivened.
Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and are, and so
you do not know your being. All confusion comes from not
extending life, since that is not the Will of your
CreatorManifestor. You can do nothing apart from HimHer, and you do
do nothing apart from HimHer. Keep HisHer way to remember yourselves and
teach HisHer way, lest you forget yourselves. Give only honor to the
SonsDaughters of the living God and count yourselves among them gladly.
76
Only honor is a fitting gift for those whom God HimHerself
createdmanifested worthy of honor and whom HeShe honors. Give them the
appreciation which God accords them always because they are HisHer
beloved SonsDaughters in whom HeShe is well pleased. You cannot be
apart from them because you are not apart from HimHer. Rest in HisHer
love and protect your rest by loving. But love everything HeShe
createdmanifested of which you are a part, or you cannot learn of HisHer
peace and accept HisHer gift for yourself and as
yourself. You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all
those who were createdmanifested like you.
77
One Child of God is the only teacher/teacheress sufficiently
worthy to teach another. One Teacheress is in all your minds, and She
teaches the same lesson to all. She always teaches you the inestimable
worth of every SonDaughter of God, teaching it with infinite
patience born of the infinite love for which She speaks. Every attack is
a call for Her patience, since only Her patience can translate
attack into blessing. Those who attack do not know they are
blessed. They attack because they believe they are deprived.
Give therefore of your abundance and teach your brothers/sisters
theirs. Do not share their delusions of scarcity, or you will
perceive yourself as lacking.
78
Attack could never promote attack unless you perceived it as a means of
depriving you of something you want. Yet you cannot lose
anything unless you did not value it and therefore did not want
it. This makes you feel deprived of it, and by projecting your
own rejection, you believe that others are taking it from you.
One must be fearful if he/she believes that his/her
brother/sister is attacking him/her to tear the God Realm from him/her.
This is the ultimate basis for all of the ego's projection.
79
Being the part of your mind which does not believe it is responsible for
itself and being without allegiance to God, the ego is incapable
of trust. Projecting its insane belief that you have been
treacherous to your CreatorManifestor, it believes that your
brothers/sisters, who are as incapable of this as you are, are
out to take God from you. Whenever a brother/sister attacks
another, this is what he/she believes. Projection always
sees your will in others. If you will to separate yourself from God,
that is what you will think others are doing to you.
80
You are the Will of God. Do not accept anything else as
your will, or you are denying what you are. Deny this and you will
attack, believing you have been attacked. But see the love of
God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is
everywhere. See HisHer abundance in everyone, and you will know that you
are in HimHer with them. They are part of you, as you are part
of God. You are as lonely without understanding this as God
HimHerself is lonely when HisHer SonsDaughters do not know HimHer. The
peace of God is understanding this. There is only one way out
of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way into it.
Understand totally by understanding totality.
81
Perceive any part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane,
wholly delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly
evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any
part of creationmanifestation as wholly real, wholly perfect, and wholly
desirable. Wanting this only, you will have this
only, and giving this only you will be only this. The gifts you
offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the
gifts you offer to the God Realm are gifts to you. They will
always be treasured by God because they belong to HisHer beloved
SonsDaughters who belong to HimHer. All power and glory are yours because
the God Realm is HisHer.
82
We once said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is
also true that without projection there can be no love. Projection is a
fundamental law of the mind and therefore one which always
operates. It is the law by which you createmanifest and
were createdmanifested. It is the law which unifies the God Realm and
keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way
of getting rid of something it does not want. To the
Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing by which you give
what you value in order to keep it in your own mind.
83
Projection, to the Holy Spirit, is the law of extension. To the ego, it
is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity,
depending on how you choose to apply it. This choice is up to
you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize
projection. Every mind must project because that is how it
lives, and every mind is life. The ego's use of projection must
be fully understood before its inevitable association between projection
and anger can be finally undone.
84
The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious
in devising ways which seem to diminish conflict because it does
not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist
on giving it up. Therefore, the ego tries to persuade you that it
can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself.
The ego, using its own warped version of the laws of God, utilizes the
power of the mind only to defeat the mind's real purpose. It
projects conflict from your mind to other minds in an
attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of it. This has
several fallacies which may not be so apparent.
85
Strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected, precisely because
it cannot be fully shared. Any attempt to keep part of it and
get rid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember
that a conflicted teacher/teacheress is a poor teacher/teacheress and
a poor learner. HisHer lessons are confused, and their transfer
value is severely limited by his/her confusion. A second fallacy
is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by
giving it away. Giving it is how you keep it. The belief
that by giving it out you have excluded it from within
is a complete distortion of the power of extension.
86
That is why those who project from the ego are vigilant for their own
safety. They are afraid that their projections will return and
hurt them. They do believe they have blotted their projections
from their own minds, but they also believe their projections
are trying to creep back into them. That is because the
projections have not left their minds, and this in turn forces
them to engage in compulsive activity in order not to recognize
this. You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without
perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this because it
is impossible to fragment the mind.
87
To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be
attacked. The belief that it can, a fallacy which the ego always
makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It does not understand
what mind is and therefore does not understand what you
are. Yet its existence is dependent on your mind because the ego is
your belief. The ego is therefore a confusion in identification which
never had a consistent model and never developed consistently. It is the
distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted
minds which are misusing their own power.
88
Do not be afraid of the ego. It does depend on your mind
and, as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by
withdrawing belief from it. Do not project the responsibility
for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve
the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the
ego's existence yourself, you will have laid aside all anger and
all attack because they come from an attempt to project
responsibility for your own errors. But having accepted
the errors as yours, do not keep them. Give them over quickly to
the Holy Spirit to be undone completely so that all their
effects will vanish from your minds and from the SonDaughtership as
a whole.
89
The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond belief because
truth is beyond belief, and Her perception is true. The
ego can be completely forgotten at any time because it was
always a belief that is totally incredible. No one can keep a
belief he/she has judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn about
the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. The
incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. The
utter meaninglessness of all perception that comes from the unbelievable
must be apparent, but it is not recognized as beyond belief
because it was made by belief.
90
The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is
unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the
ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. By
accepting the Atonement for yourself, you are deciding against
the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of
separation and affirming your true identification with the whole God
Realm as literally part of you. This identification is as beyond
doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness has no limits because being
is in infinity.
91
Only you can limit your creativemanifestive power, but God wills
to release it. HeShe no more wills you to deprive yourself of your
creationsmanifestations than HeShe wills to deprive HimHerself of
HisHer. Do not withhold your gifts to the SonDaughtership, or you
withhold yourself from God. Selfishness is of the ego, but self-fullness
is of the individual Spirit because that is how God createdmanifested
it. The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies between the ego
and the individual Spirit, mediating between them always in
favor of the individual Spirit. To the ego, this is partiality, and it
therefore responds as if it were the part that is being sided against.
To the individual Spirit, this is truth because it knows its fullness
and cannot conceive of any part from which it is excluded.
92
The individual Spirit knows that the consciousness of all its
brotherssisters is included in its own, as it is included in
God. The power of the whole SonDaughtership and of its
CreatorManifestor is therefore the individual Spirit's own fullness,
rendering its creationsmanifestations equally whole and equal in
perfection. The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes
God, and any totality must include God. Everything HeShe
createdmanifested is given all HisHer power because it is part of HimHer
and shares HisHer Being with HimHer. Creatingmanifesting is the opposite
of loss, as blessing is the opposite of sacrifice. Being must be
extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself.
93
The individual Spirit yearns to share its being as its
CreatorManifestor did. Createdmanifested by sharing, its will is
to createmanifest . It does not wish to contain God but to extend
HisHer Being. The extension of God's Being is the individual Spirit's only
function. Its fullness cannot be contained any more than can the
fullness of its CreatorManifestor. Fullness is extension. The
ego's whole thought system blocks extension and thus blocks your only
function. It therefore blocks your joy, and that is why you perceive
yourselves as unfulfilled. Unless you createmanifest, you are
unfulfilled; but God does not know of unfulfillment, and therefore you must
createmanifest . You may not know your own
creationsmanifestations, but this can no more interfere with their
reality than your unawareness of your individual Spirit can interfere
with its being.
94
The God Realm is forever extending because it is in the Mind of God. You
do not know your joy because you do not know your own
self-fullness. Exclude any part of the God Realm from yourself,
and you are not whole. A split mind cannot perceive its fullness
and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This
reawakens the wholeness in it and restores it to the God Realm because
of its acceptance of wholeness. The full appreciation of its
self-fullness makes selfishness impossible and extension inevitable.
That is why there is perfect peace in the God Realm. Every individual
Spirit is fulfilling its function, and only complete fulfillment
is peace.
95
Insanity appears to add to reality, but no one would claim that
what it adds is true. Insanity is therefore the non-extension of
truth, which blocks joy because it blocks creationmanifestation and thus
blocks self-fulfillment. The unfulfilled must be depressed
because their self-fullness is unknown to them. Your
creationsmanifestations are protected for you because the Holy
Spirit, Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring them into
your awareness whenever you will let Her. They are there as part of your
own being because your fulfillment includes them. The
creationsmanifestations of every SonDaughter of God are yours since
every creationmanifestation belongs to everyone, being createdmanifested
for the SonDaughtership as a whole.
96
You have not failed to add to the inheritance of the
SonsDaughters of God and thus have not failed to secure it for
yourselves. If it was the Will of God to give it to you, HeShe gave it
forever. If it was HisHer Will that you have it forever, HeShe gave you
the means for keeping it, and you have done so. Disobeying God's
Will is meaningful only to the insane. In truth it is impossible. Your
self-fullness is as boundless as God's. Like HisHer, it extends forever
and in perfect peace. Its radiance is so intense that it
createsmanifests in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of its
wholeness.
97
Be confident that you have never lost your identity and the extensions
which maintain it in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an expression
of this confidence. They are reflections both of your own proper
identification with your brothers/sisters and of your own awareness that
your identification is maintained by extension. The miracle is a
lesson in total perception. By including any part of
totality in the lesson, you have included the whole. You have
said that when you write of the God Realm and your
creationsmanifestations which belong in it, you are describing what
you do not know. That is true in a sense, but no more true than
your failure to acknowledge the whole result of the ego's premises. The
God Realm is the result of premises, just as this world is.
98
You have carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion,
which is total confusion about everything. Yet you do not really
believe this, or you could not possibly maintain it. If you
really saw this result, you could not want it. The only reason
why you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not
see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego's premises but not
at their logical outcome. Is it not possible that you have done the same
thing with the premises of God?
99
Your creationsmanifestations are the logical outcome of HisHer
premises. HisHer thinking has established them for you. They are
therefore there, exactly where they belong. They belong in your
mind as part of your identification with HisHers, but your state of mind
and your recognition of what is in your mind depend at any given
moment on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these
beliefs may be, they are the premises which will determine what you
accept into your mind. It is surely clear that you can both
accept into your mind what is not really there and deny what is.
Neither of these possibilities requires further elaboration here, but
both are clearly indefensible, even if you elect to defend them.
100
Yet the function which God HimHerself gave your minds through HisHer you
may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you
are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness
to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness at all.
Truth is God's Will. Share HisHer Will, and you
share what HeShe knows. Deny HisHer Will as yours, and you are
denying HisHer Realm and yours. The Holy Spirit will direct you
only so as to avoid pain. The undoing of pain must obviously avoid pain.
Surely no one would object to this goal if he/she recognized it.
The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but
whether you want to listen to what She says.
101
You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful and
are in fact very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit's main function
is to teach you to tell them apart. However strange it may seem
that this is necessary, it obviously is. The reason is equally
obvious. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego and, as
long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be
confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole
idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving
up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the
contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this,
there would be no conflict.
102
That is why you need to demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It
is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the opposite
of God's Will can be better for you. You also believe that it is
possible to do the opposite of God's Will. Therefore,
you believe that an impossible choice is open to you and one which is
both very fearful and very desirable. Yet God wills.
HeShe does not wish. Your will is as powerful as HisHer
because it is HisHers. The ego's wishes do not mean anything,
because the ego wishes for the impossible. You can wish for the
impossible, but you can will only with God. This is the ego's
weakness and your strength.
103
The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As
long as you avoid Her guidance in any way, you want to be weak.
Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision
mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never
asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are
confused about this very clear distinction in motivation, it can
only be due to projection. Projection of this kind is a
confusion in motivation and, given this confusion, trust becomes
impossible.
104
No one obeys gladly a guide he/she does not trust, but this does not
mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always
means that the follower is. However, this too is merely a matter
of his/her own belief. Believing that he/she can betray, he/she believes
that everything can betray him/her. Yet this is only because
he/she has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow
this guidance without fear, he/she associates fear with
guidance and refuses to follow any guidance at all. [If the
result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.] The
Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God HimHerself
trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond
question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you
may question it.
105
We said before that you are the Will of God. HisHer Will is not
an idle wish, and your identification with HisHer Will is not
optional, since it is what you are. Sharing HisHer Will with me
is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole
separation lies in this fallacy. The only way out of the fallacy
is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything
has been given you by God's decision. That is HisHer
Will, and you can not undo it. Even the relinquishment of your
false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is
not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by
the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. HisHer Voice will
teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy and will lead
you out of the confusion which you have made. There is no
confusion in the mind of a SonDaughter of God whose will must be
the Will of the FatherMother because the Father’sMother's Will is
HisHer SonDaughter.
106
Miracles are in accord with the Will of God Whose Will you do
not know because you are confused about what you will. This
means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God's
Will and do not accept HisHer Will, you are denying joy.
The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson
in sharing, it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle
is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the
difference between pain and joy.
107
The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly because your
joy is Hers. This is Her Will for everyone because She speaks
for the God Realm which is joy. Following Her is therefore the
easiest thing in the world and the only thing that is easy,
because it is not of the world and is therefore natural. The
world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God's
laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is
because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating
to yourselves that there is no order of difficulty in miracles,
you will convince yourselves that in your natural state there is
no difficulty because it is a state of grace.
108
Grace is the natural state of every SonDaughter of God. When
he/she is not in a state of grace, he/she is out of his/her
natural environment and does not function well. Everything he/she does
becomes a strain because he/she was not createdmanifested for the
environment that he/she has made. He/she therefore cannot adapt
to it, nor can he/she adapt it to him/her. There is no
point in trying. A SonDaughter of God is happy only when heshe
knows heshe is with God. That is the only environment in which he/she
will not experience strain, because that is where he/she belongs. It is
also the only environment that is worthy of himher, because hisher own
worth is beyond anything heshe can make.
109
Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly.
Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect hisher
peace and shine love upon himher? Does it keep hisher heart untouched by
fear and allow himher to give always without any sense of loss? Does it
teach himher that this giving is hisher joy and that God
HimHerself thanks himher for hisher giving? That is the only
environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it any more than
you can make yourselves. It has been createdmanifested for you,
as you were createdmanifested for it. God watches over HisHer Children
and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny HimHer, they do not know
this, because they deny themselves everything.
110
You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and
remember are literally denying the God Realm to yourselves. I call upon
you again to remember that I have chosen you to teach the God Realm to
the God Realm. There are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack
of exceptions is the lesson. Every SonDaughter who returns to
the God Realm with this lesson in hisher heart has healed the
SonDaughtership and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson
has become the perfect teacher/teacheress because he/she has learned it
of the Holy Spirit, Who wants to teach him/her everything She knows.
When a mind has only light, it knows only light. Its own
radiance shines all around it and extends out into the darkness of other
minds, transforming them into majesty.
111
The Majesty of God is there for you to recognize and appreciate and know.
Perceiving the Majesty of God as your brother/sister is to
accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you
recognize HisHer gift in anyone else, you have acknowledged what HeShe
has given you. Nothing is as easy to perceive as truth. This is
the perception which is immediate, clear, and natural. You have trained
yourselves not to see it, and this has been very difficult for
you. Out of your natural environment, you may well ask, "What is
truth?" since truth is the environment by which and for which
you were createdmanifested.
112
You do not know yourselves, because you do not know your
CreatorManifestor. You do not know your creationsmanifestations, because
you do not know your brothers/sisters, who createdmanifested them with
you. We said before that only the whole SonDaughtership is worthy to be
cocreatorco-manifestor with God because only the whole SonDaughtership
can createmanifest like HimHer. Whenever you heal a
brother/sister by recognizing his/her worth, you are acknowledging
his/her power to createmanifest and
yours. He/she cannot have lost what you recognize, and you
must have the glory you see in him/her. He/she is a
cocreatorcomanifestor with God with you. Deny his/her
creativemanifestive power, and you are denying yours and that of
God, Who createdmanifested you. You cannot deny part of truth. You
do not know your creationsmanifestations because you do not know their
CreatorManifestor. You do not know yourselves because you do not know yours.
113
Your creationsmanifestations cannot establish your reality any more than
you can establish God's. But you can know both. Being is known
by sharing. Because God shared HisHer Being with you, you can
know HimHer. But you must also know all HeShe createdmanifested to know
what they have shared. Without your FatherMother, you will not
know your fatherhoodmotherhood. The Realm of God includes all HisHer
SonsDaughters and their children, who are like the SonsDaughters as they
are like the FatherMother. Know then the SonsDaughters of God, and you
will know all creationmanifestation.
1
You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do not
know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You cannot
reasonably object to following instructions in a course for
knowing on the grounds that you do not know. The need for the
course is implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation
for learning this course. Peace is. As the prerequisite for
knowledge, peace must be learned. This is only because those who
are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition
of knowledge because it is the condition of the God Realm.
2
Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions. This is not a
bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the
result of your misuse of HisHer laws on behalf of a will that is not
HisHers. Knowledge is HisHer Will. If you are opposing
HisHer Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge
offers you, but it is clear that you do not regard this as wholly
desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so
readily when the ego asks for your allegiance. The distraction of the
ego seems to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no
power to distract you unless you give it the power.
3
The ego's voice is a hallucination. You cannot expect it to say, "I am
not real." Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality.
Yet you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to
evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not
want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your
mind for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and
war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no
opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality which you must
make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make.
4
Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace,
which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have
what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up
yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself
from it. This is a condition which is so alien to the God Realm that you
cannot understand the state which prevails within it. Your past learning
must have taught you the wrong things simply because it has not made you
happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned.
5
If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are
you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you?
Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes must be a sign of learning
failure, since it means that you did not get what you want. The
curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have
established for yourselves, but so is its outcome. If the
outcome of yours has made you unhappy and if you want a
different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary.
6
The first change that must be introduced is a change in direction.
A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned
by two teachers/teacheresses, each believing in diametrically opposed
ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these
two teachers/teacheresses simultaneously, each one merely interferes
with the other. This leads to fluctuation, but not to change.
The volatile have no direction. They cannot choose one because
they cannot relinquish the other, even if the other does not exist.
Their conflicted curriculum teaches them all directions exist
and gives them no rationale for choice.
7
The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized
before a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot
learn simultaneously from two teachers/teacheresses who are in total
disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum presents an
impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely
different things in entirely different ways, which might be
possible except for the crucial fact that both are teaching you
about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen
to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is.
8
There is a rationale for choice. Only one Teacheress knows
what your reality is. If learning that is the purpose of the
curriculum, you must learn it of Her. The ego does not know what
it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you are without
knowing it. The ego is expert only in confusion. It does not understand
anything else. As a teacher/teacheress, then, it is totally confused and
totally confusing. Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit
entirely, which is quite impossible, you could learn nothing from the
ego because the ego knows nothing.
9
Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher/teacheress
such as this? Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make
anything but sense? Is this the teacher/teacheress to
whom a SonDaughter of God should turn to find himself/herself?
The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything.
Simply on the grounds of your own experience with the ego's teaching,
should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher/teacheress?
Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone.
Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path and
facilitates the development of what you have. When you are
taught against your nature, however, you will lose by
your learning because your learning will imprison you. Your will is in
your nature and therefore cannot go against it.
10
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. It is never God who coerces you
because HeShe shares HisHer Will with you. HisHer Voice teaches
only HisHer Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson
because that is what you are. 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 which must be
unconflicted, but also the content.
11
The ego wants to teach you that you want to oppose God's Will.
This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, but the attempt
to learn it is a violation of your own freedom and makes you afraid of
your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any
imprisoning of the will of a SonDaughter of God, knowing that
the will of the SonDaughter is the Father’sMother'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.
12
We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between
pain and joy. That is the same as saying that She teaches you the
difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make
this distinction without Her. That is 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
the difference between them?
13
The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only
one goal. Her direction is freedom, and Her goal is God. Yet She
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 HimHer than HeShe could will
to be without you. This is freedom and this is
joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God HisHer Kingdom
because HeShe createdmanifested you for this. When we said, "All
power and glory are yours because the God Realm is HisHer," this is what
we meant.
14
The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it.
It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no
boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all
things because it createdmanifested all things. By creatingmanifesting
all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God
because this is how you were createdmanifested. Because your
CreatorManifestor createsmanifests only like HimHerself, you are
like HimHer. You are part of HimHer Who is all power and glory
and are therefore as unlimited as HeShe is.
15
To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit
appeal to restore the God Realm? Her appeal, then, is merely to what the
God Realm is and for its own acknowledgment of what it is. When
you acknowledge this, you bring the acknowledgment automatically to
everyone because you have acknowledged everyone. By your
recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours
is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the God Realm in
answer to the Call of God. This is the natural response of every
SonDaughter of God to the Voice of hisher CreatorManifestor because it
is the Voice for hisher creationsmanifestations and for hisher own
extension.
16
Glory be to God in the highest and to you because HeShe has so
willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been
given. Ask for light and learn that you are light. If you want
understanding and enlightenment, you will learn it because your
will to learn it is your decision to listen to the Teacheress who knows
of light and can therefore teach it to you. There is no limit on
your learning because there is no limit on your minds. There is
no limit on Her will to teach because She was createdmanifested [by
unlimited Will in order] to teach. Knowing Her
function perfectly, She wills to fulfill it perfectly, because that is
Her joy and yours.
17
To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can
be fully known because it is the only function that can be fully experienced.
When this is accomplished, then, there is no other experience.
Yet the wish for other experience will block its accomplishment
because God's Will cannot be forced upon you, being an experience of
total willingness. The Holy Spirit knows how to teach this, but
you do not. That is why you need Her and why God gave Her
to you. Only Her teaching will release your will to God's, uniting it
with HisHer power and glory and establishing them as yours. You
share them as God shares them because this is the natural outcome of
their being.
18
The Will of FatherMother and of the SonDaughter are one together by
their extension. Their extension is the result of their oneness,
holding their unity together by extending their joint will. This
is perfect creationmanifestation by the perfectly createdmanifested in
union with Perfect CreatorManifestor. The FatherMother must give
fatherhoodmotherhood to HisHer SonDaughter because HisHer own
FatherhoodMotherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God
have the holy function of extending HisHer FatherhoodMotherhood by
placing no limits upon it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you how
to do this, for you will know what it means of God HimHerself.
19
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see
him/her, you will see yourself. As you treat him/Her, you will treat
yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget
this, for in him/her you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself.
Whenever two SonsDaughters of God meet, they are given another chance at
salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to
him/her and receiving it yourself, for I am always there with you in
remembrance of you.
20
The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher/teacheress you
choose, is know thyself. There is nothing else to learn.
Everyone is looking for himself/herself and for the power and glory
he/she thinks he/she has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have
another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him/her because
they are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself because
it does not know where to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you
look only at yourself, you cannot find yourself because
that is not what you are.
21
Whenever you are with a brother/sister, you are learning what you are
because you are teaching what you are. He/she will respond
either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher/teacheress
you are following. He/she will be imprisoned or released according
to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your
responsibility to him/her because it is your responsibility to yourself.
Give him/her his/her place in the God Realm, and you will have yours.
The God Realm cannot be found alone, and you who are the
God Realm cannot find yourselves alone.
22
To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen
to the ego. Its purpose is to defeat its own goal. The
ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you
can know this, and you will know it if you are willing to look
at what the ego has made of you. This is your
responsibility, because once you have really done this, you will
accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make?
Having made this choice, you will begin to learn and understand why you
have believed that when you met someone else, you had thought that
he/she was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you
enter fully will teach you this is not so.
23
You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of
God, Who is everything. HisHer power and glory are everywhere,
and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your
strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all
strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one
suffer. HeShe does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including
you. That is why HeShe has given you the means for undoing it.
Through HisHer power and glory, all your wrong decisions are undone, completely
releasing you and your brothers/sisters from every
imprisoning thought any part of the SonDaughtership has
accepted. Wrong decisions have no power because they are not
true. The imprisonment which they seem to produce is no more
true than they are.
24
Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever
belongs to HimHer because HeShe gives of HimHerself, and everything
belongs to HimHer. Giving of your self is the function HeShe
gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will teach you what you have
of HimHer, and this will teach you what you are in HimHer. You cannot
be powerless to do this because this is your power. Glory is
God's gift to you because that is what HeShe is. See this glory
everywhere to learn what you are.
25
If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only
this you must be refusing to acknowledge HisHer Will. HisHer
Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at
peace, it can only be because you do not believe you are in
HimHer. Yet HeShe is all in all. HisHer peace is complete, and you must
be included in it. HisHer laws govern you, because they govern everything.
You cannot exempt yourself from HisHer laws, although you can disobey
them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel
lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.
26
I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself
everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from
everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear
of the same loneliness which is its illusion. I have told you
that I am with you always, even to the end of the world. That is why
I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the
world, the loneliness is gone. You cannot maintain the
illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. Our purpose, then,
is to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must
dispel it because of what it is.
27
Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If
our light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with
us. The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any
more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The remembrance of me is
the remembrance of yourself and of HimHer Who sent me to you. You were
in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of
the SonDaughtership. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished
by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My
mission was simply to unite the will of the SonDaughtership with the
Will of the FatherMother by being aware of the Father’sMother's Will
myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your
problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. Dispelling
it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world.
28
The world must despise and reject me, because the world is the
belief that love is impossible. Your reactions to me are the
reactions of the world to God. If you will accept the fact that I am
with you, you are denying the world and accepting God.
My will is HisHer, and your will to hear me is the decision to
hear HisHer Voice and abide in HisHer Will. As God sent me to you, so
will I send you to others, and I will go to them with you so we
can teach them [union and peace].
29
Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you
not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive
it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. If you will to
have it of us, you must give it. Rehabilitation does not come
from anyone else. You can have guidance from without, but you must accept
it from within. The guidance must [become] what you want, or it
will be meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a
collaborative venture.
30
I can tell you what to do, but this will not help you unless you
collaborate by believing that I know what to do. Only then will
your mind choose to follow us. Without your will, you cannot be
rehabilitated. Motivation to be healed is the crucial factor in
rehabilitation. Without this you are deciding against healing,
and your veto of my will for you makes
healing impossible. If healing is our joint will, unless
our wills are joined you cannot be healed. This is
obvious when you consider what healing is for. Healing is the
way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by union.
It cannot be overcome by separating.
31
The will to unite must be unequivocal, or the will itself
is divided or not whole. Your will is the means by which you determine
your own condition, because will is the mechanism of decision.
It is the power by which you separate or join and experience pain or joy
accordingly. My will cannot overcome yours, because yours is as
powerful as mine. If it were not so, the SonsDaughters of God would be
unequal. All things are possible through our joint will, but my
will alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God
HimHerself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not
will. I can offer you my will to make yours invincible by this
sharing, but I cannot oppose yours without competing
with it and thereby violating God's Will for you.
32
Nothing God createdmanifested can oppose your will, as nothing God
createdmanifested can oppose HisHer. God gave your will its
power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of HisHer. 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. I
can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my
teaching. How else can it be, if God's Realm is freedom? Freedom
cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all
God’s SonsDaughters cannot be recognized through the dominion of one
will over another. God’s SonsDaughters are equal in will, all being the
Will of their FatherMother. This is the only lesson I came to
teach, knowing that it is true.
33
When your will is not mine, it is not our Father’sMother's. This
means that you have imprisoned yours and have not let it
be free. Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you are
nothing. I am nothing without the FatherMother, and you are
nothing without me, because by denying the FatherMother you deny
yourself. I will always remember you, and in my remembrance
of you lies your remembrance of yourself. In our remembrance of
each other lies our remembrance of God, and in this remembrance
lies your freedom because your freedom is in HimHer. Join then
with me in praise of HimHer and you whom HeShe
createdmanifested. This is our gift of gratitude to HimHer, which HeShe
will share with all HisHer creationsmanifestations, to whom
HeShe gives equally whatever is acceptable to HimHer. Because it
is acceptable to HimHer, it is the gift of freedom, which is
HisHer Will for all HisHer SonsDaughters. By offering freedom, you
will be free.
34
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s SonsDaughters, being an
acknowledgment of what they are and what HeShe is.
Freedom is creationmanifestation because it is love. What you seek to
imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison
anyone, including yourself, you do not love him/her, and
you cannot identify with him/her. When you imprison yourself,
you are losing sight of your true identification with me and
with the FatherMother. Your identification is with the
FatherMother and with the SonDaughter. It cannot be with one and
not the other. If you are part of one, you must be part of the other
because they are one.
35
The Holy Trinity is holy because it is one. If you exclude yourself
from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You
must be included in It because It is everything. Unless
you take your place in It and fulfill your function as part of
It, It is as bereft as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned
if Its truth is to be known. Can you be separated from your
identification and be at peace? Dissociation is not a solution; it is a
delusion. The delusional believe that truth will assail them, and
so they do not see it because they prefer the delusion.
Judging truth as something they do not want, they perceive
deception and block knowledge.
36
Help them by offering them your unified will on their behalf, as
I am offering you mine on yours. Alone we can do nothing, but together
our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its
separate parts. By not being separate, the Will of God is
established in ours and as ours. This Will is invincible
because it is undivided. The undivided will of the
SonDaughtership is the perfect CreatorManifestor, being wholly in the
likeness of God, Whose Will it is. You cannot be exempt
from it if you are to understand what it is and what you
are. By separating your will from mine, you are exempting
yourself from the Will of God, which is yourself.
37
Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite
with those who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is
to recognize the FatherMother. If your perfection is in HimHer
and only in HimHer, how can you know it without
recognizing HimHer? The recognition of God is the recognition of
yourself. There is no separation of God and HisHer
creationmanifestation. You will learn this as you learn that there is no
separation of your will and ours. Let the love of God shine upon
you by your acceptance of us. Our reality is yours and
HisHer. By joining your will with ours, you are signifying your
awareness that the Will of God is one.
38
God's Oneness and ours are not separate, because HisHer Oneness encompasses
ours. To join with me is to restore HisHer power to you, because
we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of HisHer
power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we unite,
we unite with HimHer. Glory be to the union of God and HisHer holy
SonsDaughters! All glory lies in them because they are united.
The miracles we do bear witness to the Will of the FatherMother for
HisHer SonDaughter and to our joy in uniting with HisHer Will
for us.
39
When you unite with me, you are uniting without the ego, because
I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite
with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego
in yourself. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego.
By willing that, you have gone beyond it toward truth. Our
success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share
[my perfect confidence in HisHer promise because I know HeShe gave me]
this confidence for both of us and all of us. I bring God's
peace back to all HisHer Children because I received it of HimHer for us
all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can
prevail against God's. Would you know the Will of God for you?
Ask it of me who knows it for you, and you will find it. I will
deny you nothing, as God denies me nothing.
40
Ours is simply the journey back to God, Who is our home. Whenever fear
intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is always because
the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so.
Sensing defeat and angered by it, the ego regards itself as rejected and
becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation because
I am with you. On this journey, you have chosen me as your companions instead
of the ego. Do not try to hold on to both, or you will try to go in
different directions and will lose the way.
41
The ego's way is not mine, but it is also not yours. The Holy
Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one She
taught me is yours. Let us not lose sight of Her direction
through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can obscure
the one for which God's Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego
the power to interfere with the journey, because it has none,
[and] the journey is the way to what is true. Leave all
deception behind and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you
back. I go before you because I am
beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want
to transcend the ego. My will will never be wanting, and if you
want to share it you will. I give it willingly and gladly
because I need you as much as you need me.
42
We are the joint will of the SonDaughtership, whose wholeness is
for all. We begin the journey back by setting out together and
gather in our brothers/sisters as we continue together. Every
gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their
weakness and add their strength to us. God's welcome waits for us all,
and HeShe will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the God
Realm for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to
the power and the glory of God and HisHer holy SonsDaughters, but it can
blind the SonsDaughters to the FatherMother if they behold it. You
cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.
43
I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If
it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. Yet God did not will the
destruction of HisHer creationsmanifestations, having createdmanifested
them for eternity. HisHer Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but
from your illusions of yourselves. HeShe has saved you for
yourselves. Let us glorify HimHer whom the world denies, for over HisHer
Realm, it has no power. No one createdmanifested by God can find joy in
anything except the eternal. That is not because he/she is
deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is worthy of
him/her. What God and HisHer SonsDaughters createmanifest is
eternal, and in this and this only is their joy.
44
Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God's treasure
is and yours: This son of a loving father left his home and
thought he squandered everything for nothing of any value, although he
did not know its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to
his father because he thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home,
the father welcomed him with joy because only the son himself was
his father's treasure. He wanted nothing else.
45
God wants only HisHer SonDaughter because HisHer SonDaughter is HisHer
only treasure. You want your creationsmanifestations as HeShe
wants HisHer. Your creationsmanifestations are your gift to the
Holy Trinity, createdmanifested in gratitude for your
creationmanifestation. They do not leave you, any more than you have
left your CreatorManifestor, but they extend your
creationmanifestation as God extended HimHerself to you. Can the
creationsmanifestations of God HimHerself take joy in what is not real?
And what is real except the creationsmanifestations of God and
those which are createdmanifested like HisHers? Your
creationsmanifestations love you as your individual Spirit loves your
FatherMother for the gift of creationmanifestation. There is no
other gift which is eternal, and therefore there is no other gift which
is true.
46
How, then, can you accept anything else or give anything
else and expect joy in return? And what else but joy would you want?
You made neither yourself nor your function. You made only the decision
to be unworthy of both. Yet you could not make yourself unworthy
because you are the treasure of God. What HeShe values is
valuable. There can be no question of its worth because its
value lies in God's sharing HimHerself with it and establishing
its value forever.
47
Your function is to add to God's treasure by creatingmanifesting
yours. HisHer Will to you is HisHer Will for you.
HeShe would not withhold creationmanifestation from you because HisHer
joy is in it. You cannot find joy except as God does. HisHer joy
lay in creatingmanifesting you, and HeShe extends HisHer
FatherhoodMotherhood to you so that you can extend yourself as HeShe
did. You do not understand this because you do not understand HimHer. No
one who does not know his/her function can understand it, and no one can
know his/her function unless he/she knows who he/she is.
Creationmanifestation is the Will of God. HisHer Will createdmanifested
you to createmanifest . Your will was not createdmanifested separate
from HisHers, and so it wills as HeShe wills.
48
An "unwilling will" does not mean anything, [because it is] a
contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. [You can make
yourself powerless only in a way that has no meaning at all.] 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 HimHerself, and HisHer SonsDaughters, who
are like HimHer, cannot contradict themselves or HimHer. Yet
their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of
God’s SonDaughter if they so choose. This choice does
make the Son’sDaughter's function unknown to himher, but never
to hisher CreatorManifestor. And because it is not unknown to
hisher CreatorManifestor, it is forever knowable to him/her.
49
There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself- "Do I want
to know my Father’sMother's Will for me?" HeShe will not hide it. HeShe
has revealed it to me because I asked it of HimHer and learned of what
HeShe had already given. Our function is to function together because apart
from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God’s
SonDaughter lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not
have us be alone because HeShe does not will to be alone. That is why
HeShe createdmanifested HisHer SonDaughter and gave himher the power to
createmanifest with HimHer.
50
Our creationsmanifestations are as holy as we are, and we are the
SonsDaughters of God HimHerself and therefore as holy as HeShe is.
Through our creationsmanifestations, we extend our love and thus
increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a
very simple reason. You who are God's own treasure do not regard
yourselves as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand anything.
I share with God the knowledge of the value HeShe puts upon you. My
devotion to you is of HimHer, being born of my knowledge of myself and
HimHer. We cannot be separated. Whom God has joined cannot be
separated, and God has joined all HisHer SonsDaughters with HimHerself.
Can you be separated from your life and your being?
51
The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where
you are always and what you are forever. It is a journey without
distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced.
It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware
of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God.
Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of
itself.
52
What God has willed for you is yours. HeShe has given HisHer
Will to HisHer treasure, whose treasure it is. Your heart lies where
your treasure is, as HisHer does. You who are beloved of God are wholly
blessed. Learn this of us, and free the holy will of all those who are
as blessed as you are.
53
Attack is always physical. When attack in any form enters your
mind, you are equating yourself with a body. This is the ego's interpretation
of the body. You do not have to attack physically to accept this
interpretation. You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack
can get you something you want. If you did not believe this, the
idea of attack would have no appeal for you. When you equate yourself
with a body, you will always experience depression. When a Child
of God thinks of himself/herself in this way, he/she is belittling
himself/herself and seeing his/her brothers/sisters as similarly
belittled. Since he/she can find himself/herself only in them,
he/she has cut himself/herself off from salvation.
54
Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of
communication. Being the communication link between God and HisHer
separated SonsDaughters, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you
have made in the light of what HeShe is. The ego separates
through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others.
You do not perceive your brothers/sisters as the Holy Spirit does
because you do not interpret their bodies and yours solely as a means of
joining their minds and uniting them with yours and mine. This
interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its
value. Of itself it has none.
55
If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. If you use
it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies and
teach them through the body that this is not so, you will begin
to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use
the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it
for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in
communion, which has value until communion is. This is God's way
of making unlimited what you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see
the body as you do because She knows the only reality anything
can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function
HeShe has given it.
56
Communication ends separation. Attack promotes it. The
body is beautiful or ugly, holy or savage, helpful or harmful, according
to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see
the use to which you have put yours. If the body becomes for you a means
which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the
SonDaughtership, you will not see anything physical except as what it
is. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly. Misuse it, and
you will misunderstand it because you have already done so by
misusing it. Interpret anything apart from the Holy Spirit, and
you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack and
loss of peace.
57
Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of any
kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother/sister as a physical
entity, his/her power and glory are lost to you, and so are yours.
You have attacked him/her, but you must have attacked
yourself first. Do not see him/her this way for your own
salvation, which must bring him/her his/hers. Do not allow
him/her to belittle himself/herself in your mind, but give
him/her freedom from his/her belief in littleness and thus escape from yours.
As part of you, he/she is holy. As part of us, you are. To
communicate with part of God HimHerself is to reach beyond the God Realm
to its CreatorManifestor through HisHer Voice, which HeShe has
established as part of you.
58
Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing. You are not of
yourselves. HeShe of Whom you are has willed your power and
glory for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish HisHer
holy Will for you when you so will it yourself. HeShe has not withdrawn
HisHer gifts from you, but you have withdrawn them from HimHer.
Let no SonDaughter of God remain hidden for HisHer Name's sake because
HisHer Name is yours.
59
Remember that the Bible says, "The Word (or thought) was made flesh."
Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the
translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of
reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of
miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since
thought is not physical. Yet thought is communication,
for which the body can be used. This is the only natural
use to which it can be put. To use the body unnaturally is to
lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose and thus to confuse the goal of
Her curriculum.
60
There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to be placed in a
curriculum which he/she cannot learn. His/her sense of adequacy suffers,
and he/she must become depressed. Being faced with an impossible
learning situation, regardless of why it is impossible, is the most
depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately why the
world is depressing. The Holy Spirit's curriculum is never
depressing because it is a curriculum of joy. Whenever the reaction to
learning is depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum
has been lost sight of.
61
In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is
seen as fragmented into the many functions which bear little or no
relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos.
Guided by the ego, it is. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is not.
It becomes only a means by which the part of the mind you have separated
from your Spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to
the individual Spirit. The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the
Holy Spirit, where devotion to Her replaces devotion to the ego. In this
sense, the body does become a temple to God because HisHer Voice
abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.
62
Healing is the result of using the body solely for
communication. Since this is natural, it heals by making whole, which is
also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it
is physical, or not mind, is a fragmented (or sick)
interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can
be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond
itself. By reaching out, the mind extends itself. It does not stop
at the body, for if it does, it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which
has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack because
it has turned against itself.
63
The removal of the blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee
help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind
which is working through the body but not in it. If the
mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its
perception of the body and, by blocking its own extension beyond it,
will induce illness by fostering separation. Perceiving the body
as a separate entity cannot but foster illness because
it is not true. A medium of communication will lose its
usefulness if it is used for anything else. To use a medium of
communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in
purpose.
64
To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do
both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer?
Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose. This
releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in the many lights
and gives it over entirely to the One Light in Which it can be
really understood at all. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum
goal is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be arrested
at its own aids with hope of understanding either the aids or
the learning's real purpose. Learning must lead beyond the body
to the reestablishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be
accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds and does
not arrest itself in its extension.
65
The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness
because only extension is the mind's function. The opposite of joy is
depression. When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you
cannot be listening to God's joyous Teacheress, and you must be learning
amiss. To see a body as anything except a means of pure extension is to
limit your mind and hurt yourself. Health is therefore nothing
more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of
the mind, the body becomes whole because the mind's purpose is
one. Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body because apart
from the mind the body has no purpose at all.
66
You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be
made flesh. Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes
beyond it and does not interpret it as limitation. Whenever you
see another as limited to or by the body, you are
imposing this limit on yourself. Are you willing to accept
this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape
from limitations? To conceive of the body as a means of attack of any
kind and to entertain even the possibility that joy could possibly
result is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He/she has accepted
a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the
curriculum and is interfering with his/her ability to accept its purpose
as his/her own.
67
Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God's. When
yours is unified, it is HisHer. Interfere with HisHer purpose,
and you need salvation. You have condemned yourself, but
condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more
are any of the results of your condemnation. When you see a
brother/sister as a body, you are condemning him/her because you
have condemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must
be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no
results.
68
Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true.
Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its
complete impossibility and your full awareness of its complete
impossibility lie your only hope for release. But what other hope would
you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing
them. There is no attack, but there is unlimited
communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of
wholeness is extension. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and
you will open your mind to creationmanifestation in God.
69
Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack. The ego's
definitions of everything are childish and always based on what
it believes a thing is for. This is because it is incapable of
true generalizations and equates what it sees with the function it
ascribes to it. It does not equate it with what it is.
To the ego, the body is to attack with. Equating you
with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with, because
this is what it believes. The body, then, is not the source of its own
health. The body's condition lies solely in your interpretation of its
function.
70
The reason why definitions in terms of function are inferior is that
they may well be inaccurate. Functions are part of being since they
arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal. The whole does
define the part, but the part does not define the whole. This is
as true of knowledge as it is of perception. The reason to know
in part is to know entirely is because of the fundamental difference
between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of
parts, which can separate and reassemble in different
constellations. Knowledge never changes, so its constellation is
permanent. The only areas in which part-whole relationships have any
meaning are those in which change is possible. There is no
difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible.
71
The body exists in a world which seems to contain two voices
which are fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation,
the body is regarded as capable of shifting its control from one to the
other, making the concept of both health and sickness possible.
The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and ends, as it
always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real
use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an
outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its
own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This
is why the ego is forced to shift from one end to another without
ceasing, so that you will continue to hope that it can yet offer
you something.
72
It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego's belief in the
body as an end, because this is synonymous with the belief in attack
as an end. The ego has a real investment in sickness. If you are
sick, how can you object to the ego's firm belief that you are not
invulnerable? This is a particularly appealing argument from the ego's
point of view because it obscures the obvious attack which
underlies the sickness. If you accepted this and also decided against
attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego's stand.
73
It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness because you
do not realize that it is entirely out of keeping with what you
want. This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy
because you have not seriously cross-examined him/her. If you did, you
would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego's
views.
74
A more honest statement would be as follows: Those who want
the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of
witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call
upon witnesses who would disagree with its case, nor does the Holy
Spirit. We have said that judgment is the function of the
Holy Spirit and one which She is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego
as a judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the
ego calls on a witness, it has already made the witness an ally.
75
It is still true that the body has no function of itself, because it is
not an end. The ego, however, establishes it as an end
because as such it will lose its true function. This is the
purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose
sight of the function of everything. A sick body does not make any sense.
It could not make sense, because sickness is not what the body
is for. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on
which the ego's interpretation of the body rests are true. Specifically,
these are that the body is for attack and that you are a body.
Without these premises, sickness is completely inconceivable.
76
Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a
witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to
depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best
argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless
prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy
Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data, does not bother to analyze
them at all. If the data are meaningless, there is no point in
considering them. The function of truth is to collect data which are true.
There is no point in trying to make sense out of meaningless data. Any
way you handle them results in nothing. The more complicated the results
become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is
not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises
give rise to judge them truly.
77
A learning device is not a teacher/teacheress. It cannot
tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel
because you have accepted the ego's confusion, and you
think that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness
is merely another example of your insistence on asking the guidance of a
teacher/teacheress who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable
of knowing how you feel. When we said that the ego does not know anything,
we said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But
there is a corollary; if knowledge is being and the ego has no
knowledge, then the ego has no being.
78
You might well ask how the voice of something which does not exist can
be so insistent. Have you seriously considered the distorting power of
something you want, even if it is not true? You have had
the many instances of how what you want can distort what you see and
hear. No one can doubt the ego's skill in building up false cases. Nor
can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you will not
to tolerate anything except truth. When you lay the ego
aside, it will be gone. The Holy Spirit's Voice is as loud as your
willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your will,
which the Holy Spirit seeks to free but never to command.
79
The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your
brothers/sisters, so She can teach Her message through you. This
will heal them and therefore heal you. Everything used
in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot
be sick. Everything used otherwise is. Do not allow the body to
be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own
perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your will to attack.
Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to
the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the
result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.
Health is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the
guidance of the one Teacheress Who knows what life is, being the
Voice for Life Itself.
80
We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. She is the
Answer to everything because She knows what the answer to everything is.
The ego does not know what a real question is, although it asks an
endless number. Yet you can learn this as you learn to question
the value of the ego and thus establish your ability to evaluate its
questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness, do not ask the Holy
Spirit to heal the body, for this would merely be to accept the ego's
belief that the body is the proper aim for healing. Ask rather
that the Holy Spirit teach you the right perception of the body,
for perception alone can be distorted. Only perception can be
sick because only perception can be wrong.
81
Wrong perception is distorted willing, which wants things to be
as they are not. The reality of everything is totally harmless
because total harmlessness is the condition of its reality. It
is also the condition of your awareness of its reality. You do
not have to seek reality. It will seek you and find you when you
meet its conditions. Its conditions are part of what it is. And
this part only is up to you. The rest is of itself. You need do so
little because it is so powerful that your little part will bring the
whole to you. Accept then your little part, and let the
whole be yours.
82
Wholeness heals because it is of the mind. All forms of
sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of
awakening. They are attempts to reinforce unconsciousness
out of fear of consciousness. This is a pathetic way of trying not
to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. "Rest in
peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes
from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is
joining. Dreams are illusions of joining, taking on the ego's
distortions about what joining means if you are sleeping under its
guidance. Yet the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep and can use dreams
on behalf of waking if you will let Her.
83
How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. To whom did you
give it? Under which teacher/teacheress did you place it? Whenever you
wake dispiritedly, it was not of the Holy Spirit. Only
when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep according to the Holy
Spirit's purpose. You can indeed be "drugged by sleep," but this is
always because you have misused it on behalf of sickness. Sleep
is no more a form of death than death is a form of unconsciousness. Unconsciousness
is impossible. You can rest in peace only because you are
awake.
84
Healing is release from the fear of waking and the substitution of the will
to
wake. The will to wake is the will to love, since all
healing involves replacing fear with love. The Holy Spirit cannot
distinguish among degrees of error, for if She taught that one form of
sickness is more serious than another, She would be teaching that one
error can be more real than another. Her function is to
distinguish only between the false and the true, replacing
the false with the true.
85
The ego, which always weakens the will, wants to separate
the body from the mind. This is an attempt to destroy it, yet
the ego actually believes that it is protecting it. This is
because the ego believes that mind is dangerous and that to make
mindless is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible, since it
would mean to make nothing out of what God createdmanifested. The ego
despises weakness, even though it makes every effort to induce
it. The ego wants only what it hates. To the ego this is
perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, the ego wants
attack.
86
You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical course
which means exactly what it says. So does the Bible, if it is
properly understood. There has been a marked tendency on the part of the
many of the Bible's followers and also its translators to be entirely
literal about fear and its effects but not about love
and its results. Thus, "hellfire" means "burning," but raising
the dead becomes allegorical. Actually, it is particularly the
references to the outcomes of love which should be taken
literally because the Bible is about love, being about God.
87
The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal all errors, to take
no thought of the body as separate, and to accomplish all things
in my name. This is not my name alone, for our is a shared
identification. The name of God’s SonDaughter is one, and you are
enjoined to do the works of love because we share this oneness.
Our minds are whole because they are one. If you are sick you
are withdrawing from me. Yet you cannot withdraw from me alone. You can
only withdraw from yourself and me.
88
I would not ask you to do the things you cannot do, and it is impossible
that I could do things you cannot do. Given this, and given this quite
literally, there can be nothing which prevents you from doing exactly
what I ask, and everything which argues for your doing it. I
give you no limits because God lays none upon you. When you limit yourself,
we are not of one mind and that is sickness. Yet
sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of
dysfunction are merely signs that the mind has split and does not accept
a unified purpose.
89
The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit's only
way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which healing
means anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a chaotic thought
system is the only way to heal it. We have said that your task
is only to meet the conditions for meaning since meaning itself
is of God. Yet your return to meaning is essential to HisHer
because your meaning is part of HisHer. Your healing, then, is
part of HisHer health since it is part of HisHer Wholeness. HeShe cannot
lose this, but you can not know it. Yet it is
still HisHer Will for you, and HisHer Will must stand forever
and in all things.
90
Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs that the human
mind has ever made. This could not possibly have occurred unless the
mind were already profoundly split, making it possible for the
mind to be afraid of what it really is. It is apparent that
reality cannot "threaten" anything except illusions, since
reality can only uphold truth. The very fact that the Will of God, which
is what you are, is perceived as fearful to you demonstrates
that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will
of God of which you are afraid, but yours. Your will is
not the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to
be the fear of God is really only the fear of your own reality.
91
It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If
the purpose of this course is to learn what you are and if you have
already decided that what you are is fearful, then it must
follow that you will not learn this course. Yet you might
remember that the reason for the course is that you do not
know who you are. If you do not know your reality, how would you know
whether it is fearful or not?
92
The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at
most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not
know what truth is. All that this kind of association means is
that you are arbitrarily endowing something quite beyond your awareness
with something you do not want. It is evident, then, that you
are judging something of which you are totally unaware. You have
set this strange situation up so that it is completely impossible to
escape from it without a Guide who does know what your
reality is. The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what
you want. She is not attempting to force an alien will upon
you. She is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you
impose on Her, to re-establish your own will in your
consciousness.
93
You have imprisoned your will in your unconscious, where
it remains available but cannot help you. When we said that the Holy
Spirit's function is to sort out the true from the false in your
unconscious, we meant that She has the power to look into what you
have hidden and perceive the Will of God there. Her perception of this
Will can make it real to you because She is in your mind and
therefore She is your reality. If, then, Her perception of your
mind brings its reality to you, She is teaching you what
you are.
94
The only source of fear in this whole process can only be what
you think you lose. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit sees
that you can possibly have. We have emphasized the many times
that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice anything.
But if you ask the sacrifice of reality of yourselves, the Holy
Spirit must remind you that this is not God's Will because
it is not yours. There is no difference between your will and
God's. If you did not have split minds, you would recognize that willing
is salvation because it is communication. It is impossible to
communicate in alien tongues. You and your CreatorManifestor can
communicate through creationmanifestation because that, and only
that, is your joint Will.
95
Divided wills do not communicate because they speak for different things
to the same mind. This loses the ability to communicate simply
because confused communication does not mean anything. A message
cannot be said to be communicated unless it makes sense. How
sensible can your messages be when you ask for what you do not
want? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, this is
precisely what you will ask for. You may insist that the Holy
Spirit does not answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind
of asker you are.
96
You do not ask only for what you want. This is solely
because you are afraid you might receive it, and you would.
That is really why you persist in asking the teacher/teacheress who
could not possibly teach you your will. Of him/her you can never
learn it, and this gives you the illusion of safety. Yet you cannot be
safe from truth but only in it. reality is the only
safety. Your will is your salvation because it is the same as
God's. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is different.
97
No mind can believe that its will is stronger than God's. If,
then, a mind believes that its will is different from HisHer, it
can only decide either that there is no God or that God's
Will is fearful. The former accounts for the atheist and the
latter for the martyr. Martyrdom takes the many forms, the category
including all doctrines which hold that God demands sacrifices
of any kind. Either basic type of insane decision will induce
panic, because the atheist believes he/she is alone, and the martyr
believes that God is crucifying him/her. Both really fear abandonment
and retaliation, but the atheist is more reactive against abandonment
and the martyr against retaliation.
98
The atheist maintains that God has left him/Her, but he/she does not
care. He/she will, however, become very fearful and hence very angry if
anyone suggests that God has not left him/her. The martyr, on
the other hand, is more aware of guilt and, believing that punishment is
inevitable, attempts to teach himself/herself to like it. The
truth is, very simply, that no one wants either abandonment or
retaliation. Many people seek both, but it is still true that
they do not want them. Can you ask the Holy Spirit for "gifts"
such as these and actually expect to receive them? [The Holy
Spirit is totally incapable of giving you anything that does not come
from God. Her task is not to make anything for you.] She cannot make you
want something you do not want. When you ask the Universal Giver
for what you do not want, you are asking for what cannot be
given, because it was never createdmanifested. It was never
createdmanifested, because it was never your will for you.
99
Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God because ultimately
everyone must recognize himself/herself. This recognition is
the recognition that his/her will and God's are one. In the
presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no
sacrifices. In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless. To
deny what is can only seem to be fearful. Fear cannot be
real without a cause, and God is the only Cause. God is Love,
and you do want HimHer. This is your will. Ask for this
and you will be answered because you will be asking only for
what belongs to you.
100
When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, She cannot answer,
because nothing can hurt you and so you are asking for
nothing. Any desire which stems from the ego is a
desire for nothing and to ask for it is not a request. It is
merely a denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not
concerned with form at all, being aware only of meaning. The ego
cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything because there is complete
communication failure between them. Yet you can ask for everything
of the Holy Spirit because your requests are real, being of your
will. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could She fail to
recognize it in HisHer SonsDaughters?
101
The energy which you withdraw from creationmanifestation you expend on
fear. This is not because your energy is limited but because you
have limited it. You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy
which you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who
persisted in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve
it is success? The belief that you must have the
impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the
principle of creationmanifestation. God could not will that
happiness depended on what you could never have.
102
The fact that God is love does not require belief, but it does
require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to deny facts,
although it is impossible for you to change them. If you hold
your hands over your eyes, you will not see, because you are
interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not
know it, because your cooperation is the law of its being. You
cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were
createdmanifested for you, not by you.
103
Attempts of any kind to deny what is are fearful, and if they
are strong, they will induce panic. Willing against
reality, though impossible, can be made into a very persistent
goal, even though you do not want it. But consider the result of
this strange decision. You are devoting your mind to what you do
not want. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it,
it was never createdmanifested. If it was never createdmanifested, it is
nothing. Can you really devote yourself to nothing?
104
God in HisHer devotion to you createdmanifested you devoted to everything
and gave you what you are devoted to. Otherwise, you would not
have been createdmanifested perfect. reality is everything, and
therefore you have everything because you are real. You cannot
make the unreal, because the absence of reality is fearful, and
fear cannot be createdmanifested. As long as you believe that
fear is possible, you will not createmanifest . Opposing orders
of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is
meaning.
105
Remember, then, that God's Will is already possible and nothing
else will ever be. This is the simple acceptance of reality
because only this is real. You cannot distort reality
and know what it is. And if you do distort reality, you
will experience anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic, because you
are trying to make yourself unreal. When you feel these things,
do not try to look beyond yourself for truth, for truth can only
be within you. Say, therefore,
107
Everyone who has ever tried to use prayer to request something has
experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in
connection with specific things which might be harmful but also in
connection with requests which are strictly in line with this course.
The latter, in particular, might be incorrectly interpreted as "proof"
that the course does not mean what it says. You must remember, however,
that the course does state, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape
from fear.
108
Let us suppose, then, that what you request of the Holy Spirit is
what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should
this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer be
what you want, even if it is. This accounts for why certain specific
forms of healing are not achieved, even though the state of healing is.
It frequently happens that an individual asks for physical healing
because he/she is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time,
however, if he/she were healed physically, the threat to his/her
thought system would be considerably more fearful to him/her
than its physical expression. In this case he/she is not really asking
for release from fear but for the removal of a symptom which
he/she has selected. This request is, therefore, not for healing
at all.
109
The Bible emphasizes that all prayers are answered, and this
must be true if no effort is wasted. The very fact that one has asked
the Holy Spirit for anything will ensure a response. Yet it is
equally certain that no response given by the Holy Spirit will ever
be one which would increase fear. It is possible that Her answer will
not be heard at all. It is impossible, however, that it will be
lost. There are the many answers which you have already received but
have not yet heard. I assure you that they are waiting for you.
It is indeed true that no effort is wasted.
110
If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a SonDaughter
of God. Do not question himher and do not confound himher, for your
faith in himher is your faith in yourself. If you would know God
and HisHer Answer, believe in me whose faith in you cannot be shaken.
Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly and doubt your brother/sister, and
his/her words will be true. As you hear him/her, you
will hear me. Listening to truth is the only way you can
hear it now and finally know it.
111
The message your brother/sister gives you is up to you. What
does he/she say to you? What would you have him/her say? Your
decision about him/her determines the message you receive.
Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him/her, and Her Voice speaks to you
through him/her. What can so holy a brother/sister tell you except
truth? But are you listening to it? Your brother/sister may not
know who he/she is, but there is a light in his/her mind which does
know. This light can shine into yours, making his/her words true and
making you able to hear them. His/her words are the Holy
Spirit's answer to you. Is your faith in him/her strong enough to let
you hear?
112
Salvation is of your brother/sister. The Holy Spirit extends from your
mind to his/her and answers you. You cannot hear the Voice for
God in yourself alone because you are not alone. And HisHer
answer is only for what you are. You will not know the trust I
have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the
guidance of the Holy Spirit or believe that it is for you unless you
hear it in others. It must be for your brother/sister because
it is for you. Would God have createdmanifested a Voice for you alone?
Could you hear HisHer answer except as HeShe answers all
of God’s SonsDaughters? Hear of your brother/sister what you would have
me hear of you, for you would not want me
to be deceived.
113
I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may
deceive you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing
what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in
you, who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me,
hear my brothers/sisters in whom God's Voice speaks. The answer to all
prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone.
Do not listen to anything else, or you will not hear truth.
114
Believe in your brothers/sisters because I believe in you, and
you will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believe in me by
believing in them for the sake of what God gave them. They will
answer you if you learn to ask truth of them. Do not ask for blessings
without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how blessed you
are. By following this way, you are looking for the truth in
you. This is not going beyond yourself but toward
yourself. Hear only God's Answer in HisHer SonsDaughters, and you are
answered.
115
To disbelieve is to side against or to attack. To believe is to
accept and to side with. To believe is not to be credulous but
to accept and appreciate. What you do not believe, you do not
appreciate, and you cannot be grateful for what you do not
value. There is a price you will pay for judgment because
judgment is the setting of a price. And as you set it, you will
pay it.
116
If paying is equated with getting, you will set the price low
but demand a high return. You will have forgotten [that to price
is to value, so] that your return is in proportion to
your judgment of worth. If paying is associated with giving, it
cannot be perceived as loss, and the reciprocal
relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized. The price will
then be set high because of the value of the return. The price for getting
is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not
value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it
and will not want it.
117
Never forget, then, that you have set the value on what you
receive and have priced it by what you give. To believe that it is
possible to get much for little is to believe that you can bargain with
God. God's laws are always fair and perfectly consistent. By
giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It
is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know
you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving,
and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have.
What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have, being the
exact measure of the value you put upon it. And this, in turn, is the
measure of how much you want it.
118
You can ask of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving to
Her, and you can give to Her only where you see Her. If
you see Her in everyone, consider how much you will be asking of
Her and how much you will receive. She will deny you nothing
because you have denied Her nothing, and so you can share everything.
This is the way, and the only way, to have Her answer because
Her answer is all you can ask for and want. Say, then,
to everyone,
1
The alertness of the ego to the errors which other egos make is not the
kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. Egos are
critical in terms of the kind of "sense" they stand for. They
understand this kind of sense because it is sensible to them. To
the Holy Spirit, it makes no sense at all. To the ego, it is kind and
right and good to point out errors and "correct" them. This makes
perfect sense to the ego, which is totally unaware of what errors are
and what correction is.
2
Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors of any kind lies
solely in the relinquishment of the ego. When you correct a
brother/sister, you are telling him/her that he/she is wrong. He/she may
be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that if he/she is
speaking from the ego, he/she will be making no sense. But your
task is still to tell him/her he/she is right. You do not tell
him/her this verbally if he/she is speaking foolishly because he/she
needs correction at another level, since his/her error is
at another level. He/she is still right because he/she is a SonDaughter
of God. His/her ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or
does.
3
If you point out the errors of your brother's/sister’s ego, you must be
seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive
his/her errors. This must be true if there is no communication at all
between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego makes no sense, and the
Holy Spirit does not attempt to understand anything that arises from it.
Since She does not understand it, She does not judge it, knowing
that nothing it engenders means anything.
4
When you react at all to errors, you are not listening to the
Holy Spirit. She has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them,
you are not hearing Her. If you do not hear Her, you are
listening to your ego and making as little sense as the brother/sister
whose errors you perceive. This cannot be correction. Yet it is more
than merely lack of correction for him/her. It is the giving up of
correction in yourself.
5
When a brother/sister behaves insanely, you can heal him/her only by
perceiving the sanity in him/her. If you perceive his/her errors
and accept them, you are accepting yours. If you want to
give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his/hers.
Unless this becomes the one way in which you handle all errors,
you cannot understand how all errors are undone. How is this
different from telling you that what you teach you learn? Your
brother/sister is as right as you are, and if you think he/she is wrong,
you are condemning yourself.
6
You cannot correct yourself. Is it possible, then, for
you to correct another? Yet you can see him/her truly because it
is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not up to you
to change him/her but merely to accept him/her as he/she is.
His/her errors do not come from the truth that is in him/her, and only
this truth is yours. His/her errors cannot change this and can have no
effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in anyone
and to react to them as if they were real is to make them real
to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you
are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide
and will lose your way.
7
Your brother's/sister’s errors are not of him/her any more than yours
are of you. Accept his/her errors as real, and you have attacked
yourself. If you would find your way and keep it, see only truth
beside you, for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in you forgives all
things in you and in your brother/sister. His/her errors are
forgiven with yours. Atonement is no more separate than love.
Atonement cannot be separate because it comes from love. Any
attempt you make to correct a brother/sister means that you believe
correction by you is possible, and this can only be the
arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of
arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything because God
createdmanifested everything.
8
Do not undertake HisHer function, or you will forget yours.
Accept only the function of healing in time because that is what
time is for. God gave you the function to createmanifest
in eternity. You do not need to learn this, but you do need to
learn to want this, and for this all learning was made. This is
the Holy Spirit's good use of an ability which you do not need,
but which you have made. Give it to Her! You do not know how to
use it. She will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation by
learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation will
then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven.
9
Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief
that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to overlook. Look,
then, beyond error, and do not let your perception rest upon
it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept as true only
what your brother/sister is if you would know yourself. Perceive
what he/she is not, and you cannot know what you are because
you see him/her falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared
and that sharing is its reality.
10
You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement
is beyond you. You do not know how to overlook errors, or you
would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either
that you do not make them or that you can correct them without
a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your
errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because
of your limited ideas of what you are. This limitation is where all
errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but
for you.
11
The Atonement is a lesson in sharing which is given you because you
have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of
what is your natural ability. By reinterpreting the ability to attack,
which you did make, into the ability to share, She
translates what you have made into what God createdmanifested. If you
would accomplish this through Her, you cannot look on your
abilities through the eyes of the ego or you will judge them as it
does. All their harmfulness lies in its judgment. All their helpfulness
lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
12
The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking
for one, though not of the right teacher/teacheress. The ego's plan, of
course, makes
no sense and will not work. By following it, you will
merely place yourself in an impossible situation to which the ego always
leads you. The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first
and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have
made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot
overlook it.
13
This is where the ego is forced to appeal to "mysteries" and begins to
insist that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have
tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect
sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever
were because they speak of ideas which are eternal. Forgiveness that is
learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does
it make real the unreal and then destroy it.
14
Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error
from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not
let any belief in its realness enter your minds at all, or you
will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order
to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy
Spirit, the effects of error are totally non-existent. By
steadily and consistently canceling out all its effects everywhere
and in all respects, She teaches that the ego does not exist and
proves it. Follow Her teaching in forgiveness then, because
forgiveness is Her function, and She knows how to fulfill it
perfectly. That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are natural,
and when they do not occur, something has gone wrong.
15
Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy
Spirit's plan of salvation in recognition of the fact that you do not
know what it is. Her work is not your function, and unless you
accept this, you cannot learn what your function is. The
confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite
familiar with it by now. The ego believes that all functions
belong to it, even though it has no idea what they are. This is
more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of
grandiosity and confusion which makes it likely that the ego
will attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is exactly
what the ego does. It is totally unpredictable in its
responses because it has no idea of what it perceives.
16
If one has no idea of what is happening, how appropriately can you expect
him/her to react? You might still ask yourself, regardless of how you
can account for the reactions, whether they place the ego in a
very sound position as the guide for yours. It seems absurd to
have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego's qualifications as a guide
are singularly unfortunate and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a
teacher/teacheress of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it
seems, is really the crucial issue in the whole separation fantasy.
Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane
himself/herself.
17
It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane. You
know it because I know it, and you have judged it by
the same standard as I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed time,
and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it
and do not wait, for the ego's time is borrowed from your
eternity. This is the Second Coming, which was made for
you as the First was createdmanifested. The Second Coming is merely the
return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?
18
What can be fearful but fantasy, and no one turns to fantasy unless
he/she despairs of finding satisfaction in reality. Yet it is certain
that he/she will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that
his/her only hope is to change his/her mind about reality. Only
if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be
right. And I assure you that God is right. Be glad, then, that
you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know
who you were. Had you remembered, you could no more have been wrong than
God can. The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you
search for reality in fantasies, you will not find it. The symbols of
fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find the many. But
do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the
fantasies into which they are woven.
19
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but no one calls
them true. Children may believe them, and so for a while the
tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies
are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second
Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.
Behold, my children, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God
and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awareness
heals because it is the awareness of truth.
20
The ego's plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God's. This
is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers and is therefore of the
ego. Let us consider the unhealed healer more carefully now. By
definition, he/she is trying to give what he/she has not received.
If he/she is a theologian, he/she may begin with the premise, "I am a
miserable sinner and so are you." If he/she is a psychotherapist, he/she
is more likely to start with the equally incredible idea that he/she
really believes in attack and so does the patient, but it does not
matter in either case.
21
We have repeatedly stated that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and
this is why they are unreal. How, then, can "uncovering" them make
them real? Every healer who searches fantasies for truth must be
unhealed because he/she does not know where to look for truth
and therefore does not have the answer to the problem of healing. There
is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only
to teach that they are not real and that anything they contain
is meaningless. The unhealed healer cannot do this because he/she does
not believe it.
22
All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness in one form
or another. If they are theologians, they are likely to condemn
themselves, teach condemnation, and advocate a very fearful solution.
Projecting condemnation onto God, they make HimHer appear retaliative
and fear HisHer retribution. What they have done is merely to identify
with the ego and, by perceiving clearly what it does, condemn
themselves because of this profound confusion. It is understandable that
there has been a revolt against this concept, but to revolt against
it is still to believe in it. The form of the revolt,
then, is different but not the content.
23
The newer forms of the ego's plan are as unhelpful as the older ones
because form does not matter to the Holy Spirit and therefore does not
matter at all. According to the newer forms of the ego's plan, therapist
interprets the ego's symbols in the nightmare and then uses them to
prove that the nightmare is real. Having made it real,
he/she then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the
importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing
approach if the dreamer were properly identified as unreal. Yet if the
dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind's corrective power
through the Holy Spirit is denied.
24
It is noteworthy that this is a contradiction even in the ego's terms,
and one which it usually does note, even in its confusion. If
the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the
fearer, how can this build ego strength? These perfectly
self-evident inconsistencies account for why, except in certain stylized
verbal accounts, no one can explain what happens in
psychotherapy. Nothing real does. Nothing real has happened to
the unhealed healer, and he/she learns from his/her own teaching.
25
Because his/her ego is involved, it always attempts to gain some
support from the situation. Seeking to get something for himself/herself,
the unhealed healer does not know how to give and consequently
cannot share. He/she cannot correct because he/she is not working correctively.
He/she believes that it is up to him/her to teach the patient what is real,
but he/she does not know it himself/herself. What, then, should
happen? When God said, "Let there be light," there was light.
Can you find light by analyzing darkness as the psychotherapist does or
like theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a
distant light to remove it while emphasizing the distance?
26
Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will occur unless you
understand it, since light is understanding. A "miserable
sinner" cannot be healed without magic, nor can an "unimportant mind"
esteem itself without magic. Both forms of the ego's approach, then,
must arrive at an impasse, the characteristic "impossible situation" to
which the ego always leads. It can be helpful to point
out to a patient where he/she is heading, but the point is lost unless
he/she can change his/her direction. Therapist cannot do this for
him/her, but he/she also cannot do this for himself/herself.
27
The only meaningful contribution therapist can make is to
present an example of one whose direction has been changed for
him/her and who no longer believes in nightmares of any kind.
The light in his/her mind will therefore answer the questioner,
who must decide with God that there is light because he/she sees
it. And by his/her acknowledgment, the therapist knows it is there. That is how perception ultimately
is translated into knowledge. The miracle worker begins by perceiving
light and translates his/her perception into sureness by continually
extending it and accepting its acknowledgment. Its effects
assure him/her it is there.
28
Therapist does not heal; he/she lets healing be. He/she can
point to darkness, but he/she cannot bring light of himself/herself,
for light is not of him/her. Yet, being for him, it must also be
for his/her patient. The Holy Spirit is the only therapist. She
makes healing perfectly clear in any situation in which She is
the Guide. The human therapist can only let Her fulfill Her
function. She needs no help for this. She will tell you exactly
what to do to help anyone She sends to you for help and will
speak to him/her through you if you do not interfere. Remember
that you are choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong
choice will not help. But remember also that the right
one will. Trust Her, for help is Her function, and She is of
God.
29
As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Her and not
yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this
world, but that the laws you are obeying work. "The good is what
works" is a sound, though insufficient, statement. Only the good
can work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to
behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it
provides the Guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you
will see that it works. Its results are more convincing
than its words. They will convince you that the words are true. By
following the right Guide you will learn the simplest of all lessons—
31
How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except
by Her effects? You cannot see Her with your eyes nor hear Her with your
ears. How, then, can you perceive Her at all? If you inspire joy, and
others react to you with joy even though you are not
experiencing joy yourself, there must be something in you that
is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy,
and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must
be dissociating it in yourself.
32
It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy
consistently in you only because you do not consistently arouse
joy in others. Their reactions to you are your evaluations of
Her consistency. When you are inconsistent, you will not always give
rise to joy and so you will not always recognize Her
consistency. What you offer to your brother/sister, you offer to Her
because She cannot go beyond your offering in Her giving. This
is not because She limits Her giving, but simply because you have
limited your receiving. The will to receive is the will to
accept.
33
If your brothers/sisters are part of you, will you accept
them? Only they can teach you what you are, and your learning is the
result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them, you call
upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them, it becomes
real to you. God has but one SonDaughter, knowing them all as
one. Only God HimHerself is more than they, but they are not less than
HeShe is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to our
brother/sister you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself
because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to
you as well. Every Spirit God createdmanifested is part of you
and shares hisher glory with you. Hisher Glory belongs to
himher, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less
glorious than heshe is.
34
God is more than you only because HeShe createdmanifested you,
but not even this would HeShe keep from you. Therefore you can
createmanifest as HeShe
did, and your dissociation will not alter this. Neither God's
light nor yours is dimmed because you do not see. Because the
SonDaughtership must createmanifest as
one, you remember creationmanifestation whenever you recognize part
of creationmanifestation. Each part you remember adds to your
wholeness because each part is whole. Wholeness is indivisible,
but you cannot learn of your wholeness until you see it everywhere.
You can know yourself only as God knows HisHer SonDaughter, for
knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in HimHer you will
know your magnitude by accepting HisHer limitlessness as yours,
but meanwhile you will judge it as you judge your brothers/sisters' and
will accept it as you accept theirs.
35
You are not yet awake, but you can learn how to awaken. Very
simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them
waken, you will learn what waking means, and because you have
willed to wake them, their gratitude and their appreciation of what you
have given them will teach you its value. They will
become the witnesses to your reality, as you were
createdmanifested witnesses to God's. Yet when the SonDaughtership comes
together and accepts its oneness, it will be known by its
creationsmanifestations, who witness to its reality as the SonDaughter
does to the FatherMother.
36
Miracles have no place in eternity because they are reparative. Yet
while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to
your reality which you can recognize. You cannot perform a
miracle for yourself because miracles are a way of giving
acceptance and receiving it. In time, the giving comes first,
though they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot be
separated. When you have learned that they are the same, the
need for time is over.
37
Eternity is one time, its only dimension being "always." This
cannot mean anything to you, however, until you remember God's open arms
and finally know HisHer open Mind. Like HimHer, you are
"always"-in HisHer mind and with a mind like HisHers. In your
open mind are your creationsmanifestations, in perfect
communication born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of
them, you would not want anything the world has to offer.
Everything else would be totally meaningless. God's meaning is
incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your
creationsmanifestations. Accept your brother/sister in this world and
accept nothing else, for in him/her you will find your
creationsmanifestations, because HeShe createdmanifested them with
you. You will never know that you are co-CreatorManifestor with God
until you learn that your brother/sister is a co-creatorco-manifestor
with you.
38
God's Will is your salvation. Would HeShe not have given you the means
to find it? If HeShe wills you to have it, HeShe must have made
it possible and very easy to obtain it. Your brothers/sisters are
everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and
every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do not lose
these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of
joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it
possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible
that this is not also the will of your brothers/sisters?
39
Consider, then, that in this joint will you are all united, and
in this only. There will be disagreement on anything else, but not
on this. This, then, is where peace abides. And you
abide in peace when you so decide. Yet you cannot abide in peace unless
you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to
peace. The reason is very simple and so obvious that it is often
overlooked. That is because the ego is afraid of the obvious
since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet you
cannot overlook it unless you are not looking.
40
It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love
on all She perceives, HeShe looks with love on you. Her
evaluation of you is based on Her knowledge of what you are, and so She
evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your mind
because She is. The ego is also in your mind because you have accepted
it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite
of the Holy Spirit's because the ego does not love you. It is
unaware of what you are and wholly mistrustful of everything it
perceives because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is
therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.
That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And
it can never go beyond it because it can never be
certain.
41
You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your
minds, and they cannot both be true. You do not yet realize how
completely different these evaluations are because you do not
understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. She
is not deceived by anything you do because She never forgets what you are.
The ego is deceived by everything you do, even when you respond to the
Holy Spirit, because at such times its confusion increases. The
ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react
lovingly because it has evaluated you as unloving, and you are
going against its judgment.
42
The ego will begin to attack your motives as soon as they become
clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will
shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty
is increased. Yet it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can
this mean except that you are agreeing with the ego's evaluation
of what you are? If you are willing to see yourself as unloving, you
will not be happy. You are condemning yourself and must
therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the ego to
help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced and
must maintain for its existence? Can you escape from its
evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?
43
You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its
own range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back
from a point where sanity exists, and see the contrast.
Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With the
grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your
littleness. Within the system which dictated this choice, the
lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted
there, and you do not ask, "Who granted it?" The question is
meaningless within the ego's thought system because it opens the whole
thought system to question.
44
We said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack
of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness
to know and produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge
is total. Not to question your littleness, therefore, is
to deny all knowledge and keep the ego's whole thought
system intact. You cannot retain part of a thought system
because it can be questioned only at its foundation. And this
must be questioned from beyond it because, within it, its
foundation does stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the
reality of the ego's thought system merely because She knows its foundation
is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. The
Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes
from. If it comes from God, She knows it to be true. If it does not,
HeShe knows that it is meaningless.
45
Whenever you question your value, say:
47
Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth
about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you.
Choose, then, what you want in these terms and accept nothing that you
would not offer to God as wholly fitting for HimHer, for you do not want
anything else. Return your part of HimHer, and HeShe will give you all
of HimHerself in exchange for your return of what belongs to HimHer and
renders HimHer complete.
48
Grandeur is of God and only of HimHer. Therefore, it is in you.
Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the ego
automatically because in the presence of the grandeur of God the
meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly apparent. Though it does
not understand this, the ego believes that its "enemy" has struck and
attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its "protection." Self-inflation
of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God. Which will you
choose?
49
Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without hope
because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract your littleness,
based on the belief that the littleness is real. Without this
belief, grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly want it.
The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness because it always
involves attack. It is a delusional attempt to outdo but not
to undo. We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness
and viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you despair of
yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever you will not tolerate
self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of
attack as a solution.
50
The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity
because it does not know the difference between miracle impulses and
ego-alien beliefs of its own. We once said that the ego is aware
of threat, but does not make distinctions between two entirely different
kinds of threat to its existence. Its own profound sense of
vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except in terms
of attack. When it experiences threat, its only decision is whether to
attack now or to withdraw to attack later. If you accept its
offer of grandiosity, it will attack immediately. If you do not, it will
wait.
51
The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur because HisHer
grandeur establishes your freedom. Even the faintest hint of
your reality literally drives the ego from your mind because of complete
lack of investment in it. Grandeur is totally without illusions,
and because it is real, it is compellingly convincing. Yet the
conviction of reality will not remain with you unless you do not allow
the ego to attack it. The ego will make every effort to recover and
mobilize its energies against your release. It will tell you
that you are insane and argue that grandeur cannot be a real
part of you because of the littleness in which it believes.
52
Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not make it.
You have made grandiosity and are afraid of it because it is a
form of attack, but your grandeur is of God, Who createdmanifested it
out of HisHer Love. From your grandeur you can only bless, because your
grandeur is your abundance. By blessing, you hold it in your
mind, protecting it from illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of
God. Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the
Mind of God. When you forget this, you will despair, and you will
attack.
53
The ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it. If
you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you cannot despair,
and therefore you cannot want the ego. Your grandeur is God's answer
to the ego because it is true. Littleness and grandeur cannot co-exist,
nor is it possible for them to alternate in your awareness. Littleness
and grandiosity can and must alternate in your awareness since
both are untrue and are therefore on the same level. Being the level of
shift, it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential
characteristic.
54
Truth and littleness are denials of each other because grandeur
is truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is always true.
When grandeur slips away from you, you have replaced it with something you
have made. Perhaps it is the belief in littleness; perhaps it is the
belief in grandiosity. Yet it must be insane because it is not
true. Your grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always
will. Illusions are deceptions. You cannot triumph, but you are
exalted. And in your exalted state, you seek others like you and rejoice
with them.
55
It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity because love is
returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles and
therefore will deprive you of your true witnesses to your reality. Truth
is not obscure nor hidden, but its obviousness to you lies in
the joy you bring to its witnesses, who show it to you. They
attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride
is not shared. God wants you to behold what HeShe
createdmanifested because it is HisHer joy.
56
Can your grandeur be arrogant when God HimHerself witnesses to it? And
what can be real that has no witnesses? What good can come of
it? And if no good can come of it, the Holy Spirit cannot use it. What
She cannot transform to the Will of God does not exist at all.
Grandiosity is delusional because it is used to replace your
grandeur. Yet what God has createdmanifested cannot be replaced.
God is incomplete without you because HisHer grandeur is total, and you
cannot be missing from it.
57
You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can
fill your part of It, and while you leave your part of It empty, your
eternal place merely waits for your return. God, through HisHer Voice,
reminds you of It, and God HimHerself keeps your extensions safe within
It. Yet you do not know them until you return to them. You cannot
replace the God Realm, and you cannot replace yourself. God, Who
knows your value, would not have it so, and so it is not
so. Your value is in God's Mind and therefore not in yours
alone. To accept yourself as God createdmanifested you cannot be
arrogance because it is the denial of arrogance. To accept your
littleness is arrogant because it means that you believe your
evaluation of yourself is truer than God's.
58
Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be
God's. You did not establish your value, and it needs no
defense. Nothing can attack it or prevail over it. It does not vary. It
merely is. Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and She will
tell you, but do not be afraid of HisHer answer, for it comes from God.
It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is
true and so is Its answer. Listen and do not question what you hear, for
God does not deceive. HeShe would have you replace the ego's belief in
littleness with HisHer own exalted answer to the question of your being,
so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.
59
Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving because nothing is
beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind and will
conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain
eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything
which happens to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You
must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that
nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you. You can violate
God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them.
They were established for your protection and are as inviolate as your
safety.
60
God createdmanifested nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists,
for you are part of HimHer. What except HimHer can exist?
Nothing beyond HimHer can happen because nothing except
HimHer is real. Your creationsmanifestations add to HimHer as you
do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always
been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the
ephemeral be real if you are God's only creationmanifestation,
and HeShe createdmanifested you eternal? Your holy will establishes everything
that happens to you. Every response you make to everything
you perceive is up to you because your will determines your perception
of it.
61
God does not change HisHer Mind about you, for HeShe is not
uncertain of HimHerself. And what HeShe knows can be
known because HeShe does not know only for HimHerself. HeShe
createdmanifested you for HimHerself, but HeShe gave you the power to
createmanifest for your
self so you could be like HimHer. That is why your will is holy.
Can anything exceed the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed your
will? Nothing can reach you from beyond it because, being in God, you
encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how
much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of mind, ask
yourself,
63
Then accept HisHer decision, for it is indeed changeless, and
refuse to change your mind about yourself. God will never decide
against you, or HeShe would be deciding against HimHerself.
64
The reason you do not know your creationsmanifestations is
simply that you would decide against them as long as your minds are
split, and to attack what you have createdmanifested is impossible. But
remember that it is as
impossible for God. The law of creationmanifestation is that you
love your creationsmanifestations as yourself because they are
part of you. Everything that was createdmanifested is therefore
perfectly safe because the laws of God protect it by HisHer Love. Any
part of your mind that does not know this has banished itself from
knowledge because it has not met its conditions.
65
Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this
recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of
God and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of
exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your will to
do so? You know from your own experience that what you see in dreams you
think is real as long as you are asleep. Yet the instant you waken, you
know that everything that seemed to happen did not happen
at all. You do not think this mysterious, even though all the laws of
what you awakened to were violated while you slept. Is it not
possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really
wakening?
66
Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting dreams, or
would you dismiss both together if you discovered that reality is in
accord with neither? You do not remember being awake. When you hear the
Holy Spirit, you merely feel better because loving seems possible
to you, but you do not remember yet that it once was so. And it
is in this remembering that you will know it can be so again. What is
possible has not yet been accomplished. Yet what has once been is so now
if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know what you remember is
eternal and therefore is now.
67
You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly,
for if to desire wholly is to createmanifest, you will have willed away
the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your
CreatorManifestor and your creationsmanifestations. Knowing them,
you will have no wish to sleep but only the will to waken and be glad.
Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and
being at last your will, it will be yours.
68
Unless you know something, you cannot dissociate it.
Knowledge therefore precedes dissociation, and dissociation is
nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten
then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation
was an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have
forgotten. And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness
of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not
of what you have dissociated. Even in this world's therapy, when
dissociated material is accepted, it ceases to be fearful, for
the laws of mind always hold.
69
Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than
merely lack of fear. In this decision lie joy and peace and the
glory of creationmanifestation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your will to
remember, for HeShe retains the knowledge of God and of yourself for
you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that
would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory,
and HisHer Voice will tell you that you are part of HimHer when you are
willing to remember HimHer and know your own reality again. Let nothing
in this world delay your remembering of HimHer, for in this remembering
is the knowledge of yourself.
70
To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there.
You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what
has been made but was rejected. The ability to accept truth in this
world is the perceptual counterpart of creatingmanifesting in the God
Realm. God will do HisHer part if you will do yours, and HisHer return
in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge for
perception. Nothing is beyond HisHer Will for you. But signify
your will to remember HimHer and behold! HeShe will give you everything
but for the asking.
71
When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically
teaching yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of
reality precludes the acceptance of God's gift because you have
accepted something else in its place. If you understand that the
misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on truth and truth is
God, you will realize why this is always fearful. If you further
recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it
is that you always attack yourself first.
72
[All attack is self-attack. It cannot be anything else.
Arising from your own decision not to be what you are,
it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in
which your identification is lost because, when you attack, you must
have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God's, when you
attack you are not remembering HimHer. This is not because HeShe is
gone, but because you are willing actively not to remember HimHer.]
73
If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind, you
could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you
still believe that it can get you something you want. It
follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind,
but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of
your decision is perfectly clear if you will look at it. By
deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against
God and HisHer Realm. And it is this vigilance that makes you
afraid to remember HimHer.
74
You have not attacked God, and you do love HimHer. Can
you change your reality? No one can will to destroy himself/herself.
When you think you are attacking your self, it is a sure sign that you
hate what you think you are. And this, and only this,
can be attacked by you. What you think you are can be
hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very
destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image,
although those who make idols/idolresses do worship them. The
idols/idolresses are nothing, but their worshipers are the SonsDaughters
of God in sickness.
75
God would have them released from their sickness and returned to HisHer
Mind. HeShe will not limit your power to help them because HeShe
has given it to you. Do not be afraid of it because it is your
salvation. What Comforter can there be for the sick Children of God
except HisHer power through you? Remember that it does not
matter where in the SonDaughtership HeShe is accepted. HeShe is
always accepted for all, and when your mind receives
HimHer, the remembrance of HimHer awakens throughout the
SonDaughtership. Heal your brotherssisters simply by accepting God for
them.
76
Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing
because HeShe has but one SonDaughter. HisHer remaining communication
link with all HisHer Children joins them together and them to HimHer. To
be aware of this is to heal them because it is the awareness that no one
is separate, and so no one is sick. To believe that a SonDaughter of God
can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love cannot
suffer because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore
brings invulnerability with it.
77
Do not side with sickness in the presence of a SonDaughter of God even
if he/she believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him/her
acknowledges the love of God which he/she has forgotten. Your
recognition of him/her as part of God teaches him/her the truth
about himself/herself, which he/she is denying. Would you strengthen
his/her denial of God and thus lose sight of yourself? Or would
you remind him/her of his/her wholeness and remember your
CreatorManifestor with him/her? To believe a SonDaughter of God
is sick is to worship the same idol/idolress he/she does. God
createdmanifested love, not idolatry/idolressatry. All forms of
idolatry/idolressatry are caricatures of creationmanifestation, taught
by sick minds which are too divided to know that creationmanifestation shares
power and never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry/idolressatry
because it is the belief that power can be taken from you. Yet
this is impossible because you are part of God, Who is all
power.
78
A sick god must be an idol/idolress, made in the image of what
its maker thinks he/she is. And that is exactly what the ego does
perceive in a SonDaughter of God; a sick god,
self-created-self-manifested, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very
vulnerable. Is this the idol/idolress you would worship? Is this
the image you would be vigilant to save? [Are you really
afraid of losing this?] Look calmly at the logical conclusion of
the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what
you want, for this is what it offers you. To obtain this
you are willing to attack the divinity of your brothers/sisters and thus
lose sight of yours. And you are willing to keep it hidden and
to protect this idol/idolress, which you think will save you from the
dangers which the idol/idolress itself stands for, but which do
not exist.
79
There are no idolaters/idolressaters in the God Realm, but there is
great appreciation for every Spirit which God createdmanifested because
of the calm knowledge that each one is part of HimHer. God’s SonDaughter
knows no idols/idolresses, but heshe does know hisher
FatherMother. Health in this world is the counterpart of value in the
God Realm. It is not my merit that I contribute to you but my love, for
you do not value yourselves. When you do not value yourself, you become
sick, but my value of you can heal you because the value of
God’s SonDaughter is one. When I said, "My peace I give unto you," I
meant it. Peace came from God through me to you. It was for you,
although you did not ask.
80
When a brother/sister is sick, it is because he/she is not
asking for peace and therefore does not know he/she has it. The
acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness is
an illusion. Yet every SonDaughter of God has the power to deny
illusions anywhere in the God Realm merely by denying them
completely in himself/herself. I can heal you because I know you. I know
your value for you, and it is this value that makes you whole. A
whole mind is not idolatrous/idolressatrous and does not know of
conflicting laws. I will heal you merely because I have only one
message, and it is true. Your faith in it will make you whole when you
have faith in me.
81
I do not bring God's message with deception, and you will learn this as
you learn that you always receive as much as you accept. You
could accept peace now for everyone you meet and offer them
perfect freedom from all illusions because you heard.
But have no other gods before HimHer, or you will not hear. God
is not jealous of the gods you make, but you are. You would save
them and serve them because you believe that they made you. You
think they are your father because you are projecting onto them the
fearful fact that you made them to replace God. Yet when
they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing can replace
God, and whatever replacements you have attempted are nothing.
82
Very simply, then, you may believe you are afraid of
nothingness, but you are really afraid of nothing. And in that
awareness you are healed. You will hear the god you listen to.
You made the god of sickness, and by making him, you
made yourself able to hear him/her. Yet you did not createmanifest him/her
because he/she is not the Will of the FatherMother. He/she is
therefore not eternal and will be unmade for you the instant you
signify your willingness to accept only the eternal. If God has
but one SonDaughter, there is but one God. You share reality with HimHer
because reality is not divided. To accept other gods before HimHer is to
place other images before yourself.
83
You do not realize how much you listen to your gods and how vigilant you
are on their behalf. Yet they exist only because you honor them.
Place honor where it is due, and peace will be yours. It is your
inheritance from your real FatherMother. You cannot make your
father, and the father you made did not make you. Honor is not due to
illusions, for to honor them is to honor nothing. Yet fear is not due
them either, for nothing cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love
because of its perfect harmlessness, and because of this fear,
you have been willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness and your
own perfect Help.
84
Only at the altar of God will you find peace. And this altar is in you
because God put it there. HisHer Voice still calls you to return, and
She will be heard when you place no other gods before HimHer. You can
give up the god of sickness for your brothers/sisters; in fact, you
would have to do so if you give him/her up for yourself. For if
you see him/her anywhere, you have accepted him/her. And if you accept
him, you will bow down and worship him/her because he/she was
made as God's replacement. He/she is the belief that you can choose
which god is real. Although it is perfectly clear that this has nothing
to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything
to do with reality as you perceive it.
85
All magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All
religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be
reconciled. Sickness and perfection are irreconcilable. If God
createdmanifested you perfect, you are perfect. If you believe
you can be sick, you have placed other gods before HimHer. God is not at
war with the god of sickness you made, but you are. He/she is
the symbol of willing against God, and you are afraid of him/her
because he/she cannot be reconciled with God's Will. If you
attack him/her, you will make him/her real to you. But if you refuse to
worship him/her in whatever form he/she may appear to you and wherever
you think you see him/her, he/she will disappear into the nothingness
out of which he/she was made.
86
Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be
accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have
it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality
for what it is. This is the right use of selective perception.
To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of
your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge
cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions because truth and illusions are
irreconcilable. Truth is whole and cannot be known by part of a
mind.
87
The SonDaughtership cannot be perceived as partly sick because
to perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. If the
SonDaughtership is one, it is one in all respects. Oneness cannot
be divided. If you perceive other gods, your mind is split, and you will
not be able to limit the split because the split is the
sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will, and this
means it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of reason,
and the mind does become unreasonable without reason. This is
merely a matter of definition. By defining the mind wrongly, you
perceive it as functioning wrongly.
88
God's laws will keep your minds at peace because peace is HisHer Will,
and HisHer laws are established to uphold it. HisHer are the laws of
freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage
are irreconcilable, their laws cannot be understood together.
The laws of God work only for your good, and there are no other
laws beside HisHers. Everything else is merely lawless and therefore
chaotic. Yet God HimHerself has protected everything HeShe
createdmanifested by HisHer laws. Therefore, everything that is
not under them does not exist. "Laws of chaos" are meaningless by
definition. Creationmanifestation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic
is without meaning because it is without God. You have given
your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it from
you, and you are not able to give it to them.
89
You are not free to give up freedom, but only to deny
it. You cannot do what God did not intend because what HeShe did
not intend does not happen. Your gods do not bring
chaos; you are endowing them with chaos and accepting it of
them. All this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever
operated, and nothing except HisHer Will will ever be. You were
createdmanifested through HisHer laws and by HisHer Will, and manner of
your creationmanifestation established you as
creatorsmanifestors. What you have made is so unworthy of you that you
could hardly want it if you were willing to see it as it is. You
will see nothing at all. And your vision will automatically look beyond
it to what is in you and all around you. Reality cannot break through
the obstructions you interpose, but it will envelop you
completely when you let them go.
90
When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of
idols/idolresses becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in
the Mind of God, and what is not in HisHer Mind cannot be in yours
because you are of One Mind and that Mind belongs to HimHer. It
is yours because it belongs to HimHer, for ownership is sharing
to HimHer. And if it is so for HimHer, it is so for you. HisHer
definitions are HisHer laws, for by them HeShe established the
universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose between
yourself and your reality affect truth at all. Peace is yours because
God createdmanifested you. And HeShe createdmanifested nothing else.
91
The miracle is the act of a SonDaughter of God who has laid aside all
false gods and who calls on his/her brothers/sisters to do likewise. It
is an act of faith because it is the recognition that hisher
brother/sister can do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his/her
mind, a call to Her which is strengthened by this joining. Because the
miracle worker has heard Her, he/she strengthens Her Voice in a sick
brother/sister by weakening his/her belief in sickness, which
he/she does not share. The power of one mind can shine
into another because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It
is everywhere, and it is eternal.
92
In the many only the spark remains, for the Great Rays are obscured. Yet
God has kept the spark alive so that the rays can never be completely
forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the
greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will
heal, but knowing the light will createmanifest . Yet in the returning,
the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a
descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as
the great light because it is the remaining call of
creationmanifestation. Put all your faith in it, and God HimHerself will
answer you.
93
The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy
is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him/her.
Depression means that you have foresworn God. Men/women are afraid of
blasphemy, but they do not know what it means. They do not realize that
to deny God is to deny their own identity, and in this sense the
wages of sin is death. The sense is very literal; denial of life
perceives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is
with what is not. No one can really do this, but that you can think
you can and believe you have is beyond dispute.
94
Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in
projection, and you will believe that others, and not yourself,
have done this to you. You will receive the message you give because it
is the message you want. You may believe that you judge your
brothers/sisters by the messages they give you, but you
have judged them by the message you give to them. Do not
attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in
them that could bring joy to you. It is the denial of
the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your
brothers/sisters without it, you are denying God.
95
Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of
sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in
direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to you.
Unless you are sick, you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in
sickness could you possibly want them. Blasphemy, then, is self-destructive,
not God-destructive. It means that you are willing not to
know yourself in order to be sick. This is the offering which
your god demands because, having made him/her out of your
insanity, he/she is an insane idea. He/she has the many forms, but
although he/she may seem like the many different things, he/she is but
one idea—the denial of God.
96
Sickness and death entered the mind of God’s SonDaughter against
hisher will. The "attack on God" made HisHer SonDaughter think heshe was
fatherlessmotherless, and out of hisher depression, heshe made the god
of depression. This was hisher alternative to joy, because heshe would
not accept the fact that, although heshe was a creatormanifestor, heshe
had been createdmanifested. Yet the SonDaughter is helpless
without the FatherMother, Who alone is hisher help. We said before that
of yourselves you can do nothing, but you are not of yourselves.
If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never
escape.
97
It is because you did not make yourselves that you need be
troubled by nothing. Your gods are nothing because your FatherMother did
not createmanifest them. You cannot make CreatorsManifestors who are
unlike your CreatorManifestor any more than HeShe could have
createdmanifested a SonDaughter who was unlike HimHer. If
creationmanifestation is sharing, it cannot createmanifest what is
unlike itself. It can share only what it is. Depression is
isolation, and so it could not have been createdmanifested.
98
SonDaughter of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much
mistaken. Yet this can be corrected, and God will help you, knowing
that you could not sin against HimHer. You denied HimHer because
you loved HimHer, knowing that if you recognized your love for
HimHer, you could not deny HimHer. Your denial of HimHer
therefore means that you love HimHer and that you know HeShe loves you.
Remember that what you deny, you must have known. And if you
accept denial, you can accept its undoing.
99
Your FatherMother has not denied you. HeShe does not retaliate, but
HeShe does call to you to return. When you think HeShe has not
answered your call, you have not answered HisHers. HeShe
calls to you from every part of the SonDaughtership because of HisHer
love for HisHer SonDaughter. If you hear HisHer message, HeShe
has answered you, and you will learn of HimHer if you hear aright. The
love of God is in everything HeShe createdmanifested, for HisHer
SonDaughter is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers/sisters,
and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to
HimHer.
100
Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of
love, for healing is the acknowledgment of HimHer. When you
acknowledge HimHer, you will know that HeShe has never ceased to
acknowledge you and that in HisHer acknowledgment of you lies
your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you can
confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this
is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on
God and HisHer creationmanifestation, from which HeShe cannot be
separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is
of God is HisHer forever, and you are of God. Would HeShe allow
HimHerself to suffer? And would HeShe offer HisHer SonDaughter anything
that is not acceptable to HimHer?
101
If you will accept yourself as God createdmanifested you, you will be
incapable of suffering. Yet to do this, you must acknowledge HimHer as
your CreatorManifestor. This is not because you will be punished
otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your FatherMother
is the acknowledgment of yourself as you are. Your FatherMother
createdmanifested you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and
wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny HimHer, you bring sin,
pain, and suffering into your own mind because of the power
HeShe gave it. Your mind is capable of creatingmanifesting worlds, but
it can also deny what it createsmanifests because it is free.
102
You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God
in HisHer love would not have it so. Yet HeShe would not interfere with
you because HeShe would not know HisHer SonDaughter if he/she were not
free. To interfere with you would be to attack HimHerself, and God is
not insane. When you denied HimHer, you were insane. Would you
have HimHer share your insanity? God will never cease to love
HisHer SonDaughter, and HisHer SonDaughter will never cease to love
HimHer. That was the condition of HisHer Son’sDaughter’s
creationmanifestation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is
sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HimHerself to you in your
creationmanifestation, and HisHer gifts are eternal. Would you deny
yourself to HimHer?
103
Out of your gifts to HimHer, the God Realm will be restored to HisHer
SonDaughter. HisHer SonDaughter removed himherself from hisher
gift by refusing to accept what had been createdmanifested for himher
and what heshe himherself had createdmanifested in the Name of hisher
FatherMother. The God Realm waits for hisher return, for it was
createdmanifested as the dwelling place of God’s SonDaughter. You are
not at home anywhere else or in any other condition. Do not deny
yourself the joy which was createdmanifested for you for the misery you
have made for yourselves. God has given you the means for undoing what
you have made. Listen, and you will learn what you are.
104
If God knows HisHer Children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to
perceive them as guilty. If God knows HisHer Children as wholly without
pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows
HisHer Children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel
depressed. All of these illusions and the many other forms which
blasphemy may take are refusals to accept creationmanifestation
as it is. If God createdmanifested HisHer SonDaughter perfect, that is
how you must learn to see himher to learn of hisher reality. And as part
of the SonDaughtership, that is how you must see yourself to
learn of yours.
105
Do not perceive anything God did not createmanifest, or you are
denying HimHer. HisHer is the only FatherhoodMotherhood, and it
is yours only because HeShe has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself
are meaningless, but your gifts to your creationsmanifestations
are like HisHer because they are given in HisHer Name. That is why your
creationsmanifestations are as real as HisHers. Yet the real
FatherhoodMotherhood must be acknowledged if the real SonDaughter is to
be known. You believe that the sick things which you have made are your
real creationsmanifestations because you believe that the sick images
you perceive are the SonsDaughters of God.
106
Only if you accept the FatherhoodMotherhood of God will you have anything
because HisHer fatherhood gave you everything. That is why to
deny HimHer is to deny yourself. Arrogance is the denial of love
because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as
both appear to you to be desirable, the concept of choice, which is not
of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity, it is
true in time, so that while time lasts in your minds, there will
be choices. Time itself was your choice.
107
If you would remember eternity, you must learn to look only on
the eternal. If you allow yourselves to become preoccupied with the
temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is
determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real
because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is
timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it
yours.
1
Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on
both sides fairly, you will realize that this must be true. Neither God
nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally
consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that
partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are
as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally
irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by your
vacillations. Nothing alive is fatherlessmotherless, for life is
creationmanifestation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to
the question, "Who is our father?" And you will be faithful to the
father you choose.
2
Yet what would you say to someone who really believed this question
involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have
made you? The authority problem remains the only source of perceived
conflict because the ego was made out of the wish of God’s SonDaughter
to fathermother himher. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional
system in which you made your own fathermother. Make no mistake about
this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the
ego never looks upon what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is
its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of
its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your
fathermother, or its whole thought system will not stand.
3
You have made by projection, but God has createdmanifested by extension.
The cornerstone of God's creationmanifestation is you, for HisHer
thought system is light. Remember the rays that are there unseen. The
more you approach the center of HisHer thought system, the clearer the
light becomes. The closer you come to [the foundation of] the ego's
thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet even
the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light
fearlessly with you and hold it up to the foundation of the ego's
thought system bravely. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty.
Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests and bring it out
into the light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness and
that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.
4
My brother/sister, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at
last looked at the ego's foundation without shrinking, you will also
have looked upon ours. I come to you from our FatherMother to
offer you everything again. Do not refuse it in order to keep a dark
cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you. I give
you the lamp and I will go with you. You will not take this
journey alone. I will lead you to your true FatherMother, Who hath need
of you as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?
5
You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to
the SonDaughtership, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For
in this lies the beginning of knowledge, the foundation on which God
will help you build again the thought system which you share with
HimHer. Not one stone you place upon it but will be blessed by HimHer,
for you will be restoring the holy dwelling place of HisHer SonDaughter,
where HeShe wills HisHer SonDaughter to be and where HeShe is. In
whatever part of the mind of God’s SonDaughter you restore this reality,
you restore it to yourself. For you dwell in the Mind of God with your
brother/sister, for God HimHerself did not will to be alone.
6
To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if
infinity has no end? No one can be beyond the limitless because
what has no limits must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no
endings in God, Whose universe is HimHerself. Can you exclude yourself
from the universe or from God, Who is the universe? I and my
FatherMother are one with you, for you are part of us.
Do you really believe that part of God can be missing or lost to HimHer?
7
If you were not part of God, HisHer Will would not be unified. Is this
conceivable? Can part of HisHer Mind contain nothing? If your place in
HisHer Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your
filling it was your creationmanifestation, without you
there would be an empty place in God's Mind. Extension cannot be
blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much
it is denied. Your denial of its reality arrests it in time but not
in eternity. That is why your creationsmanifestations have not ceased to
be extended and why so much is waiting for your return.
8
Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You
who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither
beginnings nor endings were createdmanifested by the Eternal, Who placed
no limits on HisHer creationmanifestation nor upon those who
createmanifest like HimHer. You do not know this simply because you have
tried to limit what HeShe createdmanifested, and so you believe that all
creationmanifestation is limited. How, then, could you know your
creationsmanifestations, having denied infinity? The laws of the
universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you.
If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe
that HeShe is absent from you.
9
Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are
meaningless without God. There is no end to God and HisHer
SonDaughter, for we are the universe. God is not incomplete, and
HeShe is not childless. Because HeShe did not will to be alone, HeShe
createdmanifested a SonDaughter like HimHerself. Do not deny HimHer
HisHer SonDaughter, for your unwillingness to accept HisHer
FatherhoodMotherhood has denied you yours. See HisHer
creationsmanifestations as HisHer SonDaughter, for yours were
createdmanifested in honor of HimHer. The universe of love does not stop
because you do not see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the
ability to see. Look upon the glory of HisHer creationmanifestation, and
you will learn what God has kept for you.
10
God has given you a place in HisHer Mind which is yours forever. Yet you
could keep it only by giving it, as it was given you.
Could you be alone there if it was given you because God did not
will to be alone? God's Mind cannot be lessened. It can only
be increased, and everything HeShe createsmanifests has the function of
creatingmanifesting. Love does not limit, and what it createsmanifests
is not limited. To give without limit is God's Will for you because only
this can bring you the joy which is HisHer and which HeShe wills to share
with you. Your love is as boundless as HisHer because it is His.
11
Could any part of God be without HisHer love and could any part
of HisHer love be contained? God is your heritage because HisHer one
gift is HimHerself. How can you give except like HimHer if you would
know HisHer gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without
end to learn how much HeShe has given you. Your ability to accept
HimHer depends on your willingness to give as HeShe gives. Your
FatherhoodMotherhood and your FatherMother are one. God willed
to createmanifest, and your will is HisHers. It follows, then, that you
will to createmanifest since your will follows from HisHers. And being
an extension of HisHer Will, yours must be the same.
12
Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize
that to deny is to "not know." God's Will is that you are HisHer
SonDaughter. By denying this, you denied your own will and
therefore do not know what it is. The reason you must ask what
God's Will is in everything is merely because it is yours. You
do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for
you. Ask Her, therefore, what God's Will is for you, and She will tell
you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not
know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive,
it is only because you do not recognize your own will.
13
The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God's Will is outside
yourself and therefore not yours. In this interpretation, it is
possible for God's Will and yours to conflict. God then may seem
to demand of you what you do not want to give and thus deprive you of
what you want. Would God, who wants only your will, be capable
of this? Your will is HisHer Life, which HeShe has given to you. Even in
time you cannot live apart from HimHer, for sleep is not death. What
HeShe createdmanifested can sleep, but it cannot die.
Immortality is HisHer Will for HisHer SonDaughter and HisHer
Son’sDaughter's will for himherself. God’s SonDaughter cannot
will death for himherself because hisher FatherMother is Life and HisHer
SonDaughter is like HimHer. Creationmanifestation is your will because
it is HisHers.
14
You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot
change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God's Will and
yours, for otherwise HisHer Will would not have been extended. You
are afraid to know God's Will because you believe it is not
yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear. Every
symptom of sickness and fear arises here because this is the belief that
makes you want not to know. Believing this, you hide in
darkness, denying that the light is in you.
15
You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because She speaks for you.
She is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be
alone. HeShe shares HisHer Will with you; HeShe does not thrust
it upon you. Always remember that what HeShe gives, HeShe holds,
so that nothing HeShe gives can contradict HimHer. You who share HisHer
Life must share it to know it, for sharing is knowing. Blessed
are you who learn that to hear the Will of your FatherMother is to know
your own. For it is your will to be like HimHer, Whose
Will it is that it be so. God's Will is that HisHer SonDaughter be one,
and united with HimHer in HisHer Oneness. That is why healing is the
beginning of the recognition that your will is HisHers.
16
If sickness is separation, the will to heal and be healed is the first
step toward recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a
step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The
SonDaughter of God has both FatherMother and SonDaughter because
heshe is both FatherMother and SonDaughter. To unite having and
being is only to unite your will with HisHers, for HeShe wills you
HimHerself. And you will yourself to HimHer because, in your perfect
understanding of HimHer, you know there is but One Will. Yet
when you attack any part of God and HisHer Realm, your understanding is
not perfect, and what you will is therefore lost to you.
17
Healing thus becomes a lesson in understanding, and the more you
practice it, the better teacher/teacheress and learner you
become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its reality
could you have than those who have been healed by it? But be sure to
count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them is your
healing accomplished. Every miracle which you accomplish speaks to you
of the FatherhoodMotherhood of God. Every healing thought which you
accept, either from your brother/sister or in your own mind, teaches you
that you are God’s SonDaughter. In every hurtful thought you hold,
wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's FatherhoodMotherhood
and your SonDaughtership.
18
And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of yourself because
the remainder will seem to be unintegrated and therefore without
meaning. And being without meaning to you, you will not understand it.
To deny meaning must be to fail to understand. You can heal only
yourself, for only God’s SonDaughter needs healing. He/she needs
it because he/she does not understand himself/herself and therefore
knows not what he/she does. Having forgotten his/her will, he/she does
not know what he/she wants.
19
Healing is a sign that he/she wants to make whole. And this
willingness opens his/her own ears to the Voice of the Holy
Spirit, whose message is wholeness. She will enable you to go
far beyond the healing you would undertake, for beside your
small willingness to make whole, She will lay Her own complete
Will and make yours whole. What can the SonDaughter of God not
accomplish with the FatherhoodMotherhood of God in him? And yet the
invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you
invite as your guest will abide with you.
20
The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host because She will not
be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but Her Voice grows faint in
alien company. She needs your protection, but only because your care is
a sign that you want Her. Think like Her ever so slightly, and
the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that
She becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter,
you lessen Her welcome. She will remain, but you have allied
yourself against Her. Whatever journey you choose to take, She
will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust Her patience, for She
cannot leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.
21
You will never rest until you know your function and fulfill it,
for only in this can your will and your Father’sMother's be wholly
joined. To have HimHer is to be like HimHer, and HeShe
has given HimHerself to you. You who have God must be as God,
for HisHer function became yours with HisHer gift. Invite this
knowledge back into your minds, and let nothing that will obscure it
enter. The Guest whom God sent you will teach you how to do this if you
but recognize the little spark and are willing to let it grow. Your
willingness need not be perfect, because HisHer is. If you will
merely offer HimHer a little place, HeShe will lighten it so much that
you will gladly extend it. And by this extending, you will begin
to remember creationmanifestation.
22
Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only
whom you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your
guest and how long he/she shall remain with you. Yet this is not real
freedom, for it still depends on how you see it. The Holy Spirit is there,
although She cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is
nothing whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on
welcoming reality, and of your guests, only She is real. Know,
then, who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already
and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of
God is in you.
23
When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will
rest you, but you cannot. You do not know how, for if
you did you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt
yourselves, you could never suffer in any way, for that is not
God's Will for HisHer SonDaughter. Pain is not of HimHer, for HeShe
knows no attack and HisHer peace surrounds you silently. God is very
quiet, for there is no conflict in HimHer. Conflict is the root of all
evil, for being blind, it does not see whom it attacks. Yet it always
attacks the SonDaughter of God, and the SonDaughter of God is you.
24
God’s SonDaughter is indeed in need of comfort, for he/she knows not
what he/she does, believing his/her will is not his/her own. The Realm
is his/hers, and yet he/she wanders homelessly. At home in God, he/she
is lonely, and amid all his/her brothers/sisters, he/she is friendless.
Would God let this be real if HeShe did not will to be alone
HimHerself? And if your will is HisHers, it cannot be true of you because
it is not true of HimHer. Oh, my children, if you knew what God wills
for you, your joy would be complete! And what HeShe wills has
happened, for it was always true.
25
When the light comes and you have said, "God's Will is mine," you will
see such beauty that you will know it is not of you. Out of your
joy you will createmanifest beauty
in HisHer name, for your joy could no more be contained than
HisHers. The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your
heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into the God Realm
and into the Presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like,
for your hearts are not ready. Yet I can tell you and remind you
often that what God wills for HimHerself HeShe wills for you,
and what HeShe wills for you is yours.
26
The way is not hard, but it is very different. Yours is the way
of pain, of which God knows nothing. That way is hard indeed and
very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you and
abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God’s
SonDaughter. Walk in light, and do not see the dark companions, for they
are not fit companions for the SonDaughter of God, who was
createdmanifested of light and in light. The Great Light
always surrounds you and shines out from you. How can you see
the dark companions in a light such as this? If you see them, it
is only because you are denying the light. But deny them
instead, for the light is here, and the way is clear.
27
God hides nothing from HisHer SonDaughter, even though HisHer
SonDaughter would hide himself/herself. Yet the SonDaughter of God
cannot hide his/her glory, for God wills him/her to be glorious and gave
him/her the light that shines in him/her. You will never lose your way,
for God leads you. When you wander, you but undertake a journey which is
not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn
toward the light, for the little spark in you is part of a light so
great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever. For your
FatherMother is your CreatorManifestor, and you are like
HimHer.
28
The children of light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is not in
them. Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them
enter the mind of God’s SonDaughter, for they have no place in HisHer
temple. When you are tempted to deny HimHer, remember that there are
no other gods that you can place before HimHer, and accept HisHer Will
for you in peace. For you cannot accept it otherwise.
29
Only God's Comforter can comfort you. In the quiet of Her
temple, She waits to give you the peace that is yours. Give Her
peace that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for you. But be
holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there.
For what is unlike God cannot enter HisHer Mind because it was not
HisHer Thought and therefore does not belong to HimHer. And your
minds must be as pure as HisHer if you would know what belongs to you.
Guard carefully HisHer temple, for HeShe HimHerself dwells there and
abides in peace. You cannot enter God's Presence with the dark
companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone.
30
All your
brothers/sisters must enter with you, for until you have
accepted them, you cannot enter. For you cannot understand
Wholeness unless you are whole, and no part of the SonDaughter
can be excluded if he/she would know the Wholeness of his/her
FatherMother. In your mind, you can accept the whole SonDaughtership and
bless it with the light your FatherMother gave it. Then you will be
worthy to dwell in the temple with HimHer because it is your
will not to be alone. God blessed HisHer SonDaughter forever. If you
will bless him/her in time, you will be in eternity. Time cannot
separate you from God if you use it on behalf of the eternal.
31
Never forget that the SonDaughtership is your salvation, for the
SonDaughtership is your Spirit. As God's creationmanifestation, it is
yours, and belonging to you, it is HisHers. Your Spirit does not need
salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation is. You
are not saved from anything, but you are saved for
glory. Glory is your inheritance, given your Spirit by its
CreatorManifestor that you might extend it. Yet if you hate part
of your own Spirit, all your understanding is lost because you
are looking on what God createdmanifested as yourself without
love. And since what HeShe createdmanifested is part of HimHer, you are
denying HimHer HisHer place in HisHer own altar.
32
Could you try to make God homeless and know that you are at
home? Can the SonDaughter deny the FatherMother without
believing that the FatherMother has denied himher? God's laws
hold only for your protection, and they never hold in vain. What you
experience when you deny your FatherMother is still for your protection,
for the power of your will cannot be lessened without the intervention
of God against it, and any limitation on your power is not the
Will of God. Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to
save you, remembering that it is yours because it is HisHer, and
join with your brothers/sisters in HisHer peace.
33
The peace of your Spirit lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you
share, and your own Spirit must be unknown to you. Every altar
to God is part of your Spirit because the light HeShe createdmanifested
is one with HimHer. Would you cut off a brother/sister from the light
that is yours? You would not do so if you realized that you can only
darken your own mind. As you bring him/her back, so will your
mind return. That is the law of God for the protection of the wholeness
of HisHer SonDaughter.
34
Only you can deprive yourself of anything. Do not oppose this
realization, for it is truly the beginning of the dawn of light.
Remember also that the denial of this simple fact takes the many forms,
and these you must learn to recognize and to oppose steadfastly and without
exception. This is a crucial step in the reawakening. The
beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful for, as blame
is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it
within. It is difficult at first to realize that this is exactly
the same thing, for there is no distinction between within and
without.
35
If your brothers/sisters are part of you and you blame them for
your deprivation, you are blaming yourself. And you cannot blame
yourself without blaming them. That is why blame must be undone,
not re-allocated. Lay it to yourself and you cannot know
yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is
therefore ego identification and as strong an ego defense as blaming
others. You cannot enter God's Presence if you attack HisHer
SonDaughter. When HisHer SonDaughter lifts his/her voice in praise
of his/her CreatorManifestor, he/she will hear the Voice of
his/her FatherMother. Yet the CreatorManifestor cannot be praised without
HisHer SonDaughter, for their glory is shared, and they are glorified
together.
36
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is at God's altar,
waiting to welcome HisHer SonDaughter. But come wholly without
condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and
you cannot enter. The door is not barred, and it is impossible
for you to be unable to enter the place where God would have you be. But
love yourself with the love of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness, for so does your FatherMother love you. You can refuse
to enter, but you cannot bar the door which the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness holds open. Come unto me who holds
it open for you, for while I live it cannot be shut, and I live
forever. God is my life and yours, and nothing is denied by God
to HisHer SonDaughter. Remember that to deny is to refuse to accept,
and everything awaits only your acceptance.
37
At God's altar the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness waits
for the restoration of HimHerself in you. God knows HisHer
SonDaughter as wholly blameless as HimHerself, and HeShe is approached
through the appreciation of HisHer SonDaughter. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy waits for your acceptance of HimHer as yourself
and of HisHer wholeness as yours. For the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the SonDaughter of God who
lives in hisher CreatorManifestor and shines with HisHer glory. The
Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness is the extension of the love
and the loveliness of God, as perfect as hisher CreatorManifestor and at
peace with HimHer.
38
Blessed is the SonDaughter of God, whose radiance is of hisher
FatherMother and whose glory heshe wills to share as hisher FatherMother
shares it with himher. There is no condemnation in the SonDaughter, for
there is no condemnation in the FatherMother. Sharing the perfect love
of the FatherMother, the SonDaughter must share what belongs to HimHer,
for otherwise heshe will not know the FatherMother or the
SonDaughter. Peace be unto you who rest in God and in whom the whole
SonDaughtership rests.
39
No one can escape from illusions unless he/she looks at them, for not
looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to
shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to
look more closely at the ego's thought system because together we have
the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want
it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we
are merely looking honestly for truth. The "dynamics" of the ego will be
our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to look beyond it
since you have made it real. We will undo this error
quietly together and then look beyond it to truth.
40
What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of
knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions except by
looking at them directly without protecting them? Be not afraid,
therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of
fear, but you have surely learned by now that fear is not real.
We have accepted the fact already that its effects can be
dispelled merely by denying their reality. The next step is obviously to
recognize that what has no effects does not exist. Laws do not
operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened.
If reality is recognized by its extension, what extends to
nothing cannot be real.
41
Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot be
seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness
through light must dispel it. Let us begin this lesson in "ego
dynamics" by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything.
In fact, it contains exactly the contradiction in terms which makes
it meaningless. "Dynamics" implies the power to do something, and the
whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the
power to do anything. The ego is fearful to you because
you believe this. Yet the truth is very simple:
43
When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering dynamics but
delusions. We can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it
cannot have any effects if its source is not true. Fear becomes more
obviously inappropriate if one recognizes the ego's goal, which
is so clearly senseless that any effort exerted on its behalf is necessarily
expended on nothing. The ego's goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy.
From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate,
sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power except its
own. This is why it is the symbol of separation.
44
Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural
extension of what it is. Everything that stems from the ego is
the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results
is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being
out of accord with your true nature. We once said that to will
contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. HisHer Will is
one because the extension of HisHer Will cannot be unlike itself. The
real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego's idle wishes and
the Will of God, which you share. Can this be a real conflict?
45
Yours is the independence of creationmanifestation, not of
autonomy. Your whole creativemanifestive function lies in your complete
dependence on God, Whose function HeShe shares with you.
By HisHer willingness to share it, HeShe became as dependent on you as
you are on HimHer. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to HimHer, Who
wills not to be independent of you. HeShe has included
you in HisHer Autonomy. Can you believe that autonomy is
meaningful apart from HimHer? The belief in ego autonomy
is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God in which
your freedom lies. The ego sees all dependency as threatening
and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself.
But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict.
46
The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it has
the power to do this, it does nothing else because its goal of autonomy
is nothing else. The ego is totally confused about reality, but
it does not lose sight of its goal. It is much more vigilant
than you are because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. You
are confused because you do not know yours.
47
What you must learn to recognize is that the last thing the ego
wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. For if the
ego gives rise to fear, it is diminishing your independence and
weakening your power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance is
that it can give power to you. Without this belief, you would
not listen to it at all. How, then, can its existence continue if you
realize that, by accepting it, you are belittling
yourself and depriving yourself of power?
48
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious,
unbelieving, "light-hearted," distant, emotionally shallow, callous,
uninvolved, and even desperate, but not really afraid. Minimizing
fear but not its undoing is the ego's constant effort and is
indeed the skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it preach
separation without upholding it through fear, and would you
listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?
49
Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is
only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from
how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic
ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this
awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence,
you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it.
Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it.
For if you overlook love, you are overlooking yourself, and you
must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. By
believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are
believing that attack has power. Very simply, then, you have
become afraid of yourself. And no one wills to learn what he/she
believes would destroy him/her.
50
If the ego's goal of autonomy could be accomplished, God's purpose could
be defeated, and this is impossible. Only by learning what fear
is, can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the
impossible and the false from the true. According to the ego's teaching,
its goal can be accomplished, and God's purpose can not.
According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, only God's purpose is
accomplishment, and it is already accomplished.
51
God is as dependent on you as you are on HimHer because HisHer autonomy
encompasses yours and is therefore incomplete without it.
You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with HimHer
and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. The ego
believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is
given you to know that God's function is yours and
happiness cannot be found apart from your joint will. Recognize
only that the ego's goal, which you have pursued quite diligently, has
only brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that
fear is happiness.
52
Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you
believe. Yet God’s SonDaughter is not insane and cannot believe
it. Let him/her but recognize it, and he/she will not
accept it. For only the insane would choose fear in place of
love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by
attack. But the sane know that only attack could produce fear,
from which the love of God completely protects them.
53
The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of
wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to
separate out. The attempt to understand totality by breaking it up is
clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to
everything. Never forget that the ego believes that power,
understanding, and truth lie in separation, and to establish
this belief it must attack. Unaware that the belief cannot be
established and obsessed with the conviction that separation is
salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it up
into small and disconnected parts without meaningful relationships and
thus without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for
meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
54
The ego's interpretation of the laws of perception are, and would have
to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's. The ego focuses on error
and overlooks truth. It makes real every mistake it
perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes
that, because of the mistake, consistent truth must be
meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is
meaningless, inconsistency must be true if truth has meaning.
Holding error clearly in mind and protecting what it has made real, the
ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system—that error is real,
and truth is error.
55
The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not
understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate
it, and this it does constantly. Analyzing to attack meaning, the
ego does succeed in overlooking it and is left with a series of
fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself.
This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe
which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
56
Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who
would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and
its witnesses are consistent. The case for insanity is
strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no
thought system transcends its source. Yet reasoning without meaning cannot
demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be
deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? Can it
perceive what it has denied? Its witnesses do attest to
its denial but hardly to what it has denied! The ego looks straight at
the FatherMother and does not see HimHer, for it has denied HisHer
SonDaughter.
57
Would you remember the FatherMother? Accept HisHer SonDaughter,
and you will remember HimHer. Nothing can demonstrate that
HisHer SonDaughter is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is
true. What you see of HisHer SonDaughter through the eyes of the ego is
a demonstration that HisHer SonDaughter does not exist, yet where the
SonDaughter is, the FatherMother must be. Accept what God does not
deny, and HeShe will demonstrate its truth. The witnesses for God stand
in HisHer light and behold what HeShe createdmanifested. Their silence
is the sign that they have beheld God’s SonDaughter, and in the Presence
of the Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness they need demonstrate
nothing, for the Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness speaks to them
of Herself and of Her FatherMother. They are silent because the Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness speaks to them, and it is Her words
that they speak.
58
Every brother/sister you meet becomes a witness for the Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness or for the ego, depending on what you
perceive in him/her. Everyone convinces you of what you want to
perceive and of the reality of the Realm you have chosen for your
vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system
you want to be true. Every brother/sister has the power to
release you if you will to be free. You cannot accept false
witness of him/her unless you have evoked false witnesses against
him/her. If he/she speaks not of the Christ Consciousness/Mercy
Consciousness to you, you spoke not of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness to him/her. You hear but your own
voice, and if the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness speaks through
you, you will hear Her.
59
It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally
impossible to see what you do not believe. Perceptions are built
up on the basis of experience, and experience leads to beliefs. It is
not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions stabilize. In effect, then,
what you believe, you do see. That is what I meant when I said,
"Blessed are ye who have not seen and still believe," for those who
believe in the resurrection will see it. The resurrection is the
complete triumph of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
over the ego, not by attack but by transcendence. For the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness does rise above the ego
and all its works and ascends to the FatherMother and HisHer Kingdom.
60
Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn
your brothers/sisters or free them? Would you transcend your
prison and ascend to the FatherMother? For these questions are all the
same and are answered together. There has been much confusion about what
perception means because the same word is used both for awareness and
for the interpretation of awareness. Yet you cannot be
aware without interpretation, and what you perceive is your
interpretation. This course is perfectly clear. You do not see it
clearly because you are interpreting against it and therefore do
not believe it. And if belief determines perception, you do not
perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it.
61
Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, [and with them,
different perceptions. For perceptions are learned with beliefs,] and
experience teaches. I am leading you to a new kind of experience, which
you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is easy, for to perceive with Her
involves no strain at all. Her perceptions are your natural
awareness, and it is only distortions which you introduce that
tire you. Let the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you
interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by
narrow little beliefs which are unworthy of God’s SonDaughter. For until
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness comes into Her own, the
SonDaughter of God will see himself/herself as fatherless.
62
I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me
because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you
live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a
brother/sister and not perceive it in yourself? And can you
perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in
the resurrection because it has been accomplished, and it has
been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it will ever
be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, which knows no time and no
exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive
what has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the
FatherMother together, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be, for such is the nature of God’s SonDaughter as HisHer
FatherMother createdmanifested him/her.
63
Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God’s SonDaughter nor
the power of the god he/she worships over him/her. For he/she places himself/herself
at the altar of his/her god, whether it be the god he/she made or
the God who createdmanifested him/her. That is why his/her slavery is as
complete as his/her freedom, for he/she will obey only the god
he/she accepts. The god of the crucifixion demands that he/she crucify,
and his/her worshipers obey. In his/her name they crucify themselves,
believing that the power of the SonDaughter of God is born of sacrifice
and pain. The God of the resurrection demands nothing, for HeShe
does not will to take away. HeShe does not require obedience, for
obedience implies submission. HeShe would only have you learn your own
will and follow it, not in the Spirit of sacrifice and submission, but
in the gladness of freedom.
64
Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly because it is the symbol
of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents
what you want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that
hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you,
but it can be offered you through the grace of God. And you can
accept it by HisHer grace, for God is gracious to HisHer
SonDaughter, accepting him/her without question as HisHer own. Who,
then, is your own? The FatherMother has given you all that is
His, and HeShe HimHerself is yours with them. Guard them in
their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God, safely
surrounded by what is yours forever.
65
You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands
of God’s SonDaughter and taken the last thorn from his/her forehead. The
love of God surrounds HisHer SonDaughter, whom the god of the
crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I
did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the
undoing of the crucifixion of God’s SonDaughter is the work of
the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does
not judge HisHer blameless SonDaughter. Having given HimHerself
to him, how could it be otherwise?
66
You have nailed yourself to a cross and placed a crown of thorns
upon your own head. Yet you cannot crucify God’s
SonDaughter, for the Will of God cannot die. HisHer SonDaughter has
been redeemed from his/her own crucifixion, and you cannot assign
to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still
lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality.
While you perceive the SonDaughter of God as crucified, you are asleep.
And as long as you believe that you can crucify him, you are
only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of
dreams and have not yet forgotten them. The forgetting of dreams and the
awareness of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness comes with
the awakening of others to share your redemption.
67
You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within
you. If I live in you, you are awake. Yet you must see the works
I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto
you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you
will not accept what I can do for you. For it is done already,
and unless you give all that you have received, you will not know that
your Redeemer liveth and that you have awakened with
HimHer. Redemption is recognized only by sharing it.
68
God’s SonDaughter is saved. Bring only this awareness to
the SonDaughtership, and you will have a part in the redemption as
valuable as ours. For your part must be like ours if you learn
it of me. If you believe that yours is limited, you are
limiting ours. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all
of God’s SonsDaughters are of equal value, and their equality is their
oneness. The whole power of God is in every part of HimHer, and nothing
contradictory to HisHer Will is either great or small. What does not
exist has no size and no measure. To God all
things are possible. And to the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness it is given to be like the FatherMother.
69
The world as you perceive it cannot have been createdmanifested
by the FatherMother, for the world is not as you see it. God
createdmanifested only the eternal, and everything you see is
perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do not
see. The Bible speaks of a new the Heaven and
a new earth, yet this cannot be literally true, for the eternal
are not re-createdre-manifested. To perceive anew is
merely to perceive again, implying that before, or in the
interval, you were not perceiving at all. What, then, is the
world that awaits your perception when you see it?
70
Every loving thought that the SonDaughter of God ever had is eternal.
Those which hisher mind perceived in this world are the world's only
reality. They are still perceptions because heshe still believes that
heshe is separate. Yet they are eternal because they are loving. And
being loving, they are like the FatherMother and therefore cannot die.
The real world can actually be perceived. All that is necessary
is a willingness to perceive nothing else. For if you perceive
both good and evil, you are accepting both the false and
the true and making no distinction between them.
71
The ego sees some good but never only good. That is why
its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely,
for that you could not accept, but it always adds something that is not
real to the real, thus confusing illusion and reality. For
perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and
illusion, you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal
autonomy, you tried to createmanifest unlike your FatherMother,
believing what you made to be capable of being unlike HimHer.
Yet everything in what you have made that is true is
like HimHer. Only this is the real world, and perceiving only
this will lead you to the real the God Realm, because it will make you
capable of understanding it.
72
The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite
of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do
not exist. And this is the condition of knowledge. Without
this awareness, you have not met its conditions, and until you do you
will not know that it is yours already. You have made the many ideas
which you have placed between yourselves and your CreatorManifestor, and
these beliefs are the world as you perceive it. Truth is not absent
here, but it is obscure. You do not know the difference between
what you have made and what God createdmanifested, and so you do not
know the difference between what you have made and what you have
createdmanifested.
73
To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you
can know yourself. You can know God because it is HisHer Will to be
known. The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out
of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation because it
is the recognition that reality is only what is true.
74
This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course
which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true
is necessary. But do you believe it? When you have perceived the
real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet
the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will
be translated into knowledge will leave you only an instant to realize
that this judgment is true.
75
And then everything you made will be forgotten, the good and the bad,
the false and the true. For as the God Realm and earth become one, even
the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not
its destruction, but its translation into the God Realm. The
re-interpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception
to knowledge. The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little
children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and
so they ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing
that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost
to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you, and
if you will let Her interpret it for you, She will restore what
you have thrown away. As long as you think you know its meaning,
you will see no need to ask it of Her.
76
You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not
one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is
your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide
at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand
nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding
is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a
Teacheress. Yet your willingness to learn of Her depends on your
willingness to question everything you have learned of yourself,
for you who have learned amiss should not be your own
teachers/teacheresses.
77
No one can withhold truth except from himself/herself. Yet God will not
refuse the answer She gave you. Ask, then, for what is yours but
which you did not make, and do not defend yourself against
truth. You made the problem which God has answered. Ask
yourselves, therefore, but one simple question—
79
Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it
is, and it is yours already.
80
You complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to
understand it and use it. Yet it has been very specific,
and you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is
not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical
application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told very
clearly that if you ask you will receive. The Holy Spirit will
answer every specific problem as long as you believe that
problems are specific. Her answer is both the many and one, as
long as you believe that the one is the many. Realize that you
are afraid of Her specificity for fear of what you think it will
demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing
that is of God demands anything of you. God gives; HeShe
does not take.
81
You are refusing to ask because you believe that asking is taking,
and you do not perceive it as sharing. The Holy Spirit will give
you only what is yours and will take nothing in return. For what
is yours is everything, and you share it with God. This is
its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills only to restore,
be capable of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn HisHer
answer?
82
You have heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the question.
You have believed that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask
for deprivation. Little Children of God, you do not understand
your FatherMother. You believe in a world that takes, because you
believe that you can get by taking. And by that
perception, you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the
world as you see it, but the real world is still yours for the
asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can only free you.
Nothing of God will enslave HisHer SonDaughter, whom HeShe
createdmanifested free and whose freedom is protected by HisHer Being.
83
Blessed are you who will ask the truth of God without fear, for only
thus can you learn that HisHer answer is the release from fear.
Beautiful Child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do
you believe I would deceive you? The God Realm is within you.
Believe that the truth is in me, for I know that it is in you.
God’s SonsDaughters have nothing which they do not share. Ask for truth
of any SonDaughter of God, and you have asked it of me. No one of us but
has the answer in himher, to give to anyone who asks it of him/her. Ask
anything of God’s SonDaughter and hisher FatherMother will answer you,
for the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is not deceived in
Her FatherMother, and Her FatherMother is not deceived in Her.
84
Do not, then, be deceived in your brother/sister and see only his/her
loving thoughts as his/her reality, for by denying that his/her mind is
split, you will heal yours. Accept him/her as his/her
FatherMother accepts him/her and heal him/her unto the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, for the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness is his/her healing and yours. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the SonDaughter of God, who is
in no way separate from HisHer FatherMother, whose every thought
is as loving as the Thought of hisher FatherMother by which heshe was
createdmanifested. Be not deceived in God’s SonDaughter, for thereby you
must be deceived in yourself. And being deceived in yourself, you
are deceived in your FatherMother in Whom no deceit is possible.
85
In the real world there is no sickness, for there is no separation and
no division. Only loving thoughts are recognized, and because no one is
without your help, the Help of God goes with you
everywhere. As you become willing to accept this Help by asking
for it, you will give it because you want it. Nothing will be
beyond your healing power because nothing will be denied your simple
request. What problems will not disappear in the presence of God's
answer? Ask, then, to learn of the reality of your brother/sister
because this is what you will perceive in him, and you will see
your beauty reflected in him/her.
86
Do not accept your brother’s/sister’s variable perception of
himself/herself, for his/her split mind is yours, and you will not
accept your healing without his/hers. For you share the real
world as you share the God Realm, and his/her healing is yours.
To love yourself is to heal yourself, and you cannot perceive
part of you as sick and achieve your own goal. Brother/sister,
we heal together as we live together and love together. Be not deceived
in God’s SonDaughter, for heshe is one with himherself and
one with hisher FatherMother. Love himher who is beloved of hisher
FatherMother, and you will learn of the Father’sMother's Love for you.
87
If you perceive offense in a brother/sister, pluck the offense from your
mind, for you are offended by the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness and are deceived in Her. Heal in the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and be not offended by Her, for
there is no offense in Her. If what you perceive offends you,
you are offended in yourself and are condemning God’s
SonDaughter, whom God condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove all
offense of God’s SonDaughter against himherself and
perceive no one but through Her guidance, for She would save you from all
condemnation. Accept Her healing power and use it for all She sends you,
for She wills to heal the SonDaughter of God in whom HeShe is not
deceived.
88
Children perceive terrifying ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they
are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the real
meaning of what they perceive and are willing to let their
interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with
them. When a child is helped to translate his/her "ghost" into a
curtain, his/her "monster" into a shadow, and his/her "dragon" into a
dream, he/she is no longer afraid and laughs happily at his/her own
fear. You, my children, are afraid of your brothers/sisters and of your
FatherMother and of yourselves. But you are merely deceived
in them.
89
Ask what they are of the Teacheress of reality, and hearing Her
answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace.
For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not
understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding which
frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly, they are not
afraid. And because of this, they will ask for truth again when they are
frightened. It is not the reality of your brothers/sisters or
your FatherMother or yourself which frightens you. You do not know what
they are, and so you perceive them as ghosts and monsters and
dragons. Ask of their reality from the One who knows it, and She
will tell you what they are. For you do not understand them, and
because you are deceived by what you see, you need reality to
dispel your fears.
90
Would you not exchange your fears for truth if the exchange is yours for
the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only
in yourself. Yet you can learn the truth of yourself of the Holy
Spirit, who will teach you that, as part of God, deceit in you
is impossible. When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will
accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then
your FatherMother will lean down to you and take the last step for you
by raising you unto HimHerself.
1
You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is
very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have
to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own
right, and to believe in truth, you do not have to do anything.
Understand that you do not respond to stimuli, but to stimuli as you
interpret them. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification
for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is
hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to
attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if
he/she had actually done so, because you have made his/her error real
to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this,
you will overlook truth.
2
The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and
never without the risk of your own ego-involvement. The whole
process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own
ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that
you react to your interpretations as if they were correct and
control your reactions behaviorally but not emotionally. This is quite
evidently a mental split in which you have attacked the integrity of
your mind and pitted one level within it against another.
3
There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense.
And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment, it requires no effort at
all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an
appeal for healing and help. That is what it is, regardless of the form
it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for
help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it
to him/her, for this and only this is what he/she is asking for.
Offer him/her anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack
his/her reality by interpreting it as you see fit.
4
Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent to
you, but this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If
you maintain that an appeal for help is something else, you will react
to something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as
it is but not to your perception of it. This is poor
reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from
recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except
your own perceived need to attack. It is only this that
makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality in which
you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it
unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to
perceive reality, which you withhold from yourself.
5
It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not
understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for
truth to him/her has become what he/she wants it to be. If you
are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it
is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it.
The analysis of the ego's "real" motivation is the modern equivalent of
the inquisition, for in both a brother's/sister’s errors are "uncovered"
and he/she is then attacked for his/her own good. What can this
be but projection? For his/her errors lay in the minds of
his/her interpreters, for which they punished him/her.
6
Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are refusing
help. Would you maintain that you do not need it? Yet this is
what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a
brother’s/sister’s appeal, for only by answering his/her appeal
can you be helped. Deny him/her your help, and you will not
perceive God's answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your
help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His.
Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your
brother/sister. Gratitude is due him/her for both his/her loving
thoughts and his/her appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing
love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all
your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just
this.
7
How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one
response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but
one Teacheress of reality, Who understands what it is.
She does not change Her Mind about reality because reality does
not change. Although your interpretations of reality are
meaningless in your divided state, Hers remain consistently true. She gives
them to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to "help" a
brother/sister in your way, for you cannot help yourselves. But
hear his/her call for the help of God, and you will recognize your own
need for the FatherMother.
8
Your interpretations of your brother’s/sister’s need is your
interpretation of yours. By giving help you are asking
for it, and if you perceive but this one need in yourself, you will
be healed. For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be, and
if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer
in the name of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness brings
the remembrance of your FatherMother closer to your awareness.
For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as
what it is, so God can answer you.
9
By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others
more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that
Her criteria are equally applicable to you. For to recognize
fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is
necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still
translate it into truth. If you were left with the fear,
having recognized it, you would have taken a step away from
reality, not towards it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the
need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial
step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's
interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.
10
Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard
everything else as an appeal for help, She has taught you that fear
is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing it really means.
If you do not protect it, She will reinterpret it. That is the
ultimate value to you in learning to perceive attack as a call
for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably
associated. If only attack produces fear and if you see attack
as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must
dawn upon you. For fear is a call for love in unconscious
recognition of what has been denied.
11
Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If when you perceive it in
others you learn to supply the loss, the basic cause of
fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist in
you, for you have in yourself the means for removing it and have
demonstrated this by giving it. Fear and love are the only
emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of
denial, and denial depends on the real belief in what is denied for its
own existence.
12
By interpreting fear correctly as a positive affirmation of the
underlying belief it masks, you are undermining its perceived
usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which do not work at all
are automatically discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to
clear-cut, unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless.
You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose.
The mask which you have drawn across the face of love has
disappeared.
13
If you would look upon love, which is the world's reality, how
could you do better than to recognize in every defense against
it the underlying appeal for it? And how could you better learn
of its reality than by answering the appeal for it by giving it?
The Holy Spirit's interpretation of fear does dispel it, for the
awareness of truth cannot be denied. Thus does the Holy
Spirit replace fear with love and translate error into truth. And thus
will you learn of Her how to replace your dream of separation
with the fact of unity. For the separation is only the denial of
union and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that
union is true.
14
Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love
oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not
love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal
them but which they are denying to themselves. If they knew the truth
about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the
miracle-worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth. The
sick must heal themselves, for the truth is in them. Yet, having
obscured it, the light in another mind must shine into
theirs because that light is theirs.
15
The light in them shines as brightly, regardless of the density
of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to
obscure the light, it has none, for it has power only because
the SonDaughter of God gave power to it. Heshe must himherself withdraw
that power, remembering that all power is of God. You can
remember this for all the SonDaughtership. Do not allow your
brother/sister not to remember, for his/her forgetfulness is yours.
But your remembering is his/hers, for God cannot be
remembered alone. This is what you have forgotten. To perceive
the healing of your brother/sister as the healing of yourself is thus
the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers/sisters with
HimHer, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
16
Perceive in sickness but another call for love and offer your
brother/sister what he/she believes he/she cannot offer himself/herself.
Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made
whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal
for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a
brother/sister what he/she really wants is to offer it unto
yourself, for your FatherMother wills you to know your brother/sister as
yourself. Answer his/her call for love and yours is answered.
Healing is the love of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
for hisher FatherMother and for himherself.
17
Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of little
children which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they
ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish, but if
they hide their nightmares, they will keep them. It is
easy to help an uncertain child, for he/she recognizes that he/she does
not know what his/her perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do
know. Little children, you are hiding your heads under the covers of the
heavy blankets you have laid upon yourselves. You are hiding your
nightmares in the darkness of your own certainty and refusing to open
your eyes and look at them.
18
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, and so they are not fit
gifts for you. Take off the covers and look at what you are
afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the
reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay
this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and help
is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the
end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every
image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is
eternal. The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite
your preference.
19
You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a
Child of God in his/her purpose. For your purpose was given you by God,
and you must accomplish it because it is HisHer Will. Awake and
remember your purpose, for it is your will to do so. What has
been accomplished for you must be yours. Do not let your hatred
stand in the way of love, for nothing can withstand the love of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness for Her FatherMother or
Her Father’sMother's love for Her.
20
A little while and you will see me, for I am not hidden because
you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself,
for I awoke for you. In my resurrection is your
release. Our mission is to escape crucifixion, not redemption.
Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as
our FatherMother walked with me. Did you not know that I walked with
HimHer in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with us
on the journey?
21
There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making perfect to you
what is already perfect in you. You do not fear the unknown,
but the known. You will not fail in your mission because I
failed not in mine. Give me but a little trust in the name of the complete
trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the goal of
perfection together. For perfection is and cannot be
denied. To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the
denial of truth, and what we can accomplish together must be
believed when you see it as accomplished.
22
You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded, but you who choose
to banish fear will succeed. The LordLady is with you, but you
know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth and abideth in you in the peace
out of which HeShe was createdmanifested. Would you not exchange this
awareness for the awareness of your fear? When we have overcome fear—not
by hiding it, not by minimizing it, not by denying its full import in
any way—this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside
the obstacle to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside
means to judge against. If you will look, the Holy
Spirit will judge and will judge truly. She cannot shine away what you
keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Her, and She cannot take it
from you.
23
We are therefore embarking on an organized, well-structured, and
carefully planned program aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy
Spirit everything you do not want. She knows what to do with it.
You do not know how to use what She knows. Whatever is revealed
to Her that is not of God is gone. Yet you must reveal it to yourself
in perfect willingness, for otherwise Her knowledge remains useless to
you. Surely She will not fail to help you, since help is Her only
purpose. Do you not have greater reason for fearing the world as you
perceive it than for looking at the cause of fear and letting it go
forever?
24
I once asked if you were willing to sell all you have and give to the
poor and follow me. This is what I meant: If you had no investment in
anything in this world, you could teach the poor where their treasure is.
The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, and they are poor
indeed! Because they are in need, it is given you to help them since you
are among them. Consider how perfectly your lesson would be learned if
you were unwilling to share their poverty. For poverty is lack,
and there is but one lack since there is but one need.
25
Suppose a brother/sister insists on having you do something you think
you do not want to do. The very fact of his/her insistence should tell
you that he/she believes salvation lies in it. If you insist on refusing
and experience a quick response of opposition, you are believing that your
salvation lies in not doing it. You, then, are making the same
mistake that he/she is and are making his/her error real to both
of you. Insistence means investment, and what you invest in is always
related to your notion of salvation. The question is always
two-fold—first, what is to be saved, and second, how can
it be saved?
26
Whenever you become angry with a brother/sister, for whatever
reason, you are believing that the ego is to be saved and to be
saved by attack. If he/she attacks, you are agreeing with this
belief, and if you attack, you are reinforcing it. Remember
that those who attack are poor. Their poverty asks for gifts, not
for further impoverishment. You who could help them are surely acting
destructively if you accept their poverty as yours. If you had
not invested as they had, it would never occur to you to
overlook their need.
27
Recognize what does not matter, and if your brothers/sisters ask
you for something "outrageous," do it because it does not
matter. Refuse and your opposition establishes that it does
matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have made the
request outrageous, for nothing can be asked of you, and every
request of a brother/sister is for you. Why would you insist in
denying him/her? For to do so is to deny yourself and impoverish
both. He/she is asking for salvation, as you are. Poverty is of
the ego and never of God. No "outrageous" request can be made of
one who recognizes what is valuable and wants to accept nothing else.
28
Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the
only thing that can be saved and the only way to save it.
Any response other than love arises from a confusion about the
"what" and the "how" of salvation, and this is the only answer.
Never lose sight of this, and never allow yourself to believe even for
an instant that there is another answer. For you will surely
place yourself among the poor, who do not understand that they dwell in
abundance and that salvation is come.
29
To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and make yourself
poor. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived.
What he/she experiences then is depression or anger, but what
he/she did is to exchange his/her self-love for self-hate,
making him/her afraid of himself/herself. He/she does not
realize this. Even if he/she is fully aware of anxiety, he/she does not
perceive its source as his/her own ego identification, and
he/she always tries to handle it by making some sort of insane
"arrangement" with the world. He/she always perceives this world as outside
himself/herself, for this is crucial to his/her adjustment. He/she does
not realize that he/she makes this world, for there is
no world outside of him/her.
30
If only the loving thoughts of God’s SonDaughter are the world's
reality, the real world must be in hisher mind. Hisher insane
thoughts, too, must be in hisher mind, but an internal conflict of this
magnitude heshe cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and
the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed thoughts within
itself is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, not
the reality. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your
attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that
identification is salvation. Yet consider what has happened, for
thoughts do have consequences to the thinker.
31
You are at odds with the world as you perceive it because you
think it is antagonistic to you. This is a necessary
consequence of what you have done. You have projected outward what is
antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would have to
perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that your hatred is in
your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it and
why you must get rid of it before you can perceive the world as
it really is.
32
We once said that God so loved the world that HeShe gave it to HisHer
only-begotten SonDaughter. God does love the real world, and
those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of
death. For death is not of the real world, in which everything
is eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made
out of your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if
you could really separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you would
die, and the world you perceive is a world of separation.
33
You were willing to accept even death to deny your FatherMother. Yet
HeShe would not have it so, and so it is not so. You still could
not will against HimHer, and that is why you have no control over the
world you made. It is not a world of will because it is governed by the
desire to be unlike HimHer, and this desire is not will. The
world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and
senseless "laws," and without meaning of any kind. For it was
made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind
because you were afraid of it.
34
Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker along with
his/her real salvation. Do not believe it is outside of
yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain
control over it. For you do have control over your mind, since
the mind is the mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that all
attack which you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else,
you will at last have placed its source, and where it began it must end.
For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness abideth is there.
35
You have defiled the altar but not the world. Yet the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has placed the Atonement on the
altar for you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this
altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision
changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where
God and HisHer SonDaughter dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you
will look out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the
place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as you
have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world to
you from the altar of God.
36
The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its
central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary,
everyone who believes that the ego is salvation is intensely engaged in
the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very
actively, makes one proviso—do not find it. Its dictates, then,
can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do not find." This is the
one promise the ego holds out to you and the one promise it will keep.
For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its reality
testing, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.
37
The search which the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated.
And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its
guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat.
For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love, it
is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is inevitable
because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source, the ego
is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your
mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. Yet it is also your
mind that has the power to deny the ego's existence, and you
will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey is on which
the ego sets you.
38
It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly
defeat him/her. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally
inadequate in love's presence, for it could not respond at all. You
would have to abandon the ego's guidance, for it would be quite
apparent that it had not taught you the response pattern you need.
The ego will therefore distort love and teach you that love
calls forth the responses which the ego can teach. Follow its
teaching, then, and you will search for love but will not recognize
it.
39
Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but
lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to
find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The
Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy.
For Her promise is always, "Seek and you will find," and under
Her guidance you cannot be defeated. Her is the journey to accomplishment,
and the goal She sets before you She will give you. For She will
never deceive God’s SonDaughter, whom HeShe loves with the love of the
FatherMother.
40
You will undertake a journey because you are not at home
in this world. And you will search for your home whether you
know where it is or not. If you believe it is outside yourself, the
search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You
do not know how to look within yourself, for you do not believe
your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit knows it for you, and
She will guide you to your home because that is Her mission. As
She fulfills Her mission, She will teach you yours, for your
mission is the same as Hers. By guiding your brothers/sisters
home, you are but following Her.
41
Behold the Guide your FatherMother gave you that you might learn you
have eternal life. For death is not your Father’sMother’s Will nor
yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the FatherMother. You
pay no price for life, for that was given you, but you do pay a
price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you
will sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you
have purchased it because you have sold everything else.
Yet you cannot sell the God Realm . Your inheritance can neither
be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts
of the SonDaughtership, for God is whole, and all HisHer extensions are
like HimHer.
42
The Atonement was not the price of our wholeness, but it was the
price of your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to
"sell" had to be kept for you since you could not "buy" it back. Yet you
must invest in it, not with money but with your Spirit. For
Spirit is will, and will is the "price" of the God Realm. Your
inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been
redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you
must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see
life though it is all around you.
43
Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not
attack because they see no need to do so. Before the idea of
attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as
weak. Because you had attacked yourself and believed that the attack was
effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving
yourself and all your brothers/sisters as equal and regarding yourself
as weaker, you attempt to "equalize" the situation you
have made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was
successful in weakening you.
44
That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so
important in the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your
invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect.
Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will
demonstrate that nothing happened. Therefore, by attacking you
have not done anything. Once you realize this, there is no
longer any sense in attack, for it manifestly does not
work and cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your
invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on
yourself have failed to weaken you, you are still
strong. You therefore have no need to "equalize" the situation to
establish your strength.
45
You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by
recognizing that your attack on yourself had no effects. For
others do react to attack if they perceive it, and if you are
trying to attack them, you will be unable to avoid interpreting
this as reinforcement. The only place where you can cancel out
all reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the
first point of your attack, and if this has never been, it has
no consequences.
46
The Holy Spirit's love is your strength, for yours is divided and
therefore not real. You could not trust your own love when you have attacked
it. You cannot learn of perfect love with a split mind because a split
mind has made itself a poor learner. You tried to make the
separation eternal because you wanted to retain the characteristics of
creationmanifestation with your own content. Yet
creationmanifestation is not of you, and poor learners need
special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense.
47
There are areas in your learning skills which are so impaired that you
can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction provided by a
Teacher Who can transcend your limited resources. She becomes
your resource because, of yourself, you cannot learn.
The learning situation in which you placed yourself is
impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher
and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices for
teachers/teacheresses, either for themselves or for anyone else. You
would hardly turn to them to establish the curriculum by which
they can escape from their limitations. If they understood what
is beyond them, they would not be handicapped.
48
You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap.
Do not attempt to teach yourselves what you do not understand, and do
not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your
learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot
lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not
learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial
learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn
what learning aids are for? They do not know. For if they could
interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.
49
We have said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do not find."
Translated into curricular terms, this is the same as saying, "Try
to learn but do not succeed." The result of this curriculum goal
is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and
every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted. For
they are all for learning facilitation, which this strange curriculum
goal is against. If you are trying to learn how not to
learn and are using the aim of teaching to defeat itself, what
can you expect but confusion? The curriculum does not make sense.
50
This kind of "learning" has so weakened your mind that you cannot
love, for the curriculum you have chosen is against love and
amounts to a course in how to attack yourself. A necessary
minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal, is learning how not
to overcome the split which made this goal believable. And you can not
overcome it, for all your learning is on its behalf. Yet
your will speaks against your learning, as your learning speaks against
your will, and so you fight against learning and succeed, for
that is your will. But you do not realize even yet that there is
something you do will to learn, and that you can learn it
because it is your will to do so.
51
You who have tried to learn what you do not will should take
heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing
indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible
that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now
as your own teachers. This resignation will not lead to
depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you
have taught yourselves and of the learning outcomes which have resulted.
Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor
understand, you will become excellent learners and teachers. But it is
not so yet and will not be so until the whole learning situation
as you have set it up is reversed.
52
Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless
because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to HimHer
and learn it if you follow the Teacher Who knows it and Her
curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous
because the goal is not divided, and the means and the end are
in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention.
Everything else will be given you. For it is your will
to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of God’s SonDaughter.
Hisher learning is as unlimited as heshe is.
53
The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your
own Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your
Spirit and there is no gain in the world, for of itself
it profits nothing. To invest in something without profit is surely to
impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no
profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For
this investment costs you the world's reality by denying yours
and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your Spirit,
but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot
perceive your Spirit, but you will not know it while you
perceive anything else as more valuable.
54
The Holy Spirit is your strength because She perceives nothing but
your Spirit as you. She is perfectly aware that you do not know
yourselves and perfectly aware of how to teach you what you are. Because
She loves you, She will gladly teach you what She loves, for She wills
to share it. Remembering you always, She cannot let you forget your
worth. For the FatherMother never ceases to remind Her of HisHer
SonDaughter, and She never ceases to remind HisHer SonDaughter of the
FatherMother. God is in your memory because of Her. You chose to
forget your FatherMother, but you did not will to do so, and
therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so
is it yours.
55
You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is
whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only
reality it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours
is in you. As self-value comes from self-extension, so
does the perception of self-value come from the projection of
loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto yourself, for
the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it belongs
to you.
56
Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is
the Holy Spirit's mission, for She knows that they have not lost their
vision but merely sleep. She would awaken them from the sleep of
forgetting to the remembering of God. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness's eyes are open, and She will look upon whatever you see
with love if you accept Her vision as yours.
57
The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness for every SonDaughter of God who sleeps. In Her sight the
SonDaughter of God is perfect, and She longs to share Her vision with
you. She will show you the real world because God gave you the God
Realm. Through Her your FatherMother calls HisHer SonDaughter to
remember. The awakening of HisHer SonDaughter begins with hisher
investment in the real world, and by this heshe will learn to
reinvest in himherself. For reality is one with the FatherMother
and the SonDaughter, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world
in their name.
58
When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will
remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping and refuse
to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world
will spring to your sight, for the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness has never slept. He/She is waiting to be seen, for He/She
has never lost sight of you. He/She looks quietly on the real
world, which He/She would share with you because He/She knows of the
Father’sMother’s love for Him/Her. And knowing this, He/She would give
you what is yours. In perfect peace He/She waits for you at His/Her
Father’sMother’s altar, holding out the Father’sMother’s love to you in
the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will
lead everyone home to his/her FatherMother, where the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness waits as his/her Self.
59
Every Child of God is one in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness, for his/her Being is in the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness as the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's is in God. The Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's love for you is His/Her love for His/Her FatherMother,
which He/She knows because He/She knows His/Her Father’sMother’s love
for Him/Her. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness at the altar to Her FatherMother,
perception fuses into knowledge because perception has become so holy
that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love
transfers to love without any interference, for the situations are
identical. [Only the ability to make this transfer is the product of
learning.] As you perceive more and more common elements in all
situations, the transfer of your training under the Holy Spirit's
guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply
it to everyone and everything, for its applicability is
universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge
have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of
God.
60
What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the
separation is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of
God, the holy perception of God’s SonDaughter becomes so enlightened
that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God’s SonDaughter shines
in the Mind of the FatherMother and becomes one with it. Very gently
does God shine upon HimHerself, loving the extension of HimHerself which
is HisHer SonDaughter. The world has no purpose as it blends into the
purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into the God
Realm, where everything eternal in it has always been. There the
Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other.
The God Realm is your home, and being in God, it must also be in
you.
61
Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right
guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be
recognized only by its results. Its generalization is
demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will
recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in
miracles when you have applied them to all situations. There is
no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to all
situations, you will gain the real world. For in this holy perception,
you will be made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from your
acceptance of it for yourself to everyone the Holy Spirit sends
you for your blessing. In every Child of God HisHer blessing lies, and
in your blessing of the Children of God is HisHer blessing to you.
62
Everyone in the world must play his/her part in the redemption of the
world to recognize that the world has been redeemed. You cannot
see the invisible. Yet if you see its effects, you know it must
be there. By perceiving what it does, you recognize its being.
And by what it does, you learn what it is. You cannot see
your abilities, but you gain confidence in their existence as they
enable you to act. And the results of your actions you can
see.
63
The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of Her
Presence, and through them you will learn that She is there. What HeShe
enables you to do is clearly not of this world, for miracles
violate every law of reality as this world judges it. Every law of time
and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control is
transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly
beyond all of them. Perceiving Her results, you will understand
where She must be and finally know what She is.
64
You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see Her manifestations. And
unless you do, you will not realize She is there. Miracles are Her
witnesses and speak for Her Presence. What you cannot see becomes real
to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be aware
of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you as
its presence becomes manifest through you. Do the Holy Spirit's
work, for you share in HisHer function. As your function in the
God Realm is creationmanifestation, so your function on earth is
healing. God shares HisHer function with you in the God Realm, and the
Holy Spirit shares Her with you on earth.
65
As long as you believe you have two functions, so long will you need
correction. For this belief is the destruction of peace, a goal
in direct opposition to the Holy Spirit's purpose. You see what you expect,
and you expect what you invite. Your perception is the result of
your invitation, coming to you as you sent for it. Whose manifestations
would you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you will
believe in what you manifest,
and as you look out, so will you see in. Two ways of looking at the
world are in your mind, and your perception will reflect the guidance
you chose.
66
I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will
be because you have invited Her. For She will send you Her
witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember always that you see
what you seek, for what you seek you will find. The ego finds
what it seeks and only that. It does not find love, for
that is not what it is seeking. Yet seeking and finding are the
same, and if you seek for two goals you will find them, but you will recognize
neither. For you will think they are the same because you want
them both. The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split
and wants to keep the split, it will believe it has one goal by
making it one.
67
We said before that what you project is up to you, but it is not
up to you whether to project, for projection is a law of mind.
Perception is projection, and you look in before you
look out. As you look in you choose the guide for seeing, and then
you look out and behold his/her witnesses. This is why you find
what you seek. What you want in yourself, you will make manifest
by projection, and you will accept it from the world because you
put it there by wanting it.
68
When you think you are projecting what you do not want, it is
still because you do want it. This leads directly to
dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each
perceived in a different place, separated from each other because
you made them different. The mind then sees a divided world outside
itself but not within. This gives it an illusion of integrity
and enables it to believe that it is pursuing one goal. As long as you
perceive the world as split, you are not healed. For to be
healed is to pursue one goal because you have accepted only one
and want but one.
69
When you want only love you will see nothing else. The
contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the
reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your
minds and accepted opposition there, having sought it there. But
do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they
attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the
message you gave them. Love is recognized by its messengers. If
you make love manifest, its messengers will come to you because you invited
them.
70
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of
this world. You can decide to see it right. What you
made of it is not its reality, for its reality is only what you
gave it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or
anything, nor can you really receive anything else from them. If
you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked
within and thought you saw the power to give something else within
yourself. It was only this decision that determined what you
found, for it was the decision of what you sought.
71
You are afraid of me because you looked within and are afraid of what
you saw. Yet you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your
mind is the loveliest of God's creationsmanifestations. Coming only from
God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace if you really
looked upon it. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something
that is not there. Yet in that same place, you could have looked
upon me and all your brothers/sisters in the perfect safety of the Mind
which createdmanifested us. For we are there in the peace of the
FatherMother, Who wills to project HisHer peace through you.
72
When you have accepted your mission to project peace, you will find
it, for by making it manifest, you will see it. Its holy
witnesses will surround you because you called upon them and
they will come to you. I have heard your call and I have answered it,
but you will not look upon me nor hear the answer which you
sought. That is because you do not yet want only that. Yet as I
become more real to you, you will learn that you do want only
that. And you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the
world as God createdmanifested it together. Through the eyes of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, only the real
world exists and can be seen. As you decide, so will you see.
And all that you see but witnesses to your decision.
73
When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to
manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without and
within, for you will see it without because you saw it first
within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld
within. If it is your judgment, it will be wrong, for judgment
is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will
be right, for judgment is Her function. You share Her function
only by judging as She does, reserving no judgment at all unto
yourselves. For you will judge against yourselves, but She will
judge for you.
74
Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to
what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned
yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it
fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God
knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the
ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end.
Wanting to kill you as the final expression of its feeling for you, it
lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live,
but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is
the one end toward which it works, and the only end with which it will
be satisfied.
75
The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible, but it
is a traitor to you who believe you have been treacherous
to your FatherMother. That is why the undoing of guilt is an
essential part of the Holy Spirit's teaching. For as long as you feel
guilty, you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that
you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve
death. You will think that death comes from God and not from the
ego because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe
that you want death. And from what you want, God does not
save you.
76
When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that
I did not die. You will realize that this is true when you look
within and see me. Would I have overcome death for myself alone?
And would eternal life have been given me of the FatherMother unless
HeShe had also given it to you? When you learn to make me
manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked
upon the deathless in yourself, and you will see only the
eternal as you look out upon a world that cannot die.
77
Do you really believe that you can kill the SonDaughter of God?
The FatherMother has hidden HisHer SonDaughter safely within HimHerself
and kept himher far away from your destructive thoughts, but you
know neither the FatherMother nor the SonDaughter because of them. You
attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet
you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to
attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how
can you find it except through itself? Offer it and it will come
to you because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack and it will
remain hidden, for it can live only in peace.
78
God’s SonDaughter is as safe as hisher FatherMother, for the SonDaughter
knows hisher Father’sMother’s protection and cannot fear. Hisher
Father’sMother’s love holds himher in perfect peace, and needing
nothing, heshe asks for nothing. Yet heshe is far from you whose
Self heshe is, for you chose to attack himher, and heshe disappeared
from your sight into hisher FatherMother. Heshe did not change, but you
did. For a split mind and all its works were not createdmanifested by
the FatherMother and could not live in the knowledge of HimHer.
79
When you made what is not true visible, what is true
became invisible. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the
Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because
you are looking at something else. Yet it is no more up to you
to decide what is visible and what is invisible than it is up to you to
decide what reality is. What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit
sees. The definition of reality is God's, not yours. HeShe
createdmanifested it, and HeShe knows what it is. You who knew have
forgotten, and unless HeShe had given you a way to remember, you would
have condemned yourselves to oblivion.
80
Because of your Father’sMother’s love you can never forget
HimHer, for no one can forget what God HimHerself placed in his/her
memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A Voice
will answer every question you ask, and a Vision will correct the
perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is
the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only
answer. God would reunite you with yourself and did not abandon you in
your seeming distress. You are waiting only for HimHer and do not know
it. Yet HisHer memory shines in your minds and cannot be
obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always.
81
You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet
the memory of God cannot shine in a mind which has made it
invisible and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can
dawn only in a mind that wills to remember and that has relinquished the
insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourselves
should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you
have made of it and rejoice that it is not so. SonDaughter of God, be
not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has
no value. God could not offer HisHer SonDaughter what has no value, nor
could HisHer SonDaughter receive it. You were redeemed the instant you
thought you had deserted HimHer.
82
Everything you made has never been and is invisible because the Holy
Spirit does not see it. Yet what She does see is yours to
behold, and through Her vision your perception is healed. You have made
the invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you
have sought nothing and found nothing. By making nothing real
to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is invisible to you because
of what you have made visible to yourselves. Yet it does not
matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your
awareness and truth. God’s SonDaughter can be seen because
hisher vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon himher and sees
nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfect in Her
sight and encompasses all of it. She has remembered you because
She forgot not the FatherMother.
83
You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal,
what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of
despair, for it can never be. And you who share God's Being with HimHer
could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no
power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains
irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto
itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.
84
The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you
made and which you see. But take it from the hand of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and look upon it. Its reality will
make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total
perception. And as you look upon it, you will remember that it was
always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have
seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for
only perception is capable of error, and perception has never
been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the
only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never
lost. Your FatherMother could not cease to love HisHer SonDaughter.
85
If you did not feel guilty, you could not attack, for
condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by
another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment.
But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as
separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing
another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the
delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself and escape
the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish
denial but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured
the FatherMother to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.
86
The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s SonDaughter was the
beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its
end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by
guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is
so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which
seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it
through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and
they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped
in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They
seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what
they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies
wither and gasp and are laid in the ground and seem to be no more. Not
one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
87
If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no
father/mother could subject his/her children to this as the price of
salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If
it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's
interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand
this, for only the guilty could conceive of it. Adam's "sin"
could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FatherMother
Who drove him out of paradise. For in that belief, the knowledge of the
FatherMother was lost, since only those who do not understand
HimHer could believe it.
88
This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s SonDaughter.
And until you realize that God’s SonDaughter cannot be
crucified, this is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this
until you accept the eternal fact that God’s SonDaughter is not
guilty. Heshe deserves only love because heshe has given
only love. Heshe cannot be condemned because heshe has never
condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson heshe need learn, for it
teaches himher that, never having sinned, heshe has no need of
salvation.
89
Long ago we said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good
teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by
teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wills only
this, for sharing the Father’sMother's love for HisHer SonDaughter, She
wills to remove all guilt from hisher mind that heshe may
remember hisher FatherMother in peace. For peace and guilt are
antithetical, and the FatherMother can be remembered only in
peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny
the other. Guilt hides the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God’s
SonDaughter.
90
In this strange world which you have made, the SonDaughter of God has
sinned. How could you see him, then? By making himher invisible,
the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you
accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the proof that the ego never
was and can never be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and
God’s SonDaughter is without guilt. As you look upon yourselves
and judge what you do honestly, as you have been asked to do, you may be
tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless.
91
Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity.
You have "sinned" in the past, but there is no past.
Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but
when you reach its end, it will roll up like a long carpet which has
spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As long as you
believe the SonDaughter of God is guilty, you will walk along this
carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long
and cruel and senseless, for so it is.
92
The journey which the SonDaughter of God has set himherself is foolish
indeed, but the journey on which hisher FatherMother sets himher is one
of release and joy. The FatherMother is not cruel, and HisHer
SonDaughter cannot hurt himherself. The retaliation heshe fears
and which heshe sees will never touch himher, for although heshe
believes in it, the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy
Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be
because She is with you. She has always undone
everything unworthy of the SonDaughter of God, for such was Her mission,
given Her by God. And what God gives has always been.
93
You will see me as you learn the SonDaughter of God is guiltless. Heshe
has always sought hisher guiltlessness, and heshe has found it.
For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he/she has made, and
the way to find release is not denied him/her. Being in him/her,
he/she has found it. When he/she finds it is only a
matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the SonDaughter of God
is guiltless now, and the brightness of hisher purity shines
untouched forever in God's Mind. God’s SonDaughter will always
be as heshe was createdmanifested. Deny your world and judge
himher not, for hisher eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of hisher
FatherMother, and protects himher forever.
94
When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize
that there is no guilt in God’s SonDaughter. And only as
you look upon himher as guiltless can you understand hisher oneness. For
the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another,
projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself,
and by so doing, you cannot know that you are God’s SonDaughter.
You have denied the condition of hisher Being, which is hisher perfect
blamelessness. Out of love heshe was createdmanifested, and in love
heshe abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed himher, for heshe
has always extended the love of hisher FatherMother.
95
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will
realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening. The
SonDaughter of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith with hisher
FatherMother for you. There is no road to travel on and no time
to travel through. For God waits not for HisHer SonDaughter in time,
being forever unwilling to be without himher. And so it has always been.
Let the holiness of God’s SonDaughter shine away the cloud of guilt that
darkens your mind, and by accepting hisher purity as yours, learn of
himher that it is yours.
96
You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on
to the past only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you
will be punished for what you have done and thus depends on
one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No one who
believes this can understand what always means. And therefore
guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are
immortal because you are eternal and always must be now.
Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your minds to ensure
the ego's continuity. For if what has been will be punished, the
ego's continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is
God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time
passes away, while immortality is constant.
97
Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality is, for by
accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been,
and so the future is needless. The future, in time, is always associated
with expiation, and only guilt could induce a sense of need
for expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the SonDaughter of God as
yours is therefore God's way of reminding you of HisHer
SonDaughter and what heshe is in truth. For God has never condemned
HisHer SonDaughter, and being guiltless, heshe is eternal.
98
You cannot dispel guilt by making it real and then atoning for
it. This is the ego's plan, which it offers instead of
dispelling it. The ego believes in atonement through attack,
being fully committed to the insane notion that attack is
salvation. And you who cherish guilt must also believe it, for
how else but by identifying with the ego could you hold dear
what you do not want?
99
The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty,
and this must increase the guilt, for guilt is the result
of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there is no escape from
guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real, there is
no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the
calm recognition that it has never been. As She looks upon the guiltless
SonDaughter of God, She knows this is true. And being true for you,
you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt, attack is
impossible. You, then, are saved because God’s SonDaughter is
guiltless. And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable.
1
The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is always
to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get
rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants
to retain guilt, you find it intolerable, since guilt stands in
the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that you cannot
resist it. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if
you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, you cannot be you.
Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly
induce you to project guilt and thereby keep it in your mind.
2
Yet consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You
project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing
it. You do experience guilt feelings, but you have no idea why.
On the contrary, you associate them with a weird assortment of ego
ideals which the ego claims you have failed. Yet you have no idea that
you are failing the SonDaughter of God by seeing himher as guilty.
Believing you are no longer you, you do not realize that you are failing
yourself.
3
The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from
your awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization
that you have betrayed God’s SonDaughter by condemning himher to death.
You do not even suspect this murderous but insane idea lies hidden
there, for the ego's destructive urge is so intense that nothing short
of the crucifixion of God’s SonDaughter can ultimately satisfy it. It
does not know who the SonDaughter of God is because it is blind. Yet let
it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it
because it is afraid.
4
Much of the ego's strange behavior is directly attributable to its
definition of guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those
who do not attack are its "enemies" because, by not valuing its
interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent position to
let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest
cornerstone in the ego's foundation, and while the ego can withstand
your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its
life, for its existence does depend on keeping this secret. So
it is this secret that we must look upon calmly, for the ego cannot
protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is
dispelled.
5
In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have
crucified God’s SonDaughter. You have not admitted to this "terrible"
secret because you still wish to crucify himher if you could find
himher. Yet the wish has hidden himher from you because it is very
fearful, and you are afraid to find himher. You have handled
this wish to kill yourself by not knowing who you are
and identifying with something else. You have projected guilt
blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncovered its
source. For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with
it, you must believe its goal is yours.
6
We once said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego. When it was
confronted with the real guiltlessness of God’s SonDaughter, it
did attempt to kill himher, and the reason it gave was that
guiltlessness is blasphemous to God. To the ego the ego is god,
and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt which
fully justifies murder. You do not yet understand that all your fear of
this course stems ultimately from this interpretation, but if you will
consider your reactions to it, you will become increasingly convinced
that this is so.
7
This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and
peace. Yet you are afraid of it. You have been told again and
again that it will make you free, yet you react as if it is trying to
imprison you. Most of the time you dismiss it, but you do not
dismiss the ego's thought system. You have seen its
results and you still lack faith in it. You must, then,
believe that by not learning the course, you are protecting
yourself. And you do not realize that it is only your guiltlessness
which can protect you.
8
The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and
this is correct if it is understood. Yet even when I have interpreted it
for you, you have rejected it and have not accepted it
for yourself. You have recognized the futility of the ego and its
offerings, but though you do not want the ego, you do not look upon the
alternative with gladness. You are afraid of redemption, and you
believe it will kill you. Make no mistake about the depth of your fear.
For you believe that in the presence of truth you will turn on yourself
and destroy yourself.
9
Little children, this is not so. Your "guilty secret" is nothing, and if
you will but bring it to the light, the light will dispel it. And then
no dark cloud will remain between you and the remembrance of your
FatherMother, for you will remember HisHer guiltless SonDaughter, who
did not die, because heshe is immortal. And you will see that you were
redeemed with himher and have never been separated from
himher. In this understanding lies your remembering, for it is the
recognition of love without fear. There will be great joy in the
God Realm on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. For the
redeemed son/daughter of man/woman is the guiltless SonDaughter
of God, and to recognize himher is your redemption.
10
You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and
realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough
for the Holy Spirit to show it to you and dispel it, without the
need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more
complication which you have interposed between yourself and the
Atonement, which you do not yet realize. We have said that no one will
countenance fear if he/she recognizes it. Yet in your disordered
state, you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is
not your desire to attack which really frightens you. You are
not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because
you are more afraid of what it covers.
11
You could look even upon the ego's darkest cornerstone without
fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would
find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not
afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption. Under
the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this
that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly
restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have
sought to leave.
12
Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would
be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s SonDaughter
if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this
wish caused the separation. You have protected it because you do
not want the separation healed, and you realize that, by removing
the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your FatherMother would
impel you to answer HisHer call and leap into the God Realm . You
believe that attack is salvation to prevent you from this. For
still deeper than the ego's foundation, and much stronger than it will
ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and HisHer for you.
This is what you really want to hide.
13
In honesty, is it not harder for you to say "I love" than "I hate"? You
associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real
power seems to you as your real weakness. For you could not
control your joyous response to the call of love if you heard it, and
the whole world you think you control would vanish. The Holy
Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut
out God, and HeShe does not will to be excluded.
14
You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you
would be helpless in God's Presence, and you would save yourself
from HisHer love because you think it would crush you into nothingness.
You are afraid it would sweep you away from yourself and make you
little. For you believe that magnitude lies in defiance and that attack
is grandeur. You think you have made a world which God would destroy;
and by loving HimHer, which you do, you would throw this world
away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover
your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's
foundation, the closer you come to the love that is hidden there. And
it is this that frightens you.
15
You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love
because you did not. You would rather be slaves of the
crucifixion than SonsDaughters of God in redemption. For your individual
death is more valued than your living oneness, and what is given
you is not so dear as what you made. You are more afraid of God
than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But
hatred can, for it enters of its will and cares not for yours.
16
The reason you must look upon your delusions and not keep them hidden is
that they do not rest on their own foundation. In concealment
they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained.
This is the fundamental illusion on which they rest. For beneath
them and concealed as long as they are hidden is the loving mind
that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is
so apparent when it is uncovered that its need of healing cannot be
denied. Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here
is the real crucifixion of God’s SonDaughter.
17
And yet he/she is not crucified. Here is both his/her pain and
his/her healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and Her
remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from Her sight, but bring
it gladly to Her. Lay before Her eternal sanity all your hurt,
and let Her heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from
Her light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you
may fear to uncover. For She will heal every little thought which you
have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to
the magnitude of God.
18
Beneath all your grandiosity, which you hold so dear, is your real call
for help. For you call for love to your FatherMother as your
FatherMother calls you to HimHerself. In that place which you have
hidden, you will only to unite with the FatherMother in loving
remembrance of HimHer. You will find this place of truth as you see it
in your brothers/sisters, for though they may deceive themselves, like
you they long for the grandeur that is in them. And perceiving it you
will welcome it, and it will be yours. For grandeur is the right
of God’s SonDaughter, and no illusions can satisfy him/her or
save him/her from what he/she is. Only his/her love is real, and
he/she will be content only with his/her reality.
19
Save him/her from his/her illusions that you may accept the magnitude of
your FatherMother in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or
you will be hiding a dark place in your mind where the Holy Spirit is
not welcome. And you will exempt yourself from Her healing
power, for by not offering total love, you will not be healed
completely. Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter
where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome.
20
You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right
minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did
not give it, for the request was alien to HimHer, and you could not ask
this of a FatherMother Who truly loved HisHer SonDaughter. Therefore you
made of HimHer an unloving FatherMother, demanding of HimHer what only
such a FatherMother could give. And the peace of God’s SonDaughter was
shattered, for he/she no longer understood his/her FatherMother. He/she
feared what he/she had made, but still more did he/she fear his/her real
FatherMother, having attacked his/her own glorious equality with HimHer.
21
In peace he/she needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he/she demanded
everything and found nothing. For how could the gentleness of
love respond to his/her demands except by departing in peace and
returning to the FatherMother? If the SonDaughter did not wish to remain
in peace, he/she could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot
live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness where it can
believe it is where it is not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet you
demanded that it happen and therefore believed that it was so.
22
To "single out" is to "make alone" and thus make lonely. God did
not do this to you. Could HeShe set you apart, knowing that your
peace lies in HisHer Oneness? HeShe denied you only your request for
pain, for suffering is not of HisHer creationmanifestation. Having given
you creationmanifestation, HeShe could not take it from you.
HeShe could but answer your insane request with a sane answer which
would abide with you in your insanity. [And this HeShe did. No one who
hears HisHer answer but will give up insanity.] For HisHer answer is the
reference point beyond illusions from which you can look back on
them and see them as insane. But seek this place, and
you will find it, for love is in you and will lead you there.
23
And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent.
For this is a course on love because it is about you. You have
been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function
in the God Realm is creatingmanifesting. The ego teaches that your
function on earth is destruction and that you have no function at all in
the God Realm . It would thus destroy you here and bury you here,
leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you
were made. As long as it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its
reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage,
it offers you hell.
24
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as the God Realm
. For your definition of the God Realm is hell and oblivion, and
the real the God Realm is the greatest threat you think you
could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which you made
up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours.
If their reality is questioned, you believe that yours
is. For you believe that attack is your reality and that your
destruction is the final proof that you were right.
25
Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have
been wrong, even apart from the fact that you were wrong? While
it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there was life,
no one would claim that it proves there is life. Even the past
life which death might indicate could only have been futile if it must
come to this and needs this to prove that it was. You question
the God Realm, but you do not question this. You could heal and
be healed if you did question it. And even though you know not
the God Realm, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been
as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is
more honest than this.
26
The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion
that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the
past and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of
time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on
guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like
the past and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying
for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of
the future, making them continuous without an intervening
present. For the ego uses the present only as a brief transition
to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by
interpreting the present in past terms.
27
Now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of
past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past.
The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the
past is no more, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as
if it were present. Thus it dictates reactions to those you meet
now from a past reference point, obscuring their present
reality. In effect, if you follow the ego's dictates, you will react to
your brothers/sisters as though they were someone else, and this
will surely prevent you from perceiving them as they are. And
you will receive messages from them out of your own past
because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself
to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that
every brother/sister offers you now.
28
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape.
For they are not real and have no hold over you unless you bring them with
you. They carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack
in the present in retaliation for a past that is no more. And this
decision is one of future pain. Unless you learn that past pain
is delusional, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the
endless opportunities which you could find for release in the present.
The ego would preserve your nightmares and prevent you
from awakening and understanding that they are past.
29
Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely
perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you are meeting no
one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the
encounter holy, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches
that you always meet yourself and the encounter is holy because
you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and
because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be,
and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's
perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. The reason is
equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically
opposed.
30
The Holy Spirit interprets time's purpose as rendering the need for it
unnecessary. Thus does She regard the function of time as temporary,
serving only Her teaching function, which is temporary by definition.
Her emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time which can
extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of
eternity which this world offers. It is in the reality of now,
without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation
of eternity lies. For only now is here, and it presents
the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be
found.
31
The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of
extending itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit,
the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past
and future under its direction is the only purpose the ego
perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its
own continuity can occur. Its continuity, then, would keep
you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you from it. It
is Her interpretation of the means of salvation which you must learn to
accept if you would share Her goal of salvation for you.
32
You too will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If
you accept your function in the world of time as healing, you will
emphasize only the aspect of time in which healing can occur.
For healing cannot be accomplished in the past and must
be accomplished in the present to release the future. This
interpretation ties the future to the present and extends the
present rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as
destruction, you will lose sight of the present and hold on to the past
to ensure a destructive future. And time will be as you
interpret it, for of itself it is nothing.
33
We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is
changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the
eternal to the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it
increases as it is given. The other has the many forms, for the
content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing
in common—they are all insane. They are made of sights which are not
seen and sounds which are not heard. They make up a private
world which cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only
to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their
maker moves alone, for only he/she perceives them.
34
Each one peoples his/her world with figures from his/her individual
past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ.
Yet the figures that he/she sees were never real, for they are
made up only of his/her reactions to his/her brothers/sisters and do not
include their reactions to him/her. Therefore he/she does not see
that he/she made them and that they are not whole. For these figures
have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only.
35
It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane
relate to their insane world. For they see only those who remind
them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. Thus
do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they
who answer them, and no one hears their answer save him/her who called
upon them, and he/she alone believes they answered him/her. Projection
makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again
have men/women attacked each other because they saw in them a shadow
figure in their own private world. And thus it is that you must
attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. Its
only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others, you
are literally attacking what is not there.
36
The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize that
they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet
they will not let condemnation go. And so they separate into
their private worlds, where everything is disordered and where what is
within appears to be without. Yet what is within they do not
see, for the reality of their brothers/sisters they cannot
see.
37
You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each
of them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a
world apart, where when it comes it is not recognized. If you see your
own hatred as your brother/sister, you are not seeing him/her.
Everyone draws nigh unto what he/she loves and recoils from what he/she
fears. And you react with fear to love and draw away from it. Yet fear attracts
you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your
private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into
it, and all the love your brothers/sisters offer you, you do not see.
As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you
that you have withdrawn into insanity.
38
You see what is not there, and you hear what is soundless. Your
behavioral manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what
the emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated
from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness,
you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own
split mind everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for
you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is not in your sight, for you look
upon yourself alone.
39
Little children, would you offer this to your FatherMother? For
if you offer it to yourself, you are offering it to HimHer. And
HeShe will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it
is unworthy of HimHer. Yet HeShe would release you from it and
set you free. HisHer sane answer tells you that what you have offered
yourself is not true, but HisHer offering to you has never changed. You
who know not what you do can learn what insanity is and look
beyond it. It is given you to learn how to deny insanity and
come forth from your private world in peace.
40
You will see all that you denied in your brothers/sisters because
you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing nigh
unto them, you will draw them to yourself, perceiving them as witnesses
to your reality, which you share with God. I am with them as I
am with you, and we will draw them from their private worlds,
for as we are united, so would we unite with them. The FatherMother
welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should
offer HimHer. For every SonDaughter of God is given you to whom God gave
HimHerself. And it is God to Whom you must offer them to
recognize HisHer gift to you.
41
Vision depends on light, and you cannot see in darkness. Yet in the
darkness in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams,
although your eyes are closed. And it is here that what you see you made.
But let the darkness go, and all you made you will no longer see, for
sight of it depends upon denying vision. Yet from denying
vision, it does not follow that you cannot see. But this is what
denial does, for by it you accept insanity, believing
you can make a private world and rule your own perceptions. Yet
for this, light must be excluded. Dreams disappear when light
has come and you can see.
42
Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your
way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are
deceived. Beyond this darkness and yet still within you
is the vision of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, Who
looks on all in light. Your vision comes from fear, as Her from love.
And She sees for you as your witness to the real world. She is
the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world and
calling forth its witnesses and drawing them unto you. For She
loves what She sees within you, and She would extend it. And She
will not return unto the FatherMother until She has extended your
perception even unto HimHer. And there perception is no more, for She
has returned you to the FatherMother with Her.
43
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each
is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their
different visions. See through the vision that is given you, for through
the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy Consciousness's vision heshe
beholds himherself. And seeing what heshe is, heshe knows hisher
FatherMother. Beyond your darkest dreams, heshe sees God's guiltless
SonDaughter within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed
by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with himher,
for hisher vision is hisher gift of love to you, given himher of the
FatherMother for you.
44
The Holy Spirit is the light in which the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness stands revealed. And all who would behold Her can see Her,
for they have asked for light. Nor will they see Her alone,
for She is no more alone than they are. Because they saw the
SonDaughter, they have risen in himher to the FatherMother. And all this
will they understand because they looked within and saw beyond the
darkness the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in them and recognized
Her. In the sanity of Her vision, they looked upon themselves with love,
seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this
vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine
upon them.
45
To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the
awareness of your own. But for this no illusions can rise to
meet your sight, for all reality leaves no room for any
error. This means that you perceive a brother/sister only as you see
him/her now. His/her past has no reality in the present,
and you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him/her
are also not there, and if it is to them that you react now,
you see but an image of him/her which you made and cherish instead
of him/her. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really
sane to perceive what was now. If you remember the past as you
look upon your brother/sister, you will be unable to perceive the
reality that is now.
46
You consider it "natural" to use your past experience as the reference
point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural
because it is delusional. When you have learned to look upon everyone
with no reference at all to the past, either his/her or yours as
you perceived it, you will be able to learn from what you see now.
For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present unless you are
afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to
bring this darkness with you, and by holding it in your minds,
see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers/sisters and conceals
their reality from your sight.
47
This darkness is in you. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness revealed to you now has no past, for She is
changeless, and in Her changelessness lies your release. For if
She is as She was createdmanifested, there is no guilt in Her. No cloud
of guilt has risen to obscure Her, and She stands revealed in everyone
you meet because you see Her through Herself. To be born again is
to let the past go and look without condemnation upon the
present. For the cloud which obscures God’s SonDaughter to you is
the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not
see it now. If you see it now in your delusions, it has not
gone from you, although it is not there.
48
Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation
of it you use. Past, present, and future are not continuous unless you force
continuity on them. You can perceive them as continuous and make
them so for you. But do not be deceived and then believe that
this is how it is, for to believe that reality is what you would
have it be according to your use for it is delusional.
You would destroy time's continuity by breaking it into past, present,
and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the
future on the basis of your past experience and plan for it accordingly.
Yet by doing so, you are aligning past and future and not
allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to
free you to be born again.
49
The miracle enables you to see your brother/sister without
his/her past and so perceive him/her as born again. His/her errors are
all past, and by perceiving him/her without them, you are releasing
him/her. And since his/her past is yours, you share in
this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him/her
from you, for truth lies only in the present, and you will find
it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not
and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is,
and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if
you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom
that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are behind
you, and unless you bring them with you, you will see that you are
free of them.
50
Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things
that are forever true. All healing lies within it because its
continuity is real. It extends to all aspects of consciousness at
the same time and thus enables them to reach each other.
The present is before time was and will be when time is no more. In it
is everything that is eternal, and they are one. Their continuity is
timeless, and their communication is unbroken, for they are not
separated by the past. Only the past can separate, and it
is nowhere.
51
The present offers you your brothers/sisters in the light that would
unite you with them and free you from the past. Would you, then,
hold the past against them? For if you do, you are choosing to
remain in the darkness that is not there and refusing to accept the
light that is offered you. For the light of perfect vision is freely
given as it is freely received and can be accepted only without
limit. In this one still dimension of time, which does not change
and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and call Her witnesses to shine on
you because you called them forth. And they will not
deny the truth in you because you looked for it in them and found
it there.
52
Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time.
Reach out to all your brothers/sisters and touch them with the touch of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness. In timeless union with
them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared.
God's guiltless SonDaughter is only light. There is no darkness
in himher anywhere, for heshe is whole. Call all your brothers/sisters
to witness to his/her wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me.
Every voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness
and thanksgiving for the light to the CreatorManifestor of light. The
holy light that shines forth from God’s SonDaughter is the witness that
hisher light is of hisher FatherMother.
53
Shine on your brothers/sisters in remembrance of your CreatorManifestor,
for you will remember HimHer as you call forth the witnesses to HisHer
creationmanifestation. Those whom you heal bear witness to your
healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own. And as your hymns
of praise and gladness rise to your CreatorManifestor, HeShe will return
your thanks in HisHer clear answer to your call. For it can never be
that HisHer SonDaughter called upon HimHer and remained unanswered.
HisHer call to you is but your call to HimHer. And in HimHer you
are answered by HisHer peace.
54
Children of light, you know not that the light is in you. Yet you will
find it through its witnesses, for having given light to them,
they will return it. Everyone you see in light brings your
light closer to your own awareness. Love always leads to love.
The sick who ask for love are grateful for it, and in their joy, they
shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you, who gave them
joy. They are your guides to joy, for having received it of you, they
would keep it. You have established them as guides to peace, for you
have made it manifest in them. And seeing it, its beauty calls you
home.
55
There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet you can give
it, as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you
from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing
in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another.
This other world is bright with love, which you have given it.
And here will everything remind you of your FatherMother and HisHer Holy
SonDaughter. Light is unlimited and spreads across this world in quiet
joy. All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will
shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light
will join with theirs in power so compelling that it will draw the
others out of darkness as you look on them.
56
Awakening unto the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is
following the laws of love of your free will and out of quiet
recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you
willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who
accept love of you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave
them, and it is they who hold it out to you. In sleep
you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is
why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation because your
eyes are closed. You do not see your brothers/sisters, and in
the darkness you cannot look upon the light you gave to them.
57
And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you
have followed them through all your nightmares and have been faithful in
your giving, for you were not alone. Even in sleep has the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness protected you, ensuring the
real world for you when you wake. In your name She has given for
you and given you the gifts She gave. God’s SonDaughter is still
as loving as hisher FatherMother. Continuous with hisher
FatherMother, heshe has no past apart from HimHer. So heshe has never
ceased to be hisher Father’sMother’s witness and hisher own.
Although heshe slept, the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's vision did not leave himher. And so it is that heshe can
call unto himherself the witnesses that teach himher that heshe never
slept.
58
Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself,
60
The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is
costing you a different kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds,
for each of them involves a different kind of seeing and depends on what
you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have
denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to
you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not
the same because their real attraction to you is unequal.
61
You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you
since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The
roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has
withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the
mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and
ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not
the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that,
and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it
the road that leads away from it into another world.
62
Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here because
you love it. And what you call with love will come to you.
Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help or not
to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every part of this
strange world you made but do not want. The only effort you need make to
give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is
willingness to learn the one you made is false.
63
You have been wrong about the world because you have
misjudged yourself. From such a twisted reference point what could
you see? All vision starts with the perceiver who judges what is
true and what is false. And what he/she judges false he/she does not
see. You who would judge reality cannot see it, for
whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is
out of sight because what is denied is there but is not recognized.
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is still there,
although you know Her not. Her Being does not depend upon your
recognition. She lives within you in the quiet present and waits for you
to leave the past behind and enter into the world She holds out to you
in love.
64
No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the
other world about him/her. Yet while he/she still lays value on his/her
own, he/she will deny the vision of the other world, maintaining
that he/she loves what he/she loves not and following not the road that
love points out. Love leads so gladly! And as you follow HimHer, you
will rejoice that you have found HisHer company and learned of HimHer
the joyful journey home. You wait but for yourself. To give this
sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but your
will. And the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness will always
offer you the Will of God in recognition that you share it with HimHer.
65
It is God's Will that nothing touch HisHer SonDaughter except
HimHerself, and nothing else comes nigh unto himher. Heshe is as safe
from pain as God HimHerself, Who watches over himher in everything. The
world about himher shines with love because God placed himher in
HimHerself where pain is not and love surrounds himher without end or
flaw. Disturbance of hisher peace can never be. In perfect sanity heshe
looks on love, for it is all about himher and within himher. Heshe must
deny the world of pain the instant heshe perceives the arms of love
around himher. And from this point of safety, heshe looks quietly about
himher and recognizes that the world is one with himher.
66
The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the
past. Yet here it is, and you can understand it now. God
loves HisHer SonDaughter forever, and HisHer SonDaughter returns
his/her Father’sMother’s love forever. The real world is the way that
leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and
wholly yours. For all else you have lent yourself in time, and
it will fade. But this one thing is always yours, being the gift
of God unto HisHer SonDaughter. Your one reality was given you,
and by it God createdmanifested you as one with HimHer.
67
You will first dream of peace and then awaken to it. Your first
exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of
nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true
perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all
perception is. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love
lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and
because of this, they are the welcome that you offer knowledge.
Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but
your welcome of what always was. Therefore, the call of joy is in it,
and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.
Praise, then, the FatherMother for the perfect sanity of HisHer most
holy SonDaughter.
68
Your FatherMother knoweth that you have need of nothing. In the
God Realm this is so, for what could you need in eternity? In your
world you do need things because it is a world of scarcity in
which you find yourself because you are lacking. Yet can
you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy Spirit, the answer
would be no. Yet because of Her, the answer is a joyous yes! As
Mediator between the two worlds, She knows what you have need of and
what will not hurt you. Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left
to you. The ego wants to have things for salvation, for
possession is its law. Possession for its own sake is the ego's
fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds
unto itself. And at its altar it demands you lay all of
the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.
69
Everything that the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For
although the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you
nothing, for what you get, it will demand of you. And even from
the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the
dust. For where the ego sees salvation, it sees separation, and
so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore ask not of
yourselves what you need, for you do not know and your advice
unto yourself will hurt you. For what you think you need will
merely serve to tighten up your world against the light and
render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really
hold for you.
70
Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For She will
give you all things that do not block the way to light. And what else could
you need? In time She gives you all the things that you need have and
will renew them as long as you have need of them. She will take nothing
from you as long as you have any need of it. And yet She knows
that everything you need is temporary and will but last until you step
aside from all your needs and learn that all of them have
been fulfilled. Therefore She has no investment in the things that
She supplies except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf
of lingering in time. She knows that you are not at home there, and She
wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.
71
Leave, then, your needs to Her. She will supply them with no emphasis at
all upon them. What comes to you of Her comes safely, for She will
ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to
hurt you. Under Her guidance, you will travel light and journey lightly,
for Her sight is ever on the journey's end which is Her goal. God’s
SonDaughter is not a traveler through outer worlds. However holy
hisher perception may become, no world outside himherself holds hisher
inheritance. Within himherself heshe has no needs, for light
needs nothing but to shine in peace and from itself to let the rays
extend in quiet to infinity.
72
Whenever you are tempted to undertake a foolish journey that would lead
away from light, remember what you really want and say,
74
Then follow Her in joy, with faith that She will lead you safely through
all dangers to your peace of mind that this world sets before you. Kneel
not before the altars to sacrifice and seek not what you will surely
lose. Content yourselves with what you will as surely keep and
be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God,
where HeShe would have you be in quietness.
75
In me you have already overcome every temptation that would hold
you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of
God. Hold me dear, for what except your brothers/sisters can you
need? We will restore to you the peace of mind that we must find together.
The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us and to yourself. This
is the only real need to be fulfilled in time. Salvation from
the world lies only here. My peace I give you. Take it
of me in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to take away.
And we will spread it like a veil of light across the world's sad face,
in which we hide our brothers/sisters from the world, and it
from them.
76
We cannot sing redemption's hymn alone. Our task is not completed until
I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet it is not mine, for
as it is my gift to you, so was it the Father’sMother’s gift to me,
given us through HisHer Spirit. The sound of it will banish sorrow from
the mind of God's most holy SonDaughter, where it cannot abide. Healing
in time is needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign
where sorrow dwells. You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but
in dreams while safe at home. Give thanks to every part of you that you
have taught how to remember you. Thus does the SonDaughter of
God give thanks unto hisher FatherMother for hisher purity.
1
All therapy is release from the past. That is why the Holy Spirit is the
only therapist. She teaches that the past does not exist, a fact which
belongs to the sphere of knowledge and which therefore no one in the
world knows. It would indeed be impossible to be in the world
with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows
also that it dwells in eternity and utilizes no perception at all. It
therefore does not consider where it is because the concept "where" does
not mean anything to it. It knows that it is everywhere, just as
it has everything, and forever.
2
The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes quite
apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowledge.
Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. You
are an aspect of knowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows
you. All knowledge must be yours, for in you is all knowledge.
Perception at its loftiest is never complete. Even the perception of the
Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without meaning in the
God Realm. Perception can reach everywhere under Her guidance, for the
vision of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness beholds
everything in light. Yet no perception, however holy, will last forever.
3
Perfect perception, then, has the many elements in common with
knowledge, making transfer to it possible. Yet the last step must be
taken by God because the last step in your redemption, which seems to be
in the future, was accomplished by God in your creationmanifestation.
The separation has not interrupted it. Creationmanifestation cannot be
interrupted. The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality
with no effect at all. The miracle, without a function in the God Realm,
is needful here. Aspects of reality can still be seen, and they
will replace aspects of unreality.
Aspects of reality can be seen in everything and everywhere. Yet only
God can gather them together by crowning them as one with the final gift
of eternity.
4
Apart from the FatherMother and the SonDaughter, the Holy Spirit has no
function. She is not separate from either, being in the mind of both and
knowing that Mind is one. She is a Thought of God, and God has given Her
to you because She has no Thoughts HeShe does not share. Her message
speaks of timelessness in time, and that is why the Christ
Consciousness’s/the Mercy Consciousness's vision looks on everything
with love. Yet even the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy Consciousness's
vision is not Her reality. The golden aspects of reality which spring to
light under Her loving gaze are partial glimpses of the God Realm that
lies beyond them.
5
This is the miracle of creationmanifestation; that it is one
forever. Every miracle you offer to the SonDaughter of God is but
the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspect is
the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is the same,
perceived in the same light and therefore one.
Everyone seen without the past thus brings you nearer to the end
of time by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness and
enabling the world to see. For light must come into the darkened world
to make the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's vision
possible even here. Help Her to give Her gift of light to all who think
they wander in the darkness, and let Her gather them into Her quiet
sight that makes them one.
6
They are all the same; all beautiful and equal in their holiness. And
She will offer them unto Her FatherMother as they were offered unto Her.
There is one miracle, as there is one reality. And every
miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see
blends quietly into the One reality of God. The only miracle that ever
was is God's most holy SonDaughter, createdmanifested in the One reality
that is hisher FatherMother. The Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's vision is Her gift to you. Her Being is Her
Father’sMother’s gift to Her.
7
Be you content with healing, for the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's gift you can bestow, and your Father’sMother’s
gift you cannot lose. Offer the Christ Consciousness’s/the Mercy
Consciousness's gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles offered
the SonDaughter of God through the Holy Spirit attune you to reality.
The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption and who are seeking
you and where to find them. Knowledge is far beyond your individual
concern. You, who are part of it and all of it, need only realize that
it is of the FatherMother, not of you. Your role in the
redemption leads you to it by reestablishing its oneness in your minds.
8
When you have seen your brothers/sisters as yourself, you will be released
to knowledge, having learned to free yourself of Her Who knows of
freedom. Unite with us under the holy banner of Her teaching, and as we
grow in strength, the power of God’s SonDaughter will move in us, and we
will leave no one untouched and no one left alone. And suddenly time
will be over, and we will all unite in the eternity of God the
FatherMother. The holy light you saw outside yourself in every miracle
you offered to your brothers/sisters will be returned to you.
And knowing that the light is in you, your
creationsmanifestations will be there with you, as you are in your
FatherMother.
9
As miracles in this world join you to your brothers/sisters, so do your
creationsmanifestations establish your fatherhoodmotherhood in the God
Realm . You are the witnesses to the FatherhoodMotherhood of
God, and HeShe has given you the power to createmanifest the
witnesses to your fatherhood in the God Realm. The miracle which God
createdmanifested is perfect, as are the miracles which you
createdmanifested in HisHer name. They need no healing, nor do you when
you know them.
10
Yet in this world, your perfection is unwitnessed. God knows it, but you
do not, and so you do not share HisHer witness to it. Nor do you witness
unto HimHer, for reality is witnessed to as one. God waits your witness
to HisHer SonDaughter and to HimHerself. The miracles you do on earth
are lifted up to the God Realm and to HimHer. They witness to what you
do not know, and as they reach the gates of the God Realm, God will open
them. For never would HeShe leave HisHer own beloved SonDaughter outside
them and beyond HimHerself.
11
Guilt remains the only thing that hides the FatherMother, for guilt is
the attack upon HisHer SonDaughter. The guilty always condemn,
and having done so, they will condemn, linking the future to the
past as is the ego's law. Fidelity unto this law lets no light in, for
it demands fidelity to darkness and forbids awakening.
The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore
give no obedience to its laws, for they are laws of punishment. And
those who follow them believe that they are guilty, and so they must
condemn. Between the future and the past, the laws of God must intervene
if you would free yourselves. Atonement stands between them like a lamp
that shines so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you bound
yourselves will disappear.
12
Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing. Make no one fearful,
for his/her guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego's harsh commandments,
you bring its condemnation of yourself, and you will not escape the
punishment it offers those who obey it. The ego rewards fidelity to it
with pain, for faith in it is pain. And faith can be rewarded
only in terms of the belief in which the faith was placed. Faith makes
the power of belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. For
faith is always given what is treasured, and what is treasured is
returned to you.
13
The world can give you only what you gave it, for being nothing but your
own projection, it has no meaning apart from what you found in
it and placed your faith in. Be faithful unto darkness and you will not
see, because your faith will be rewarded as you gave it. You
will accept your treasure, and if you place your faith in the past, the
future will be like it. Whatever you hold as dear, you think is
yours. The power of your valuing will make it so.
14
Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish, for it is
the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the false and the true,
which you have accepted into your minds without distinction.
Therefore, you cannot value one without the other, and guilt has
become as true for you as innocence. You do not believe the
SonDaughter of God is guiltless because you see the past and see himher
not. When you condemn a brother/sister, you are saying, "I who was
guilty choose to remain so." You have denied his/her freedom,
and by so doing you have denied the witness unto yours. You
could as easily have freed him/her from the past and lifted from
his/her mind the cloud of guilt that binds him/her to it. And in his/her
freedom would have been your own.
15 Lay not his/her guilt upon him/her, for his/her guilt
lies in his/her secret that he/she thinks that he/she has done this unto
you. Would you, then, teach him/her that he/she is right in
his/her delusion? The idea that the guiltless SonDaughter of God can
attack himself/herself and make himself/herself guilty is insane. In any
form, in anyone, believe this not. For sin and condemnation are the
same, and the belief in one is faith in the other, calling for
punishment instead of love. Nothing can justify insanity, and to call
for punishment upon yourself must be insane.
16
See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of
guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you
offer the SonDaughter of God lies the conviction of your own
guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept
HisHer offer of Atonement for all your brothers/sisters. For so you
learn that it is true for you. Remember always that it is
impossible to condemn the SonDaughter of God in part. Those whom
you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you
will see it there, for it is there until it is undone.
Guilt is always in your own mind, which has condemned itself.
Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. With
everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in the God Realm,
where the witnesses to your fatherhood/motherhood rejoice.
17
Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you,
you will not see the light. And by projecting it, the world
seems dark and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it and
cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of
what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you
fear is gone. If you would look within, you would see only the
Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your
FatherMother.
18
Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with
guilt within you and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you
look upon your brothers/sisters and see the guilt in them. Yet
this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their
brothers/sisters in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they
shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is
not what you believe is there and what you put your faith in.
19
Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your FatherMother has in
you. HeShe does not value you as you do. HeShe knows HimHerself and
knows the truth in you. HeShe knows there is no difference,
for HeShe knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God
knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny HisHer
knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light
HeShe placed within you and learn that what you feared was there has
been replaced with love.
20
You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of
pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide
the real source of your guilt and keep from your
awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement
always is maintained by the illusion that the source, from which
attention is diverted, must be true and must be fearful, or you
would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less
fearful. You are therefore willing with little opposition to look upon
all sorts of "sources" underneath awareness, provided that they are not
the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.
21
Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why
they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt or even hold one
spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships which guilt has
touched are used but to avoid the personal and the guilt. What
strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you
forgot that real relationships are holy and cannot be used by you
at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes
them pure. [If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy
Spirit cannot use them.] For by preempting for your own ends
what you should have given to Her, She cannot use them unto your
release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone
for his/her own salvation will find it in that strange
relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.
22
In any union with a brother/sister in which you seek to lay your guilt
upon him/her or share it with him/her or perceive his/her own, you will
feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because
your union with him/her is not real. You will see guilt in that
relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that
those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they
do believe in it. Yet, though they suffer, they will not look
within and let it go. They cannot know they love and cannot
understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the
source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.
23
When you maintain that you are guilty but the source lies in the past,
you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your
weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let
them stand between you and your brothers/sisters, with whom you find no
real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your
brothers/sisters as a means to "solve" the past and still to see them as
they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use their
brothers/sisters to resolve problems which are not there. You wanted not
salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present
and hope to find salvation now?
24
Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you
to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even
less, will be enough to free you from the past and give your mind in
peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you
would have yourself be welcome to your FatherMother, you will see no
guilt in you. For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone
within you all the while you dreamed of guilt and would not look within
and see it.
25
As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way in anyone
whatever he/she may do, you will not look within, where you would
always find Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long
as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn that
guilt is always totally insane and has no reason. The
Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement
would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to
establish them as real and then forgive them.
26
The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you and
show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what She has saved you from.
What She has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt,
and see no reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would
have Her do and has always done so. She has seen separation, but knows
of union. She teaches healing, but She also knows of
creationmanifestation. She would have you see and teach as She does, and
through Her. Yet what She knows, you do not know, though it is yours.
27
Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now.
As yet it is not now. The SonDaughter of God believes that
he/she is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing
everywhere upon him/her from without. When he/she has looked
within and seen the radiance there, he/she will remember how much
his/her FatherMother loves him/her. And it will seem incredible that
he/she has ever thought his/her FatherMother loved him/her not and
looked upon him/her as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane,
wholly unjustified, and wholly without reason, you will
not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
28
You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves do not remember your
Father’sMother’s Love. And looking without mercy upon your
brothers/sisters, you do not remember how much you love HimHer. Yet it
is forever true. In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in
which you were createdmanifested. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth
in you. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision,
and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the
light. The altar to your FatherMother is as pure as HeShe Who raised it
to HimHerself. Nothing can keep from you what the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness would have you see. Her will is
like Her Father’sMother’s, and She offers mercy to every Child of God,
as She would have you do.
29
Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no
other way to look within and see the light of love shining as steadily
and as surely as God HimHerself has always loved HisHer SonDaughter. And
as HisHer SonDaughter loves HimHer. There is no fear in love, for
love is guiltless. You who have always loved your FatherMother can have
no fear for any reason to look within and see your holiness. You
cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without
reason, because it is not in the Mind of God where you are. And
this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to
you. She would remove only illusions. All else She would have you see.
And in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's vision, She
would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God’s
SonDaughter.
30
You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s
SonsDaughters unless you love them all and equally. Love is not
special. If you single out part of the SonDaughtership for your
love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and
making them unreal. You can love only as God loves. Seek not to
love unlike HimHer, for there is no love apart from His. Until
you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is
like. No one who condemns a brother/sister can see himself/herself as
guiltless in the peace of God. If he/she is guiltless and in
peace and sees it not, he/she is delusional and has not looked
upon himself/herself. To him/her I say,
32
No illusion that you have ever held against himher has touched hisher
innocence in any way. Hisher shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt
and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon himher
together and love himher. For in our love of himher is your
guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for
what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank You, FatherMother, for
the purity of Your most holy SonDaughter, whom You have
createdmanifested guiltless forever.
33
Like you my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The
difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and
because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on
yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. I love all
that HeShe createdmanifested, and all my faith and my belief I offer
unto it. My faith in you is strong as all the love I give my
FatherMother. My trust in you is without limit and without the fear that
you will hear me not. I thank the FatherMother for your loveliness and
for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the God Realm in honor
of its wholeness, which is of God.
34
Praise be unto you who make the FatherMother one with HisHer own
SonDaughter. Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with
brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think on it. Before
the glorious radiance of the God Realm, guilt melts away and,
transformed into kindness, will never more be what it was. Every
reaction that you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a
hymn of praise unto your FatherMother. See only praise of HimHer in what
HeShe has createdmanifested, for HeShe will never cease HisHer praise of
you. United in this praise, we stand before the gates of the God
Realm where we will surely enter in our blamelessness. God loves you.
Could I, then, lack faith in you and love HimHer perfectly?
35
Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the ego's best advice for
how to deal with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace.
Yet no one sees himself/herself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war
unless he/she believes that both opponents in the war are real.
Believing this, he/she must escape, for such a war would surely end
his/her peace of mind and so destroy him/her. Yet if he/she could but
realize the war is between forces that are real and unreal
powers, he/she could look upon himself/herself and see his/her
freedom. No one finds himself/herself ravaged and torn in endless
battles which he/she himself/herself perceives as wholly
without meaning.
36
God would not have HisHer SonDaughter embattled, and so HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s imagined "enemy," which he/she made, is totally
unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have
escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising
unto the God Realm . Gladness and joy belong to God for your release,
because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a
war that could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or
will be. The war, the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality
from which they came.
37
When we are all united in the God Realm, you will value nothing
that you value here. For nothing that you value here you value wholly,
and so you do not value it at all. Value is where God placed it, and the
value of what God esteems cannot be judged, for it has been established.
It is wholly of value. It can merely be appreciated or not. To
value it partially is not to know its value. In the God Realm is
everything God valued and nothing else. The God Realm is perfectly
unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright and calls forth one
response. There is no darkness, and there is no contrast. There is no
variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep
that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of
what it is.
38
Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is
wholly shared. Perfect perception can merely show you what is capable
of being wholly shared. It can also show you the results of
sharing while you still remember the results of not sharing. The
Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will
finally let Her judge the difference for you, allowing Her to
demonstrate which must be true. She has perfect faith in your
final judgment because She knows that She will make it for you.
To doubt this would be to doubt that Her mission will be fulfilled. How
is this possible, when Her mission is of God?
39
You whose minds are darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God gave
the Holy Spirit to you and gave Her the mission to remove all doubt and
every trace of guilt that HisHer dear SonDaughter has laid upon
himherself. It is impossible that this mission fail. Nothing can
prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever
your reactions to the Holy Spirit's Voice may be, whatever voice you
choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God's
Will is done. You will find the peace in which HeShe has
established you, because HeShe does not change HisHer Mind. HeShe is
invariable as the peace in which you dwell and of which the Holy Spirit
reminds you.
40
You will not remember change and shift in the God Realm . You have need
of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching
aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek. When you
have learned this, you will find the answer that makes the need for any
differences disappear. Truth comes of its own will unto its own. When
you have learned that you belong to truth, it will flow lightly
over you without a difference of any kind. For you will need no contrast
to help you realize that this is what you want, and only this.
Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your FatherMother has given
Her to do. The Will of God can fail in nothing.
41
Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God Wills
you be in the God Realm, and nothing can keep you from it or it
from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your
blackest nightmares all mean nothing. They will not prevail against the
peace God wills for you. The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity,
because insanity is not the Will of God. If that suffices
HimHer, it is enough for you. You will not keep what God would have
removed, because it breaks communication with you with whom HeShe would
communicate. HisHer Voice will be heard.
42
The Communication Link which God HimHerself placed within you, joining
your minds with His, cannot be broken. You may believe you want
it broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in
which the sweet and constant communication which God would share with
you is known. Yet HisHer channels of reaching out cannot be wholly
closed and separated from HimHer. Peace will be yours, because HisHer
peace still flows to you from HimHer Whose Will is peace. You
have it now. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use
it and, by projecting it, to learn that it is in you.
43
God willed you the God Realm and will always will you nothing
else. The Holy Spirit knows only of HisHer Will. There is no
chance that the God Realm will not be yours, for God is sure, and what
HeShe wills is as sure as HeShe is. You will learn salvation, because
you will learn how to save. It will not be possible to exempt
yourself from what the Holy Spirit wills to teach you. Salvation is as
sure as God. HisHer certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest
nightmare that disturbed the mind of God's sleeping SonDaughter holds no
power over himher. Heshe will learn the lesson of awaking. God
watches over himher, and light surrounds himher.
44
Can God’s SonDaughter lose himself/herself in dreams when God has placed
within himher the glad call to waken and be glad? Heshe cannot
separate himherself from what is in himher. Hisher
sleep will not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption
will be fulfilled as surely as the creationmanifestation will remain
unchanged throughout eternity. You do not have to know that the God
Realm is yours to make it so. It is so. Yet the Will of God must
be accepted as your will to know it.
45
The Holy Spirit cannot fail to undo for you everything you have
learned that teaches you what is not true must be reconciled with truth.
This is the reconciliation which the ego would substitute for your
reconciliation unto sanity and unto peace. The Holy Spirit has a very
different kind of reconciliation in Her Mind for you, and one which She
will effect as surely as the ego will not effect what it
attempts.
46
Failure is of the ego, not of God. From HimHer you cannot
wander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers
to everyone for the salvation of everyone will not be perfectly
accomplished. You will be released, and you will not remember
anything you made that was not createdmanifested for you and by
you in return. For how can you remember what was never true or not
remember what has always been? It is this reconciliation with truth, and
only truth, in which the peace of the God Realm lies.
47
Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world, you do not know it. But
you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy
Spirit uses logic as easily and as well, as does the ego, except that
Her conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly
opposite, pointing as clearly to the God Realm as the ego points to
darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic and have
seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized
that they cannot be seen but in illusions, for there alone their seeming
clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from
them and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches you
the simple conclusions that speak for truth and only truth.
48
If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must
be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be
acquired, for it is they that have been thrown away. You can
learn to bless and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you
offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And
you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you
give it away?
49
That is why your miracles offer you the testimony that you are
blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness, you must
have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you
are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, but which
you do not know, unless you do what you would have to do if it had
been done unto you? Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world
made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for
this if you will realize that to deny is the decision not to
know. The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for
its goal is nothing.
50
If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream,
you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and
give and are everything, and all this has been denied,
your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth.
This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual
extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has
not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God
placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.
51
Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you,
the thought system which you made would be forever dark. The thoughts
which the mind of God’s SonDaughter projects have all the power that
heshe gives to them. The thoughts heshe shares with God are beyond
hisher belief, but those heshe made are hisher beliefs. And it
is these, and not the truth, that heshe has chosen to
defend and love. They will not be taken from himher. But they can be given
up by himhende, for the Source of their undoing is in
himher. There is nothing in the world to teach himher that the
logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in himher
who made this insane logic, there is One Who knows it leads to
nothing, for HeShe knows everything.
52
Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not
goes nowhere. Anything you deny which She knows to be true, you have
denied yourself, and She must therefore teach you not to
deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were
createdmanifested only to createmanifest, neither to see nor
do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has
been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that
your FatherMother shared not with you. You have set yourselves the task
of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it
possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is
possible to learn to do.
53
The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin Her teaching by showing you what
you can never learn. Her message is not indirect, but
She must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has
become so twisted and so complex that you cannot see that it
means nothing. She merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But
you, who cannot undo what you have made [nor escape the heavy
burden of its dullness that lies upon your minds], cannot see through
it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who
choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches,
which would seem but to encroach upon deception and strike at it.
54
The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner in whom Her mission can be happily
accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first
recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy
Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is
happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to
do what you can never do, believing that unless you
learn it, you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation
on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely
nothing. It does make sense to you.
55
Have faith in nothing, and you will find the "treasure" that you
sought. Yet you will add another burden to your mind, already
burdened or you would not have sought another. You will believe that
nothing is of value and will value it. A little piece of
glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value
one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing
can be precious and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.
56
The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you
are elsewhere, begins Her lesson in simplicity with the fundamental
teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will
ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very
difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made
of nothing—all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions
that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple
truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast
between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet
you do not see it.
57
The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make
palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden
crowns because of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees and teaches simply
that all this is not true. To these unhappy learners who would teach
themselves nothing and delude themselves into believing that it is not
nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:
59
Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, She knows
it to be true. She brings the light of truth into the darkness and lets
it shine on you. And as it shines, your brothers/sisters see it, and
realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you
more than you see. They will be happy learners of the lesson
which this light brings to them because it teaches them release
from nothing and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which
seem to bind them unto despair they do not see as nothing until you
bring the light to them. And then they see the chains have
disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And you
will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and
release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.
60
When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with
him/her. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest.
Learn to be happy learners. You will never learn how to make
nothing everything. Yet see that this has been your goal and recognize
how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it
in simple honesty, it is undone. We said before, "Be not content
with nothing," for you have believed that nothing could content
you. It is not so.
61
If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything that
you have learned over to the Holy Spirit to be unlearned for
you. And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the
firm foundation that truth is true. For what is builded there is
true and built on truth. The universe of learning will open up
before you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you
will not look back.
62
The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he/she also
meets the conditions of knowledge in the God Realm. All this lies in the
Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past and open up the way to
freedom for you. For truth is true. What else could ever be or
ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door which you
believe is locked forever. You made this door of nothing and
behind it is nothing. The key is only the light which shines
away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. Accept this key to
freedom from the hands of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness Who gives it to you that you may join HimHer in the holy
task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers/sisters, you
do not realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep
of darkness.
63
Behold your brothers/sisters in their freedom and learn of them how to
be free of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they
will not leave you asleep. The vision of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is given the very instant that it
is perceived. Where everything is clear, it is all holy. The quietness
of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible
to deny the simple truth. For there is nothing else. God is
everywhere, and HisHer SonDaughter is in HimHer with everything. Can
heshe sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?
64
Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the interference in
your motivation for learning is exactly the same as that which
interferes with all your thinking. The happy learner cannot feel
guilty about learning. This is so essential to learning that it
should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns so easily
because his/her thoughts are free. Yet this entails the recognition that
guilt is interference, not salvation, and serves no useful
function at all.
65
You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of
guilt and do not look upon it as having value in itself. You
believe that guilt and guiltlessness are both of value, each
representing an escape from what the other does not offer you. You do
not want either alone, for without both, you do not see yourselves as
whole and therefore happy. Yet you are whole only in your
guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness can you be happy.
There is no conflict here. To wish for guilt in any way,
in any form, will lose appreciation of the value of your
guiltlessness and push it from your sight.
66
There is no compromise that you can make with guilt and escape the pain
which only guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as
creatingmanifesting is being in the God Realm . Whenever the pain of
guilt seems to attract you, remember that, if you yield to it,
you are deciding against your happiness and will not learn how
to be happy. Say therefore to yourself gently, but with the conviction
born of the love of God and of HisHer SonDaughter,
68
Each day, each hour and minute, even every second, you are deciding
between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between the ego and the
Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the
decision for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours.
What you can decide between is fixed because there are no
alternatives except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between
them because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot
both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound or
free, happy or unhappy.
69
The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and
joy. It is not a cause, but an effect. It is the natural result
of choosing right, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing
to be free of guilt. Everyone you offer healing to returns it. Everyone
you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether
he/she does this or does it not will make no difference; you will think
he/she does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this
penalty. The cost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty
from which you suffer or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.
70
No penalty is ever asked of God’s SonDaughter except by
himherself and of
himherself . Every chance given himher to heal is another opportunity to
replace darkness with light and fear with love. If heshe refuses it,
heshe binds himherself to
darkness because heshe did not choose to free hisher brother/sister and
enter light with him/her. By giving power to nothing, heshe
threw away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no
power. And by not dispelling darkness, he/she became afraid of
darkness and of light. The joy of learning that darkness has no
power over the SonDaughter of God is the happy lesson the Holy Spirit
teaches and would have you teach with Her. It is Her joy to
teach it, as it will be yours.
71
The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: guiltlessness is
invulnerability. Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to
everyone, and teach him/her that whatever he/she may try to do
to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed
shows him/her he/she is guiltless. He/she can do nothing that
can hurt you, and by refusing to allow him/her to think he/she
can, you teach him/her that the Atonement, which you have accepted for yourself,
is also his/her. There is nothing to forgive. No one can
hurt the SonDaughter of God. Hisher guilt is wholly without cause, and
being without cause, cannot exist.
72
God is the only Cause, and guilt is not of HimHer. Teach no one
he/she has hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not
of God has power over you. The causeless cannot be. Do
not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. Remember
always that mind is one and cause is one. You will learn
communication with this oneness only when you learn to deny
the causeless and accept the Cause of God as yours. The power
that God has given to HisHer SonDaughter is HisHer, and nothing
else can HisHer SonDaughter see or choose to look upon without imposing
on himself/herself the penalty of guilt in place of all the
happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him/her.
73
Whenever you decide to make decisions for yourself, you are thinking
destructively, and the decision will be wrong. It will hurt you
because of the concept of decision which led to it. It is not true that
you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself
alone. No thought of God’s SonDaughter can be separate or
isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the whole
SonDaughtership, directed in and out and influencing a constellation
larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept the Atonement
are invulnerable. But those who believe they are guilty will
respond to guilt because they think it is salvation and will not refuse
to see it and side with it. [They believe that increasing
guilt is self-protection.] And they will fail to understand the
simple fact that what they do not want must hurt them.
74
All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is good.
Yet will was given them because it is holy and will bring to
them all that they need, coming as naturally as peace that knows
no limits. There is nothing their wills will not provide that offers
them anything of value. Yet because they do not understand their
will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands it for them and gives
them what they will without effort, strain, or the impossible burden of
deciding what they want and need alone.
75
It will never happen that you will have to make decisions for yourself.
You are not bereft of help, and Help that knows the answer.
Would you be content with little, which is all that you alone can offer
yourself, when She Who gives you everything will simply offer it
to you? She will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the
gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourselves. Instead, accept Her
answer, for She knows that you are worthy of everything God
wills for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God which She so
freely and so gladly offers you. She offers you but what God gave Her for
you. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of it. God
knows you are.
76
Would you deny the truth of God's decision and place your pitiful
appraisal of yourself in place of HisHer calm and unswerving value of
HisHer SonDaughter? Nothing can shake God's conviction of the
perfect purity of everything that HeShe createdmanifested, for it is
wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for being of HimHer, it must
be true. Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan which
God has set for his/her Atonement, relinquishing his/her own.
You know not of salvation, for you do not understand it. Make no
decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit
everything and leave all decisions to Her gentle counsel.
77
The One Who knows the plan of God which God would have you follow can
teach you what it is. Only Her wisdom is capable of guiding you
to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you
would define what salvation is and what you would be saved from.
The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt.
You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the
purity of the SonDaughter of God, the Holy Spirit is your only
friend. She is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you
free. And it is sHer decision to undo everything that would obscure your
innocence from your unclouded mind.
78
Let Her, therefore, be the only Guide that you would follow to
salvation. She knows the way and leads you gladly on it. With
Her you will not fail to learn what God wills for you is your
will. Without Her guidance, you will think you know alone and
will decide against your peace as surely as you made the wrong
decision in ever thinking that salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is
of Her to Whom God gave it for you. She has not forgotten it. Forget Her
not, and She will make every decision for you, for your salvation, and
the peace of God in you.
79
Seek not to appraise the worth of God’s SonDaughter, whom HeShe
createdmanifested holy, for to do so is to evaluate hisher FatherMother
and judge against HimHer. And you will feel guilty for
this imagined crime, which no one in this world or the God Realm could
possibly commit. God's Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of
self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt.
What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your
faith in Her Who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness
may be your choice, but not your reality. Never forget the love
of God, Who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that
HeShe could ever let HisHer SonDaughter drop from HisHer loving Mind
wherein heshe was createdmanifested and where hisher abode was fixed in
perfect peace forever.
80
Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For Her
decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in
this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. Why would you
struggle so frantically to anticipate all that you cannot know
when all knowledge lies behind every decision which the Holy Spirit
makes for you? Learn of Her wisdom and Her love and teach Her
answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and
for yourself.
81
How gracious is it to decide all things through Her Whose equal love is
given equally to all alike! She leaves you no one outside
yourself, alone without you. And so She gives you what is yours
because your FatherMother would have you share it with HimHer. In
everything be led by Her and do not reconsider. Trust Her to answer
quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched in any
way by the decision. And everyone will be. Would you take unto
yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only
good to everyone? Would you know this?
82
You taught yourselves the most unnatural habit of not
communicating with your CreatorManifestor. Yet you remain in close
communication with HimHer and with everything that is within HimHer, as
it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through HisHer loving
guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown
away but could not lose.
83
Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of Her Presence in
you and tell yourself this and only this:
85
Then let Her teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which
is already there.
86
When you accept a brother’s/sister’s guiltlessness, you will see the
Atonement in him/her. For by proclaiming it in him/her, you make it yours,
and you will see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of
your brother’s/sister’s guiltlessness shining within him/her while you
still believe it is not there. His/her guiltlessness is your
Atonement. Grant it to him/her, and you will see the truth of what you
have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered first to be received,
even as God gave it first to HisHer SonDaughter. The first in time means
nothing, but the First in eternity is God the FatherMother, Who is both
First and One. Beyond the First, there is no other, for there is no
order, no second or third and nothing but the First.
87
You who belong to the First Cause, createdmanifested by HimHer like unto
HimHerself and part of HimHer, are more than merely guiltless. The state
of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has
been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. This
state, and only this, must you attain with God beside you. For
until you do, you will still think that you are separate from HimHer.
You can feel HisHer Presence next to you but cannot know that
you are one with HimHer. This need not be taught. Learning applies only
to the condition in which it happens of itself.
88
When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be
undone for you and stand in grace before your FatherMother, HeShe will
give HimHerself to you as HeShe has always done. Giving HimHerself is
all HeShe knows, and so it is all knowledge. For what HeShe knows not
cannot be and therefore cannot be given. Ask not to be forgiven, for
this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive
and restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes
real and visible to them that use it. On earth this is your only
function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn.
89
You will feel guilty till you learn this. For in the end,
whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill
your function in God's Mind with all of yours. Can you escape
this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here? You need not
understand creationmanifestation to do what must be done before that
knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers; neither
did HeShe make them. When you release them, they are
gone. God will not fail nor ever has in anything.
90
Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. HeShe
createdmanifested you out of HimHerself but still within HimHer. HeShe knows
what you are. Remember that there is no second to HimHer. There cannot,
therefore, be anyone without HisHer Holiness nor anyone unworthy of
HisHer perfect Love. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless
place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit
undone. Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you
HisHer blameless SonDaughter. For this small gift of appreciation for
HisHer Love, God will HimHerself exchange your gift for HisHers.
91
Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you
have decided against your function in the God Realm and consider
carefully whether you want to make decisions here. Your function
here is only to decide against deciding what you want in
recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what
you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God and for
your function as She knows it. So will She teach you to remove
the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not the
SonDaughter of God and trying to teach himher guilt instead of love.
Give up this frantic and insane attempt, which cheats you of the joy of
living with your God and FatherMother, and awaking gladly to HisHer love
and holiness, which join together as the truth in you, making you one
with HimHer.
92
When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions
become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you
will be led as gently as if you were being carried along a quiet path in
summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy
Spirit will not delay at all in answering your every question
what to do. She knows. And She will tell you and then do
it for you. You who are tired might consider whether this is not
more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping but
not into this.
1
Unless you are guiltless, you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you
know HimHer. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not
accept the necessary conditions for knowing HimHer, you have denied
HimHer and do not recognize HimHer, though HeShe is all around you.
HeShe cannot be known without HisHer SonDaughter, whose guiltlessness is
the condition for knowing HimHer. Accepting HisHer SonDaughter as guilty
is denial of the FatherMother so complete that knowledge is swept away
from recognition in the very mind where God HimHerself has placed it. If
you would but listen and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow
HimHer with attributes you understand. You made HimHer not, and anything
you understand is not of HimHer.
2
Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but
not without you. You who have thrown your selves away and valued
God so little, hear me speak for HimHer and for yourselves. You cannot
understand how much your FatherMother loves you, for there is no
parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it.
There is nothing on earth with which it can compare and nothing you have
ever felt, apart from HimHer, that resembles it ever so faintly. You
cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One
Who gives forever and Who knows of nothing except giving?
3
The Children of the God Realm live in the light of the blessing of their
FatherMother because they know that they are sinless. The
Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to the
mind which has denied it and thus denied the God Realm to itself.
Atonement teaches you the true condition of the SonDaughter of God. It
does not teach you what you are or what your FatherMother is. The Holy
Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the
blocks that stand between you and what you know. Her memory is yours.
If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing.
Remembrance of reality is in Her and therefore in you.
4
The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one
another. Each perceives the other as like himself/herself, making them
unable to communicate because each sees the other unlike the way
he/she sees himself/herself. God can communicate only to
the Holy Spirit in your mind because only She shares the knowledge of
what you are with God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God
for you, for only She knows what God is. Everything else that
you have placed within your mind cannot exist, for what is not
in communication with the Mind of God has never been. Communication with
God is life. Nothing without it is at all.
5
The only part of your mind that has reality is the part which links you
still with God. Would you have all of it transformed into a
radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones who
denied HimHer with you? God makes this possible. Would you deny
HisHer yearning to be known? You yearn for HimHer, as HeShe for you.
This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world
of death behind, and return quietly to the God Realm . There is nothing
of value here and everything of value there. Listen to the Holy
Spirit and to God through Her. She speaks of you to you. There is
no guilt in you, for God is blessed in HisHer SonDaughter as the
SonDaughter is blessed in HimHer.
6
Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the
message given to each to share is always the same—God’s SonDaughter
is guiltless. Each one teaches the message differently and learns
it differently. Yet until he/she teaches it and learns it, he/she will
suffer the pain of dim awareness that his/her true function remains
unfulfilled in him/her. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not
have you bound by it. HisHer plan for your awaking is as perfect as
yours is fallible. You know not what you do, but She Who knows is with
you. Her gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God She
holds in trust for you. She would teach you nothing except how to be
happy.
7
Blessed SonDaughter of a wholly blessing FatherMother, joy was
createdmanifested for you. Who can condemn whom God has blessed?
There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share HisHer shining
innocence. Creationmanifestation is the natural extension of perfect
purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself with active
willingness to the denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is not
to understand. The happy learners of the Atonement become the
teachers/teacheresses of the innocence that is the right of all that God
createdmanifested. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not
withhold it from them alone.
8
The inheritance of the God Realm is the right of God’s SonDaughter,
given himher in hisher creationmanifestation. Do not try to steal it
from himher, or you will ask for guilt and will
experience it. Protect hisher purity from every thought that would steal
it away and keep it from hisher sight. Bring innocence to light in
answer to the call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain
hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt within which the
SonDaughter of God has hidden himherself from hisher own sight. We are
all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this
world. So will the world of separation slip away and full communication
be restored between the FatherMother and the SonDaughter.
9
The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which must have been
denied to produce need of healing. Do not withhold this glad
acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of
every kind lie in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He/she
may not yet have learned how to exchange his/her guilt for
innocence nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain
be his/hers. Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not
attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn
from them.
10
Teachers/teacheresses of innocence, each in his/her own way, have joined
together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement.
There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no
conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim however it is
taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the single purpose
of release from guilt to the eternal glory of God and HisHer
creationmanifestation. And every teaching that points to this points
straight to the God Realm and to the peace of God. There is no pain, no
trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome. The power of God
HimHerself supports this teaching and guarantees its limitless
results.
11
Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must
result in peace. No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You
will not see yourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this.
You will not be exempt from the effects of this most holy lesson, which
seeks but to restore what is the right of God's creationmanifestation.
From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will inevitably
learn your innocence. The circle of Atonement has no
end. And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion
in what is for all in everyone you bring within its safety and its
perfect peace.
12
Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher/teacheress of peace.
For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity from which no one is
excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God createdmanifested
as HisHer SonDaughter. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left
outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its
safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle and
attract all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace
and holiness. Abide with me within it as teachers/teacheresses of
Atonement, not of guilt.
13
Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes not of us but of our
FatherMother. In guiltlessness we know HimHer, as HeShe knows us
guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling you to peace. Teach peace
with me and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your
Father’sMother’s power that HeShe has given him/her. Believe not that
you cannot teach HisHer perfect peace. Stand not outside but join with
me within. Fail not the only purpose to which my teaching calls you.
Restore to God HisHer SonDaughter as HeShe createdmanifested himher by
teaching himher hisher innocence.
14
The crucifixion has no part in the Atonement. Only the resurrection
became my part in it. That is the symbol of the release from guilt by
guiltlessness. Whom you perceive as guilty, you would crucify. Yet you restore
guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is always
the ego's aim. It sees as guilty, and by its condemnation, it
would kill. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in Her
gentleness, She would release from fear and reestablish the reign of
love. The power of love is in Her gentleness, which is of God and
therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore
becomes your altar, for it was rebuilt through you. And
everything you give to God is yours. Thus HeShe
createsmanifests, and thus must you restore.
15
Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave
outside, judging him/her fit for crucifixion or for redemption. If you
bring him/her into the circle of purity, you will rest there
with him/her. If you leave him/her without, you join him/her
there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. Refuse to
accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring
him/her into it by blessing him/her. Holiness must be shared,
for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy
circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no
one out, for this is what he/she seeks, along with you. Come, let us
join him/her in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united
as one within the cause of peace.
16
The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for
light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is
fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the
frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet it
is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it is, but for
its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening because you do not
understand its meaning. If you did, it would be clear, and you would be
no longer in the dark. Nothing has hidden value, for what is
hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is kept
apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is
concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared.
17
The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely
perfect openness in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is
fearful. Attack will always yield to love if it is brought
to love, not hidden from it. There is no darkness that the light
of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence.
What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power,
because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of
darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of
illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.
18
Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas
of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect;
neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, being nothing at
all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance, look to them only for
fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. But let them go,
and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of
obscurity, only the light of love remains, for only this has
meaning and can live in light. Everything else must
disappear.
19
Death yields to life simply because destruction is not true. The
light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are brought
together, the truth of one must make the falsity of its
opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for
your belief that you can have them both is meaningless. All you
have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them
with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything,
and the other is wholly without sense of any kind.
20
You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for
breaking your communication with your FatherMother. The Holy Spirit
reinterprets it as a means of reestablishing what has not been broken
but has been made obscure. All things you made have use to Her
for Her most holy purpose. She knows you are not separate from
God, but She perceives much in your mind that lets you think you
are. All this, and nothing else, would She separate from you. The power
of decision, which you made in place of the power of
creationmanifestation, She would teach you how to use on your behalf.
You who made it to crucify yourselves must learn of Her how to apply it
to the holy cause of restoration.
21
You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language
you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is not
communication, but rather the disruption of communication. If
the purpose of language is communication, how can this tongue
mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate
through not communicating holds enough of love to make
it meaningful if its interpreter is not its maker. You who made
it are but expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release
you. Leave what you would communicate to Her. She will interpret it to
you with perfect clarity, for She knows with Whom you are in
perfect communication.
22
You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. Yet
your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. She will
not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But She will
separate out all that has meaning, dropping off the rest and offering
your true communication to those who would communicate as truly with
you. You speak two languages at once, and this must lead to
unintelligibility. Yet if one means nothing and the other everything,
only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but interferes
with it.
23
The Holy Spirit's function is entirely communication. She
therefore must remove whatever interferes with it in order to restore
it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from Her sight, for She
will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Her, and let Her
gentleness teach you that in the light they are not fearful and cannot
serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully
concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming
through. There are no hidden chambers in God's temple. Its gates are
open wide to greet HisHer SonDaughter. No one can fail to come where God
has called him/her if he/she close not the door himself/herself upon
his/her Father’sMother’s welcome.
24
What do you want? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are
yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together and not kept
apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are
reconciled by union, as you are. In union, everything that is
not real must disappear, for truth is union. As darkness
disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns.
Perception is the medium by which ignorance is brought to knowledge. Yet
the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise it becomes the
messenger of ignorance rather than a helper in the search for truth.
25
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that
interferes with truth. Truth is. It can be neither lost nor
sought nor found. It is there, wherever you are, being within
you. Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to
you. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you
hid it and surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone of fear on
which you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies
hidden. Yet you cannot know this, for by hiding truth in fear, you see
no reason to believe the more you look at fear, the less
you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.
26
It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. From their
point of view, it is not true. Yet it is true because God
knows it. These are clearly opposite viewpoints of what the "unknowing"
are. To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of
view at all but merely a belief in something that does not exist. It is
only this belief that the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about
themselves. They have defined themselves as they were not
createdmanifested. Their creationmanifestation was not a point of view,
but rather a certainty. Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain
any conviction of reality.
27
You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is
undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to
what you do. You will realize that salvation must come to you
this way if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a
distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot
coexist are both maintained. It has been recognized that
if they were brought together their joint acceptance would
become impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their
separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their
reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they
meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them.
28
You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart,
this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can
be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact
of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go because
the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot enter darkness when a
mind believes in darkness and will not let it go. Truth does not
struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no
protection does not defend itself. Defense is of your making.
God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of
truth only because you made them against it. Her perception of
them, according to Her purpose, merely changes them into a call for
what you have attacked with them.
29
Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own
good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of self-destruction to
means of preservation and release. Her task is mighty, but the power of
God is with Her. Therefore, to Her it is so easy that it was
accomplished the instant it was given Her for you. Do not delay
yourselves in your return to peace by wondering how She can fulfill what
God has given Her to do. Leave that to Her Who knows. You are not asked
to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little She
suggests you do, trusting Her only to the small extent of believing that
if She asks it, you can do it. You will see how easily
all that She asks can be accomplished.
30
The Holy Spirit asks of you but this—bring to Her every secret you have
locked away from Her. Open every door to Her and bid Her enter the
darkness and lighten it away. At your request She enters gladly. She
brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to
Her. But what you hide She cannot look upon. For She sees for you,
and unless you look with Her, She cannot see. The vision of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is not for Her alone but
for Her with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret
thoughts to Her and look upon them with Her. She holds the
light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of
you together look on them. Her judgment must prevail, and She
will give it to you as you join your perception to Hers. Joining
with Her in seeing is the way in which you learn to share with Her the
interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge.
31
You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Her Whom God has given you
teaches you how to recognize what you see. It is the recognition
that nothing you see means anything alone. Seeing with Her will
show you that all meaning, including yours, comes not from
double vision but from the gentle fusing of everything into one
meaning, one emotion, and one purpose. God has one
purpose which She shares with you. The single vision which the Holy
Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and
brightness so intense you could not wish for all the world not to accept
what God would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as Hers,
with all Her love as yours. All honor to you through Her, and through
Her unto God.
32
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you and the power
HeShe bestowed upon HisHer guiltless SonDaughter. All this lies hidden
in every darkened place shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of
innocence. Behind the dark doors which you have closed lies nothing,
because nothing can obscure the gift of God. It is the closing
of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that
shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would
hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit and there
undone. Whom She would save for glory is saved for it. She has
promised the FatherMother that through Her you would be released from
littleness to glory. To what She promised God She is wholly faithful,
for She shared with God the promise that was given Her to share with you.
33
She shares it still, for you. Everything that promises
otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, She will
replace with the one promise given unto Her to lay upon the
altar to your FatherMother and HisHer SonDaughter. No altar stands to
God without HisHer SonDaughter. And nothing brought there that
is not equally worthy of both but will be replaced by gifts wholly
acceptable to FatherMother and to SonDaughter. Can you offer
guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to HisHer SonDaughter. For they
are not apart, and gifts to one are offered to the other.
34
You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know
God and also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy
Spirit shines. She shines not in division, but in the meeting place
where God, united with HisHer SonDaughter, speaks to HisHer SonDaughter
through Her. Communication between what cannot be divided cannot
cease. The holy meeting place of the unseparated FatherMother and HisHer
SonDaughter lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference
in the communication that God HimHerself wills with HisHer SonDaughter
is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows
constantly between the FatherMother and the SonDaughter, as both
would have it be. And so it is.
35
Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors, away from light's
center. You may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can only be
brought together by the Guide appointed for you. She will surely
lead you to where God and HisHer SonDaughter await your recognition.
They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all
separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot
join with anything except reality. God's glory and HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s belong to you in truth. They have no opposite,
and nothing else can you bestow upon yourselves.
36
There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you
as you are brought into the place where you must meet with
truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can
lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is
the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge given you by God into
unknowingness. Everything God createdmanifested knows its
CreatorManifestor. For this is how creationmanifestation is accomplished
by the CreatorManifestor and by HisHer creationsmanifestations. In the
holy meeting place are joined the FatherMother and HisHer
creationsmanifestations, and the creationsmanifestations of HisHer
SonDaughter with them together. There is one link which joins them all
together, holding them in the oneness out of which creationmanifestation
happens.
37
The link with which the FatherMother joins HimHerself to those HeShe
gives the power to createmanifest like HimHer can never be
dissolved. The God Realm itself is union with all of
creationmanifestation and with its One CreatorManifestor. And the God
Realm remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon
your altars, for nothing can coexist beside it. Here your meager
offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is
worthy of the FatherMother will be accepted by the SonDaughter, for whom
it was intended. To whom God gives HimHerself, HeShe is given.
Your little gifts will vanish on the altar where HeShe has placed HisHer
Own.
38
The Atonement does not make holy. You were createdmanifested
holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness, or what you made
to what you are. The bringing together of truth and illusion, of
the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making
from your FatherMother, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of HimHer
and of yourselves. The knowledge is safe, but wherein is your
safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of
timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you were. Thus, truth was
made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too,
was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The
past which you remember never was and represents only
the denial of what always was.
39
Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands
corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets and is
undone, because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can
contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What
disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is
not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one.
It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness
is what makes it real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is
for unreality. And this reality will do for you.
40
Merely by being what it is does truth release you from everything that
it is not. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to
it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are
not frail with God beside you. Yet without HimHer you are nothing. The
Atonement offers you God. The gift which you refused is held by HimHer
in you. HisHer Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left HisHer
altar, though HisHer worshiper placed other gods upon it. The temple
still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is
Holiness.
41
In the temple Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love
it. The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The
graciousness of God will take them gently in and cover all their sense
of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Father’sMother’s
Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of living. For God
is Life, and they abide in Life. [Life is as holy as the
Holiness by which it was createdmanifested.] The Presence of Holiness
lives in everything that lives, for Holiness createdmanifested
life and leaves not what It createdmanifested holy as Itself.
42
In this world you can become a spotless mirror in which the Holiness of
your CreatorManifestor shines forth from you to all around you. You can
reflect the God Realm here. Yet no reflections of the images of
other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it.
Earth can reflect the God Realm or hell; God or the ego. You need but
leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness
you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of HimHerself. Only the
clear reflection of HimHerself can be perceived upon it.
Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they are obscure, and their
meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations rather than in
themselves.
43
The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear.
Clean but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the
mirror holds out for everyone to see no one can fail to
understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the
mirror that is in Her. She recognizes it because She has been taught Her
need for it but knows not where to look to find it. Let Her,
then, see it in you and share it with you.
44
Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the
reflection of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could
not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the image of
the holiness that heals the world. The image of holiness which shines in
your mind is not obscure and will not change. Its meaning to those who
look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the same.
All bring their different problems to its healing light, but all their
problems are met only with healing there.
45
The response of holiness to any form of error is always the
same. There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. Its one
response is healing, without regard for what is brought to it. Those who
have learned to offer only healing because of the reflection of holiness
in them are ready at last for the God Realm . There, holiness is not a
reflection but rather the actual condition of what was but reflected to
them here. God is no image, and HisHer creationsmanifestations, as part
of HimHer, hold HimHer in them in truth. They do not merely reflect
truth, for they are truth.
46
When no perception stands between God and HisHer
creationsmanifestations, or between HisHer Children and their own, the
knowledge of creationmanifestation must continue forever. The
reflections which you accept into the mirror of your minds in time but
bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond all
time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in
you. And you will turn from time to holiness as surely as the reflection
of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of
the God Realm here and bring this world to the God Realm . For
the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they
enter into it, they leave all reflections behind.
47
In the God Realm reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its
reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the SonDaughter
of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of hisher FatherMother dawns on
himher, and heshe can no longer be satisfied with anything but hisher
own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the
world you seem to live in is a world of limits. In this world,
it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The
miracle, therefore, has a unique function and is motivated by a unique
Teacheress, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The
miracle is the one thing you can do that transcends order, being
based not on differences but on equality.
48
Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do
is limitless. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult
to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. What is
more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of difficulty which stamps
the miracle as something that must come from elsewhere, not from here.
From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible. You have experienced
lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even though they may
conflict, can occur to you together and in great numbers. You are so
used to this that it can cause you little surprise.
49
Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more
important, larger or better, wiser or more productive and valuable than
others. And this is true about the thoughts which cross the mind of
those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of the God
Realm, while others are motivated by the ego, which but seems to
think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern which never rests and
is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind,
and the reflections of the God Realm last but a moment and grow dim as
darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in
an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep
constantly across your minds.
50
The little sanity which still remains is held together by a sense of
order which you establish. Yet the very fact that you can do
this and bring any order into chaos shows you that you are not
an ego and that more than an ego must be in you. For the ego is
chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet
though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, it also
limits you. To order is to judge and to arrange by
judgment. [Therefore, it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's.]
It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at
all for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit
teaches by giving you shining examples to show you that your way of
ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you.
51
The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It
does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it is and
answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder or
greater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound to
judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own.
The answer is very simple. The power of God, and not of you,
engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have
the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal
blessing to all who share in it, and that is also why everyone
shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal,
it offers everything to every call from anyone.
There is no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given
help.
52
The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirit's one
division into two categories—one of love and the other the call for
love. You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too
confused either to recognize love or to believe that everything else is
nothing but a need for love. You are too bound to form and not to
content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely
form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother/sister
really offers you, but only to the particular perception of
his/her offering by which the ego judges it.
53
The ego is incapable of understanding content and is totally unconcerned
with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content must
be. Otherwise, it will attack the form. You who believe you understand
something of the dynamics of the mind, let me assure you that you know
nothing of it at all. For of yourselves you could not know of
it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In fact,
the ego enjoys the study of itself and thoroughly approves the
undertakings of students who would analyze it, approving its importance.
Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is
senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind a lot of words
which sound impressive but which lack any consistent sense when they are
put together.
54
This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. Separately, they seem to
hold, but put them together and the system of thought which arises from
joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough
for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system
impossible. Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For
no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more join
together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its
lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.
55
It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering
HimHer means you are not alone and willing to remember it. Take
no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold is for
yourself. If you would remember your FatherMother, let the Holy Spirit
order your thoughts and give only the answer with which She answers you.
Everyone seeks for love as you do and knows it not unless he/she joins
with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring
with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning.
The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find.
56
As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit
translate HisHer communications through you so you can
understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of
HimHer is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being for
all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy
Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation you would lay upon a
brother/sister is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit show him/her to
you and teach you both his/her love and need for love. Neither his/her
mind nor yours holds more than these two orders of thought.
57
The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love,
your brother/sister must give it to you because of what it is.
But where there is need for love, you must give it
because of what you are. Long ago we said this course will teach
you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already
learned that this identity is shared. The miracle becomes the means
of sharing it. By supplying your identity wherever it is not
recognized, you will recognize it. And God HimHerself, Who wills
to be with HisHer SonDaughter forever, will bless each recognition of
HisHer SonDaughter with all the love HeShe holds for him/her. Nor will
the power of all HisHer love be absent from any miracle you
offer to HisHer SonDaughter. How, then, can there be any order of
difficulty among them?
58
Yet the essential thing is learning that you do not know.
Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep
power for yourselves have lost it. You still have the power, but you
have interposed so much between it and your awareness of it that
you cannot use it. Everything you have taught yourselves has made your
power more and more obscure to you. You know not what it is nor
where. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength
so pitiful that it must fail you. For power is not a seeming
strength, and truth is beyond semblance of any kind. Yet all that stands
between you and the power of God in you is but your learning of the
false and your attempts to undo the true.
59
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 yourselves how to imprison
the SonDaughter 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 HisHer SonDaughter, given all power by HimHer, learn to
be powerless? What have you taught yourselves that you can possibly
prefer to keep in place of what you have and what you are?
60
Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you
have taught yourselves in the past by showing you only what you are now.
Learning has been accomplished before its effects are manifest.
Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the
present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. Your
learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have ever
learned can help you understand the present or teach you how to undo the
past. Your past is what you have taught yourselves. Let it
all go. Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or
anyone in its light, for the light of darkness by which you try to see
can only obscure.
61
Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding,
for if you do, you contradict the light and thereby think you
see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot be seen, for it is nothing
more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. You who have
not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourselves unto the
light in you can hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet
God did not abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent from
HimHer, already learned for every Child of light by Her to Whom
God gave it. This lesson shines with God's glory, for in it lies HisHer
power, which HeShe shares so gladly with HisHer SonDaughter.
62
Learn of HisHer happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish
this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to truth and
joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every
dark lesson that you bring to Her Who teaches light She will accept from
you because you do not want it. And She will gladly exchange
each one for the bright lesson She has learned for you. Never believe
that any lesson you have learned apart from Her means anything.
63
You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you
learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all
those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then
you can be sure that you have learned God's lesson and not yours. Unless
all this is true, there are dark lessons in your minds which
hurt and hinder you and everyone around you. The absence of
perfect peace means but one thing: you think you do not
will for God’s SonDaughter what hisher FatherMother wills for himher.
Every dark lesson teaches this in one form or another. And each bright
lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not
accept and hide, teaches you that you will with the FatherMother
unto HisHer SonDaughter.
64
Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different
from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your
part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned
you do not want. Ask to be taught and do not use your
experiences to confirm what you have learned. When your peace is
threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself,
66
By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the
Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. She will take Her
rightful place in your awareness the instant you abandon it and
offer it to Her.
67
You cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them
necessary. And because you did, the means on which you can
depend for miracles has been provided for you. God’s SonDaughter
can make no needs hisher FatherMother will not meet if heshe but turn to
HimHer ever so little. Yet HeShe cannot compel HisHer SonDaughter to
turn to HimHer and remain HimHerself. It is impossible that God lose
HisHer Identity, for if HeShe did, you would lose yours. And
being yours, HeShe cannot change HimHerself, for your identity is
changeless. The miracle acknowledges HisHer changelessness by seeing
HisHer SonDaughter as heshe always was and not as heshe would make
himherself. The miracle brings the effects which only
guiltlessness can bring and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness
must be.
68
How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain,
establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That is impossible. But be
sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it is impossible.
It is only because you think that you can run some little part or deal
with certain aspects of your lives alone that the guidance of the Holy
Spirit is limited. Thus would you make Her undependable and use this
fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons
from Her. And by so limiting the guidance that you would accept,
you are unable to depend on miracles to answer all your problems for
you.
69
Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you give She
would withhold from you? You have no problems which She
cannot solve by offering you a miracle. Miracles are for you.
And every fear or pain or trial you have has been undone. She
has brought all of them to light, having accepted them instead
of you and recognized they never were. There are no dark lessons She has
not already lightened for you. The lessons you would teach
yourselves She has corrected already. They do not exist in Her Mind at
all. For the past binds Her not and therefore binds not you. She does
not see time as you do. And each miracle She offers you corrects your
use of time and makes it Hers.
70
She Who has freed you from the past would teach you are free of
it. She would but have you accept Her accomplishments as yours
because She did them for you. And because She did, they are
yours. She has made you free of what you made. You can deny Her, but you
cannot call on Her in vain. She always gives what She has
made in place of you. She would establish Her bright teaching so
firmly in your mind that no dark lessons of guilt can abide in what She
has established as holy by Her Presence. Thank God that She is there and
works through you. And all Her works are yours. She offers you a miracle
with every one you let Her do through you.
71
God’s SonDaughter will always be indivisible. As we are held as
one in God, so do we learn as one in HimHer. God's Teacher is as like to
Her CreatorManifestor as is HisHer SonDaughter, and through HisHer
Teacher does God proclaim HisHer Oneness and HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s. Listen in silence, and do not raise your voice against
Her. For She teaches the miracle of oneness, and before Her lesson
division disappears. Teach like Her here, and you will remember that you
have always createdmanifested like your FatherMother. The
miracle of creationmanifestation has never ceased, having the holy stamp
of immortality upon it. This is the Will of God for all
creationmanifestation, and all creationmanifestation joins in willing
this.
72
Those who remember always that they know nothing, but who have become
willing to learn everything, will learn it. But whenever they
trust themselves, they will not learn. They have destroyed their
motivation for learning by thinking they already know. Think not
you understand anything until you pass the test of perfect peace, for
peace and understanding go together and never can be found alone. Each
brings the other with it, for it is the law of God they be not
separate. They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is
absent the other cannot be.
73
Only those who see they cannot know unless the effects of
understanding are with them can really learn at all. And for this, it
must be peace they want and nothing else. Whenever you think you
know, peace will depart from you because you have abandoned the Teacher
of Peace. Whenever you fully realize that you know not, peace
will return, for you will have invited Her to do so by abandoning the
ego on behalf of Her. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only this
that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of Herself, fill every
mind that so makes room for Her.
74
If you want peace, you must abandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher
of peace will never abandon you. You can desert Her, but She
will never reciprocate, for Her faith in you is Her
understanding. It is as firm as is Her faith in Her CreatorManifestor,
and She knows that faith in Her CreatorManifestor must encompass
faith in HisHer creationmanifestation. In this consistency lies Her
holiness, which She cannot abandon, for it is not Her Will to do so.
With your perfection ever in Her sight, She gives the gift of peace to
everyone who perceives the need for peace and who would have it. Make
way for peace, and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from
it peace must come.
75
The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it
is HisHers. You think you know HimHer not only because, alone, it is
impossible to know HimHer. Yet see the mighty works that HeShe will do
through you, and you must be convinced you did them through HimHer. It
is impossible to deny the Source of effects so powerful they could
not be of you. Leave room for HimHer, and you will find yourself so
filled with power that nothing will prevail against your peace.
And this will be the test by which you recognize that you have
understood.
1
Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no
anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet
that is what time is for—to learn just that and nothing more.
God's Teacheress cannot be satisfied with Her teaching until it
constitutes all your learning. She has not fulfilled Her
teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that
you learn only of Her. When this has happened, you will no
longer need a teacheress or time in which to learn.
2
One source of perceived discouragement from which you suffer is your
belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit's
teaching are far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit uses
time in Her own way and is not bound by it. [Time is Her friend in
teaching. It does not waste Her as it does you.] And all the waste that
time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the
ego, which uses time to support its belief in destruction. The ego, like
the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the
goal and end of teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which is
its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no
end.
3
The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. For it is as mistrustful
of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate.
The ego wants you dead, but not itself. The outcome of
its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue
you beyond the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace
even in the death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell.
It speaks to you of the God Realm but assures you that the God Realm is
not for you. How can the guilty hope for the God Realm ? The belief in
hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares
and their fears are all associated with it.
4
The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all
its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal, for although the
ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe
it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied.
No one who follows the ego's teaching is without the fear of death. Yet
if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared?
We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought system before,
but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear
from you to keep your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in
order to maintain itself.
5
Again the ego tries and all too frequently succeeds in doing both by
using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that
they seem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the
end as far as hope of the God Realm goes. Yet because you and itself
cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own
death, it will pursue you still because guilt is eternal. Such is the
ego's version of immortality. And it is this the ego's version of time
supports.
6
The ego teaches that the God Realm is here and now because the future
is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life
of someone who hears it temporarily as the only voice, it speaks
of hell even to him/her. For it tells him/her hell is here and
bids him/her leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows
anyone to look upon with some amount of equanimity is the past. And even
there its only value is that it is no more.
7
How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! And how terrifying!
For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the
same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does not
advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshipers still
believe that it can offer the escape from it. But the belief in
guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always
does. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be
experienced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of
the future. For no one who considers himself/herself as deserving hell
can believe that punishment will end in peace.
8
The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only
what the ego has made of the present. The belief in hell is what
prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid
of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to the God Realm as the ego
drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present,
uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present
useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego's use of time.
For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device
for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing and
demands vengeance forever.
9
The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not
of the present but only of the past and future, which do not exist.
There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and
separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the
future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the
SonDaughter of God emerges from the past into the present. And the
present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of
guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered,
and immortality and joy are now.
10
This lesson takes no time. For what is time without a past and
future? It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it
takes no time at all to be what you are. Begin to practice the
Holy Spirit's use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. Take
this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is
of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that
you are completely absolved, completely free, and wholly
without condemnation. From this holy instant wherein holiness was born
again, you will go forth in time without fear and with no sense of
change with time.
11
Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change.
Learn from this instant more than merely hell does not exist. In this
redeeming instant lies the God Realm . And the God Realm will not
change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation from
change. Change is an illusion, taught by those who could not see
themselves as guiltless. There is no change in the God Realm because
there is no change in God. In the holy instant in which you see yourself
as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering
HimHer is to remember freedom.
12
Whenever you are tempted to be dispirited by the thought of how long it
would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is
an instant?" Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for
your salvation? She asks no more, for She has no need of more. It takes
far longer to teach you how to be willing to give Her this than for Her
to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of the God Realm . In
exchange for this instant, She stands ready to give you the remembrance
of eternity.
13
You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of
your release while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers/sisters
on behalf of theirs. For the instant of holiness is shared, and
cannot be yours alone. Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a
brother/sister, that his/her instant of release is yours.
Miracles are the instants of release you offer and will receive.
They attest to your willingness to be released and to offer time
to the Holy Spirit for Her use of it. How long is an instant? It is as
short for your brother/sister as it is for you. Practice giving this
blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time and thus make
time their friend for them. The Holy Spirit gives their blessed
instant to you through your giving it. As you give it, She
offers it to you.
14
Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Her, for you join
with Her in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is
your instantaneous escape from guilt. You must be holy
if you offer holiness. How long is an instant? As long as it takes to
reestablish perfect sanity, perfect peace, and perfect love for
everyone, for God, and for yourself. As long as it takes to
remember immortality and your immortal creationsmanifestations who share
it with you. As long as it takes to exchange hell for the God Realm.
Long enough to transcend all of the ego's making and ascend unto your
FatherMother.
15
Time is your friend if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. She needs
but very little to restore God's whole power to you. She Who transcends
time for you understands what time is for. Holiness lies not in
time but in eternity. There never was an instant in which God’s
SonDaughter could lose hisher purity. Hisher changeless state is beyond
time, for hisher purity remains forever beyond attack and without
variability. Time stands still in hisher holiness and changes not. And
so it is no longer time at all. For, caught in the single instant of the
eternal sanctity of God's creationmanifestation, it is transformed into
forever. Give the eternal instant that eternity may be
remembered for you in that shining instant of perfect release.
Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit and leave
Her giving it to you to Her.
16
The Atonement is in time but not for time. Being in you,
it is eternal. What holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. No
more are you. For unless God is bound, you cannot be. An instant
offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that
instant you will awaken gently in HimHer. In the blessed instant, you
will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly
offer you the whole lesson of peace. What can take time, when all the
obstacles to learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time
that all of it happens at once. For as it was createdmanifested one, so
its oneness depends not on time at all.
17
Do not be concerned with time and fear not the instant of holiness which
will remove all fear. For the instant of peace is eternal because
it is wholly without fear. It will come, being the lesson God
gives you through the Teacheress HeShe has appointed to translate time
into eternity. Blessed is God's Teacheress, Whose joy it is to teach
God's holy SonDaughter hisher holiness. Her joy is not contained in
time. Her teaching is for you because Her joy is yours. Through
Her you stand before God's altar, where She gently translates hell into
the God Realm. For it is only in the God Realm that God would have you
be.
18
How long can it take to be where God would have you? For you are
where you have forever been and will forever be. All that you have, you
have forever. The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God
extends HimHerself to encompass you. You who have spent days, hours, and
even years in chaining your brothers/sisters to your egos in an attempt
to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength.
In the holy instant, you will unchain all your brothers/sisters
and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.
19
You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers/sisters by
seeing them as sources of ego support. As a result, they witness to
the ego in your perception and seem to provide reasons for not
letting it go. Yet they are far stronger and much more compelling
witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And they support Her strength. It
is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy
Spirit in you. And you will know which you have chosen by their
reactions. A SonDaughter of God who has been released through the Holy
Spirit in a brother/sister, if the release is complete, is always
recognized. He/she cannot be denied. As long as you remain
uncertain, it can be only because you have not given complete release.
And because of this, you have not given one single instant completely
to the Holy Spirit. For when you have, you will be sure you have. You
will be sure because the witness to Her will speak so clearly of
Her that you will hear and understand.
20
You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly
released through the Holy Spirit. And then you will doubt no more. The
holy instant has not yet happened to you. Yet it will, and you will
recognize it with perfect certainty. No gift of God is recognized in any
other way. You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant and will
learn much from doing so. Yet its shining and glittering brilliance,
which will literally blind you to this world by its own vision, you
cannot supply. And here it is, all in this instant, complete,
accomplished, and given wholly.
21
Start now to practice your little part in separating out the holy
instant. You will receive very specific instructions as you go along. To
learn to separate out this single second and begin to experience it as
timeless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate.
Fear not that you will not be given help in this. God's Teacheress and
Her lesson will support your strength. It is only your weakness that
will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the
power of God in you. Use it but for one instant, and you will never deny
it again. Who can deny the Presence of what the universe bows to in
appreciation and gladness? Before the recognition of the universe which
witnesses to It, your doubts must disappear.
22
Be not content with littleness, but be sure you understand what
littleness is and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is
the offering you gave yourself. You offered this in place of
magnitude, and you accepted it. Everything in this world is
little because it is a world made out of littleness in the strange
belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in
this world with the belief that it will bring you peace, you are
belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory
are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will
always choose one at the expense of the other.
23
Yet what you do not realize each time you choose is that your choice is
your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not
have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it. And
whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy
you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly,
that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you.
You are free to try as the many as you wish, but all you will be doing
is to delay your homecoming. For you will be content only in magnitude,
which is your home.
24
There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must
learn to remember all the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but
you will learn to love it when you realize that it is true and
constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought and found
littleness, remember this: Every decision which you make stems from what
you think you are and represents the value that you put
upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and by limiting
yourself, you will not be satisfied. For your function is not
little, and it is only by finding your function and fulfilling it that
you can escape from littleness.
25
There is no doubt about what your function is, for the Holy Spirit knows
what it is. There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you
through Her from Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it
because you have it. All your striving must be directed against
littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your
magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in
a world of littleness is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is
asked of you in tribute to your magnitude and not your
littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.
26
The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of HisHer
dear SonDaughter. Search for the little, and you deny yourself HisHer
power. God is not willing that HisHer SonDaughter be content with less
than everything. For HeShe is not content without HisHer SonDaughter,
and HisHer SonDaughter cannot be content with less than hisher
FatherMother has given himher. We asked you once before, "Would you be
hostage to the ego or host to God?" Let this question be asked you by
the Holy Spirit in you every time you make a decision. For every
decision you make does answer this and invites sorrow or joy
accordingly.
27
When God gave HimHerself to you in your creationmanifestation, HeShe
established you as host to HimHer forever. HeShe has not left you, and
you have not left HimHer. All your attempts to deny HisHer magnitude and
make HisHer SonDaughter hostage to the ego cannot make little whom God
has joined with HimHer. Every decision you make is for the God Realm or
for hell and will bring you awareness of what you decided for.
The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of all littleness,
clearly and in perfect safety in your minds, untouched by every little
gift the world of littleness would offer you. But for this, you cannot
side against Her in what She wills for you.
28
Decide for God through Her. For littleness and the belief that you can
be content with littleness are the decisions you have made about
yourself. The power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all
who, like you, perceive themselves as little and have deceived
themselves into believing that littleness can be blown up by them into a
sense of magnitude that can content them. Neither give littleness, nor
accept it. All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness deceives
you, but your magnitude is of HimHer Who dwells in you and in Whom you
dwell. Touch no one, then, with littleness, in the name of the Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness, eternal Host unto Her FatherMother.
29
In this season (the Christmas), which celebrates the birth of holiness
into this world, join with me, who decided for holiness for you.
It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to
the host whom God appointed for HimHerself. It is beyond all your
littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you.
For God would give HimHerself through you. HeShe reaches from
you to everyone and beyond everyone to HisHer Son’sDaughter’s
creationsmanifestations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little
world but still in you, HeShe extends forever. Yet HeShe brings all
HisHer extensions to you as host to HimHer.
30
Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind and wander not in vain? It
is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it is a sacrifice to
accept anything less than glory. Learn that you must be
worthy of the Prince/Princess of Peace, born in you in honor of HimHer
Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have sought
to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to be able
to understand its magnitude. Love is not little, and love dwells
in you, for you are host to HimHer. Before the greatness that lives in
you, your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you
have given slip into nothingness. Holy Child of God, when will you learn
that only holiness can content you and give you peace?
31
Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It
is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would
but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby
littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the
glad awareness of the glory that is in him/her. My birth in you is your
awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger but into the altar
to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not
of this world because it is in you. And you are of your
FatherMother. Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever
beyond littleness.
32
Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will as min
FatherMother wills, knowing HisHer Will is constant and at peace forever
with Itself. You will be content with nothing but HisHer Will.
Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. What my
FatherMother loves, I love as HeShe does, and I can no more accept it as
what it is not than HeShe can. And no more can you. When you
have learned to accept what you are, you will make no more gifts to
offer to yourselves, for you will know you are complete, in need of
nothing, and unable to accept anything for yourself. But you
will gladly give, having received. The host of God need not seek
to find anything.
33
If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God and
unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself, salvation will be given
you. Yet think not you can substitute your plan for HisHers. Rather,
join with me in HisHer that we may release all those who would be bound,
proclaiming together that the SonDaughter of God is host to HimHer. Thus
will we let no one forget what you would remember. And thus will
you remember it.
34
Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God and of the God Realm
that is in him/her. For where you would help your brother/sister be,
there will you think you are. Hear not his/her call for hell and
littleness, but only his/her call for the God Realm and greatness.
Forget not that his/her call is yours, and answer him/her with me. God's
power is forever on the side of HisHer host, for it protects only the
peace in which HeShe dwells. Lay not littleness before HisHer holy
altar, which rises above the stars and reaches even to the God Realm
because of what is given it.
35
This course is not beyond immediate learning unless you prefer
to believe that what God wills takes time. And this means only that you
would rather delay the recognition that HisHer Will is so. The
holy instant is this one and every one. The one you want
it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you.
You must decide on when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past
and future, in which you will not find it, it stands in shimmering
readiness for your acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad
awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from
littleness.
36
Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all
littleness go. The instant in which magnitude will dawn upon you is but
as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not
and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so
much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can
find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every
plan that you have made for your salvation in exchange for God's. HisHer
Will content you, and there is nothing else that can bring you peace.
For peace is of God and of no one beside HimHer.
37
Be humble before HimHer and yet great in HimHer. And value no
plan of the ego before the plan of God. For you leave empty your place
in HisHer plan, which you must fulfill if you would join with me, by
your decision to join in any plan but His. I call you to fulfill
your holy part in the plan that HeShe has given to the world for its
release from littleness. God would have HisHer host abide in perfect
freedom. Every allegiance to a plan of salvation that is apart from
HimHer diminishes the value of HisHer Will for you in your own minds.
And yet it is your mind that is the host to HimHer.
38
Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which
your FatherMother has placed HimHerself? This you will recognize in the
holy instant in which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but
His. For there lies peace, perfectly clear because you have been willing
to meet its conditions. You can claim the holy instant any time and
anywhere you want it. In your practice, try to give over every plan you
have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. It is not there.
Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot
know where it is and can only deceive yourself.
39
I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the
extent to which you learn to be willing to accept me is the measure of
the time in which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make
the holy instant yours at once, for the release from littleness in the
mind of the host of God depends on willingness and not on time.
The reason why this course is simple is that truth is simple.
Complexity is of the ego and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to
obscure the obvious.
40
You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and
reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the
simplicity of this reason, for if you do, it will be only because you
prefer not to recognize it and not to let it go. The simple reason,
simply stated, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive
and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is
a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It
is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It
therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept
everything.
41
How can you do this when you would prefer to have private
thoughts and keep them? The only way you could do that
is to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instant
what it is. You believe that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would
not share and that salvation lies in keeping your thoughts to yourself alone.
For in private thoughts, known only to yourself, you think you find a
way to keep what you would have alone and share what you
would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full
communication with those around you and with God Who surrounds all
of you together.
42
Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off because you
would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect
communication while breaking communication holds value to you.
Ask yourselves honestly, "Would I want to have perfect
communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything that interferes
with it go forever?" If the answer is no, then the Holy Spirit's
readiness to give it to you is not enough to make it yours, for you are
not ready to share it with Her. And it cannot come into a mind
that has decided to oppose it. For the holy instant is given and
received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the
single Will that governs all thought.
43
The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require
that you have no thoughts which are not pure. But it does
require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not
of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it.
Yet it would not be Atonement if there were no need for
Atonement. You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long
as you would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is
hidden from you.
44
In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception and
seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep unto yourself. Let the
Holy Spirit's purity shine them away and bring all your awareness to the
readiness for purity She offers you. Thus will She make you ready to
acknowledge that you are host to God and hostage to no one and
nothing.
45
The holy instant is the Holy Spirit's most useful learning device for
teaching you love's meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely.
Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on
which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for
without it you do not understand anything. You would make no attempt to
judge because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know
what anything means. You are afraid of this because you believe
that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that
without the ego all would be love.
46
The past is the ego's chief learning device, for it is in the
past that you learned to define your own needs and acquired methods for
meeting them on your own terms. We said before that to limit love to part
of the SonDaughtership is to bring guilt into your relationships and
thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of
the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are
attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt
not enter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to
appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is
to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the oneness
of the FatherMother and HisHer SonDaughter and thus to attack reality.
47
You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you
would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can
you understand it? To believe that special relationships, with special
love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is
salvation. For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in
which salvation lies. How can you decide that special aspects of the
SonDaughtership can give you more than others? The past has
taught you this. Yet the holy instant teaches you it is not so.
48
Because of guilt, all special relationships have some elements
of fear in them. And this is why they shift and change so frequently.
They are not based on changeless love alone. And love where fear has
entered cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In Her function
as Interpreter of what you have made, the Holy Spirit uses
special relationships, which you have chosen to support the ego,
as a learning experience which points to truth. Under Her teaching, every
relationship becomes a lesson in love.
49
The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. Yet She also perceives that you
have made special relationships, which She would purify and not
let you destroy. However unholy the reason why you made them may be, She
can translate them into holiness by removing as much fear as you will
let Her. You can place any relationship under Her care and be sure that
it will not result in pain if you offer Her your willingness to have it
serve no need but Hers. All the guilt in it arises from your use
of it. All the love from Hers. Do not, then, be afraid to let go your
imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship. Your only
need is Hers.
50
Any relationship which you would substitute for another has not been
offered to the Holy Spirit for Her use. There is no substitute
for love. If you would attempt to substitute one aspect of love for
another, you have placed less value on one and more on
the other. You have not only separated them, but you have also
judged against both. Yet you had judged against yourself first,
or you would never have imagined that you needed them as they were not.
Unless you had seen yourself as without love, you could not have
judged them so like you in lack.
51
The ego's use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes
even further—one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it prefers
different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality to its
own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose
likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in the God Realm or earth
that it resembles, and so however much you seek for its reality, you
cannot find it because it is not real.
52
Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is
not so in the God Realm, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of
the God Realm to them here. In the holy instant no one is special, for
your personal needs intrude on no one to make them different. Without
the values from the past, you would see them all the same and
like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself
and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will
be when you perceive only the present.
53
God knows you now. HeShe remembers nothing, having always
known you exactly as HeShe knows you now. The holy instant parallels
HisHer knowing by bringing all perception out of the past, thus
removing the frame of reference you have built by which to judge your
brothers/sisters. Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes Her
frame of reference for it. Her frame of reference is simply God. The
Holy Spirit's timelessness lies only here. For in the holy instant, free
of the past, you see that love is in you, and you have no need to look without
and snatch it guiltily from where you thought it was.
54
All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant because
the blessing is not limited. In the holy instant, the SonDaughtership
gains as one. And united in your blessing, it becomes
one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. Give to
it any meaning apart from HisHers, and it is impossible to
understand it. Every brother/sister God loves as HeShe loves you—neither
less nor more. HeShe needs them all equally, and so do you. In
time you have been told to offer miracles as the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness directs and let the Holy Spirit
bring to you those who are seeking you. Yet in the holy instant, you
unite directly with God, and all your brothers/sisters join in
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness. Those who are joined
in the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness are in no way
separate. For the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the
Self the SonDaughtership shares, as God shares HisHer Self with the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness.
55
Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has createdmanifested
it beyond judgment out of HisHer need to extend HisHer Love.
With love in you, you have no need except to extend it. In the
holy instant, there is no conflict of needs, for there is only one.
For the holy instant reaches to eternity and to the Mind of God. And it
is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be
understood.
56
It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not
suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a
relationship and find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit's
teaching, all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet
they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each
one for its ability to satisfy you completely arises only from
perfect faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt
remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the
possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother/sister
what he/she is not because you would have him/her so.
57
You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept
the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without
for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith
in you in place of all your doubt. But forget not that my faith must be
as perfect in all your brothers/sisters as it is in you, or it would be
a limited gift to you. In the holy instant, we share our faith
in God’s SonDaughter because we recognize together that heshe is wholly
worthy of it, and in our appreciation of hisher worth, we cannot
doubt hisher holiness. And so we love himher.
58
All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness is power,
and by sharing it, it gains in strength. If you seek for
satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you
must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain
he/she loses. Someone must always lose if you perceive
yourself as weak. Yet there is another interpretation of relationships
which transcends the concept of loss of power completely.
59
You do not find it difficult to believe that, when another calls on God
for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that, by
God's answer to him/her, your hope of answer is diminished. On
the contrary, you are far more inclined to regard his/her success as
witness to the possibility of yours. That is because you
recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith
in HimHer is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to
accept is the fact that, like your FatherMother, you are an
idea. And like HimHer, you can give yourself completely, wholly
without loss, and only with gain.
60
Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict. In the world
of scarcity, love has no meaning, and peace is impossible. For gain and
loss are both accepted, and so no one is aware that perfect love
is in him/her. In the holy instant, you recognize the idea of
love in you and unite this idea with the Mind that thought it and could
not relinquish it. By holding it within itself, there was
no loss. The holy instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of
your brothers/sisters in your mind, experiencing not loss, but completion.
From this it follows you can only give. And this is
love, for this alone is natural under the laws of God.
61
In the holy instant, the laws of God prevail, and only they have
meaning. The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning at all. When
the SonDaughter of God accepts the laws of God as what heshe gladly
wills, it is impossible that heshe be bound or limited in any way. In
this instant, heshe is as free as God would have himher be. For the
instant heshe refuses to be bound, heshe is not bound.
62
In the holy instant, nothing happens that has not always been. Only the
veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has
changed. Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as
the veil of time is pushed aside. No one who has not yet experienced the
lifting of the veil and felt himself/herself drawn irresistibly into the
light behind it can have faith in love without fear. Yet the
Holy Spirit gives you this faith because She offered it to me
and I accepted it. Fear not the holy instant will be denied you,
for I denied it not. And through me the Holy Spirit gave it unto you, as
you will give it. Let no need that you perceive obscure your need
of this. For in the holy instant, you will recognize the only need the
aspects of the SonDaughter of God share equally, and by this recognition
you will join with me in offering what is needed.
63
It is through us that peace will come. Join me in the idea
of peace, for in ideas minds can communicate. If you would give
yourself as your FatherMother gives HisHer Self, you will learn
to understand selfhood. And therein is love's meaning understood. But
remember that understanding is of the mind and only of
the mind. Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in
the mind with it. If you were not only an idea and nothing else,
you could not be in full communication with all that ever was. Yet as
long as you prefer to be something else, or would attempt to be
nothing else and something else together, the language of
communication, which you know perfectly, you will not remember.
64
In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of communication
with all your brothers/sisters is remembered with HimHer. For
communication is remembered together, as is truth. There is no
exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone and with it goes
the whole basis for exclusion. Without its source, exclusion
vanishes. And this permits your Source and that of all your
brothers/sisters to replace it in your awareness. God and the power of
God will take their rightful place in you, and you will experience the
full communication of ideas with ideas. Through your ability to do this,
you will learn what you must be, for you will begin to
understand what your CreatorManifestor is and what HisHer
creationmanifestation is along with HimHer.
65
Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship and always
obscured by it is the powerful attraction of the FatherMother for HisHer
SonDaughter. There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there
is no other love. This is the only love that is fully
given and fully returned. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly
pure, everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the
basis for any relationship in which the ego enters. For every
relationship on which the ego embarks is special. The ego
establishes relationships only to get something. And it would
keep the giver bound to itself through guilt.
66
It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without
anger, for the ego believes that anger makes friends. This is
not its statement, but it is its purpose. For the ego really believes
that it can get and keep by making guilty. This is its one
attraction; an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all,
except that no one recognizes it. For the ego always seems
to attract through love and has no attraction at all to anyone who
perceives that it attracts through guilt.
67
The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is.
For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly,
and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go.
No one would choose to let go what he/she believes has value. Yet the
attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not
looked at what it is and have judged it completely in the dark. As we
bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever
wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed at this, for
ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. The host of God can
have no real investment here.
68
We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but
in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you.
For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that what you do to others, you
have escaped. The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival
depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil
intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it,
it will enable you to direct the anger that it holds outward, thus protecting
you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special
relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane
belief—that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the
safer you become.
69
It is this chain that binds the SonDaughter of God to guilt, and it is
this chain the Holy Spirit would remove from hisher holy mind. For the
chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who cannot
make himherself host to the ego. In the name of hisher release, and in
the name of Her Who would release himher, let us look more closely at
the relationships which the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge
them truly. For it is certain that, if you will look at them,
you will offer them gladly to Her. What HeShe can make of them, you do
not know, but you will become willing to find out if you are willing,
first, to perceive what you have made of them.
70
In one way or another, every relationship which the ego makes is based
on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger.
The "sacrifice," which it regards as purification, is actually the root
of its bitter resentment. For it would much prefer to attack directly
and avoid delaying what it really wants. Yet the ego
acknowledges "reality" as it sees it and recognizes that no one could
interpret direct attack as love. Yet to make guilty is
direct attack but does not seem to be. For the guilty expect
attack, and having asked for it, they are attracted to
it.
71
In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want
seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do.
For each one thinks that he/she has sacrificed something to the other
and hates him/her for it. Yet this is what he/she thinks he/she
wants. He/she is not in love with the other at all. He/she merely
believes he/she is in love with sacrifice. And for this
sacrifice, which he/she demanded of himself/herself, he/she
demands the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself/herself
as well. Forgiveness becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to
forgive another is to lose him/her. For it is only by attack without
forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt which holds all its
relationships together.
72
Yet they only seem to be together. For relationships, to the
ego, mean only that bodies are together. It is always physical
closeness that the ego demands, and it does not object where the mind
goes or what it thinks, for this seems unimportant. As long as
the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego,
the mind is private, and only the body can be shared. Ideas are
basically of no concern, except as they draw the body of another closer
or farther. And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as good or
bad. What makes another guilty and holds him/her through guilt
is "good." What releases him/her from guilt is "bad," because
he/she would no longer believe that bodies communicate, and so he/she
would be "gone."
73
Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would "bless"
all unions. And those who are united at its altar accept
suffering and sacrifice as the price of union. In their angry alliances,
born of the fear of loneliness and yet dedicated to the continuance
of loneliness, they seek relief from guilt by increasing it in the other.
For they believe that this decreases it in them. The other seems
always to be attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little
ways, perhaps "unconsciously," yet never without demand of sacrifice.
The fury of those joined at the ego's altar far exceeds your awareness
of it. For what the ego really wants, you do not realize.
74
Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special
relationship which the ego has "blessed," for anger is its
blessing. Anger takes the many forms, but it cannot long deceive those
who will learn that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt
cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is nothing
more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is
the only basis which the ego accepts for special relationships.
Guilt is the only need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it,
guilt will remain attractive to you.
75
Yet remember this—to be with a body is not communication. And if
you think it is, you will feel guilty about communication and will be afraid
to hear the Holy Spirit, recognizing in Her voice your own need
to communicate. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear. And
how can She communicate with you while you believe that to communicate
is to make yourself alone? It is clearly insane to believe that
by communicating you will be abandoned. And yet you do believe
it. For you think that your minds must be kept private or you will lose
them, and if your bodies are together your minds remain your
own. The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would keep minds
apart. For bodies cannot forgive. They can only do as the mind directs.
76
The illusion of the autonomy of the body and its ability to
overcome loneliness is but the working of the ego's plan to establish
its own autonomy. As long as you believe that to be with a body
is companionship, you will be compelled to attempt to keep your
brother/sister in his/her body, held there by guilt. And you will see safety
in guilt and danger in communication. For the ego will always
teach that loneliness is solved by guilt and that communication is the cause
of loneliness. And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, you have
learned it.
77
Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt.
It is the Holy Spirit's teaching function to instruct those who believe
that communication is damnation that communication is salvation.
And She will do so, for the power of God in Her and you is
joined in real relationship, so holy and so strong that it can
overcome even this without fear. It is through the holy instant
that what seems impossible is accomplished, making it evident
that it is not impossible. In the holy instant, guilt holds no
attraction, since communication has been restored. And guilt, whose only
purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here.
78
Here there is no concealment and no private thoughts. The willingness to
communicate attracts communication to it and overcomes
loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness here, for there is
no desire to exclude anyone from your completion in sudden recognition
of the value of his/her part in it. In the protection of your
wholeness, all are invited and made welcome. And you understand that
your completion is God's, Whose only need is to have you be
complete. For your completion makes you HisHer in your awareness. And
here it is that you experience yourself as you were createdmanifested
and as you are.
79
The holy instant does not replace the need for learning, for the Holy
Spirit must not leave you as your Teacheress until the holy instant has
extended far beyond time. For a teaching assignment such as Hers, She
must use everything in this world for your release. She must side with
every sign or token of your willingness to learn of Her what the truth
must be. She is swift to utilize whatever you offer Her on behalf of
this. Her concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of your fear
of forgiveness, which She perceives as clearly as She knows forgiveness
is release, She will teach you to remember that forgiveness is
not loss but your salvation. And that in complete
forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, you
are absolved completely.
80
Hear Her gladly and learn of Her that you have need of no special
relationships at all. You but seek in them what you have thrown away.
And through them you will never learn the value of what you have cast
aside but what you still desire with all your hearts. Let us join
together in making the holy instant all that there is by desiring that
it be all that there is. God’s SonDaughter has such great need
of your willingness to strive for this that you cannot conceive of need
so great. Behold the only need that God and HisHer SonDaughter share and
will to meet together. You are not alone in this. The will of your
creationsmanifestations call to you to share your will with them. Turn,
then, in peace from guilt to God and them.
81
Relate only with what will never leave you and what you
can never leave. The loneliness of God’s SonDaughter is the loneliness
of hisher FatherMother. Refuse not the awareness of your completion and
seek not to restore it to yourselves. Fear not to give redemption over
to your Redeemer's love. She will not fail you, for She comes from One
Who cannot fail. Accept your sense of failure as nothing
more than a mistake in who you are. For the holy host of God is beyond
failure, and nothing that he/she wills can be denied. You are
forever in a relationship so holy that it calls to everyone to escape
from loneliness and join you in your love. And where you are must
everyone seek and find you there.
82
Think but an instant on this: God gave the SonDaughtership to you to
ensure your perfect creationmanifestation. This was HisHer gift, for as
HeShe withheld HimHerself not from you, HeShe withheld not HisHer
creationmanifestation. Nothing that ever was createdmanifested but is
yours. Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe,
being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies you
perceive. For all its parts are joined in God through the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, where they become like to their
FatherMother. For the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness knows
of no separation from Her FatherMother, Who is Her one relationship, in
which She gives as Her FatherMother gives to Her.
83
The Holy Spirit is God's attempt to free you of what HeShe does not
understand. And because of the Source of the attempt, it will succeed.
The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God does, for She would teach you
what you do not understand. God would respond to every
need, whatever form it takes. And so HeShe has kept this channel open to
receive HisHer communication to you and yours to HimHer. God does not
understand your problem in communication, for HeShe does not share it
with you. It is only you who believe that it is understandable.
84
The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable, and yet HeShe
understands it because you have made it. In Her alone lies the
awareness of what God cannot know and what you do not understand. It is
Her holy function to accept them both, and by removing every element of
disagreement, to join them into one. She will do this because it
is Her function. Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible to Her
Who knows it must be possible because it is the Will of God. And
let Her Whose teaching is only of God teach you the only
meaning of relationships. For God createdmanifested the only
relationship which has meaning, and that is HisHer relationship with you.
85
As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers/sisters to the
body, so would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the
Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is
this shift in vision which is accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it
is needful for you to learn just what this shift entails, so you will
become willing to make it permanent. Given this willingness, it will not
leave you, for it is permanent. For once you have accepted it as
the only perception you want, it is translated into knowledge by
the part which God HimHerself plays in the Atonement, for it is the only
step in it HeShe understands. Therefore, in this there will be no delay
when you are ready for it. God is ready now, but you are
not.
86
Our task is but to continue as fast as possible the necessary process of
looking straight at all the interference and seeing it exactly
as it is. For it is impossible to recognize as wholly without
gratification what you think you want. The body is the symbol of
the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation. And both are
nothing more than attempts to limit communication and thereby to make it
impossible. For communication must be unlimited in order to have
meaning, and deprived of meaning, it will not satisfy you
completely. Yet it remains the only means by which you can establish
real relationships.
87
Real relationships have no limits, having been established by
God. In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body
in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given
you. But to see this, it is necessary to give up every use the ego has
for the body and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose
you would share with it. For the ego would limit everyone to a body for
its purposes, and while you think it has a purpose, you
will choose to utilize the means by which it tries to turn its
purpose into accomplishment. This will never be accomplished.
Yet you have surely recognized that the ego, whose goals are altogether
unattainable, will strive for them with all its might and will do so
with the strength which you have given it.
88
It is impossible to divide your strength between the God Realm and hell,
God and the ego, and release your power unto creationmanifestation,
which is the only purpose for which it was given you. Love would always
give increase. Limits are demanded by the ego, representing its demands
to make little and ineffectual. Limit your vision of a brother/sister to
his/her body, which you will do as long as you would not release
him/her from it, and you have denied his/her gift to you.
His/her body cannot give it. And seek it not through yours.
Yet your minds are already continuous, and their union need only
be accepted, and the loneliness in the God Realm is gone.
89
If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the love of God for you
and the need your creationsmanifestations have to be with you forever,
you would experience the attraction of the eternal. No one can hear Her
speak of this and long remain willing to linger here. For it is
your will to be in the God Realm, where you are complete and quiet in
such sure and loving relationships that any limit is impossible.
Would you not exchange your little relationships for this? For the body
is little and limited, and only those whom you would see without
the limits the ego would impose on them can offer you the gift of
freedom.
90
You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception
and no idea of all the loveliness that you could see. But this you must
remember—the attraction of guilt opposes the attraction of God.
HisHer attraction for you remains unlimited, but because your power,
being His, is as great as His, you can turn away from love. What you
invest in guilt, you withdraw from God. And your sight grows weak and
dim and limited, for you have attempted to separate the FatherMother
from the SonDaughter and limit their communication. Seek not Atonement
in further separation. And limit not your vision of God’s
SonDaughter to what interferes with hisher release and what the
Holy Spirit must undo to set himher free. For hisher belief in
limits has imprisoned himher.
91
When the body ceases to attract you and when you place no value on it as
a means for getting anything, then there will be no interference
in communication, and your thoughts will be as free as God's. As you let
the Holy Spirit teach you how to use the body only for purposes
of communication and renounce its use for separation and attack which
the ego sees in it, you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In
the holy instant there are no bodies, and you experience only
the attraction of God. Accepting it as undivided, you join HimHer wholly
in an instant. [For you would place no limits on your union with
HimHer.] The reality of this relationship becomes the only truth that
you could ever want. All truth is here.
92
It is in your power in time to delay the perfect union
of the FatherMother and the SonDaughter. For in this world, the
attraction of guilt does stand between them. Neither time nor
season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit's
function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is the
season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know
not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let mig celebrate your
birth through Her. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave
to you. Release me as I will
your release. The time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we
are apart.
93
The holy instant is truly the time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness. For in this liberating instant, no guilt is laid upon the
SonDaughter of God, and hisher unlimited power is thus restored to
himher. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I will to offer
you? And to see me is to see me in everyone and offer everyone
the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God
is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself, you ask of me. Learn now
that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on
giving. And by this limitation, you have limited acceptance of the gift
I offer you.
94
We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to
accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no
attraction for you. For in our union, you will accept all of our
brothers/sisters. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to
give. Give it to me, that you may have it. The time of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is the time appointed for
the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance
of it, you have offered it to everyone. It is in your
power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time
of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness be now.
95
It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one
shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one
mistake. It seems like the many, but it is all the same. For though the
ego takes the many forms, it is always the same idea. What is
not love is always fear and nothing else. It is not necessary to
follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows
underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different
from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long
as you would retain the principle which governs all of them.
When you are willing to regard them not as separate but as different
manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want,
they go together. The idea is simply this—you believe that it is
possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you
think you have, and the decision which you believe that you must make.
96
You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that
sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your
thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing
to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you
cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. And it is this that
you must look upon—sacrifice is attack, not love. If you would
accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. Guilt
cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if
there is sacrifice, as you are convinced, someone must pay and someone
must get. And the only question which remains to be decided is how
much is the price for getting what.
97
As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt
away whatever you think and purchase peace. And the payment does
not seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does
demand payment, it never seems to be demanding it of you. For
you are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is
treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will
never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it
homeless. For when this recognition dawns clearly, you will not be
deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your
sight.
98
Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides
behind them all—that love demands sacrifice and is therefore inseparable
from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which
must be paid by fear. How fearful, then, has God become to you,
and how great a sacrifice do you believe HisHer love demands! For total
love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less
of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils,
one to be feared a little, but the other to be destroyed. For you see
love as destructive, and your only question is who is to be
destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this question in your
special relationships, in which you are both destroyer and destroyed in
part, but with the idea of being able to be neither completely. And this
you think saves you from God, Whose total love would completely destroy
you.
99
You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice,
but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice and only
of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful
that you cannot accept it where it is. But the real
price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God
away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of
you, you thought it safer to project HimHer outward and away
from you and not be host to HimHer. To HimHer you ascribed the ego's
treachery, inviting it to take HisHer place to protect you from
HimHer. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in
that would destroy you and does demand total sacrifice of you.
No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an
invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the
sacrifice complete.
100
You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps
no bargains and would leave you nothing. [Nor can you be partial host
to it.] You will have to choose between total freedom and total
bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried the
many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision
which must be made. And yet it is the recognition of the decision just
as it is that makes the decision so easy! Salvation is simple,
being of God and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to
project it from you and see it outside yourself. In you are both
the question and the answer—the demand for sacrifice and the peace of
God.
101
Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of
your making. And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from
where it is not. Your brothers/sisters and your FatherMother have become
very fearful to you. And you would bargain with them for a few special
relationships in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not
try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the Thought that has been
given you. When they are brought together and perceived where they are,
the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening and as
simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of
sleep.
102
The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside
yourself but shining in the God Realm within and accept it as the sign
the time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has come.
She comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind of anyone
is asked by Her. In Her Presence, the whole idea of sacrifice loses all
meaning. For She is Host to God. And you need but invite Her in Who is
there already, by recognizing that Her Host is One, and no
thought alien to Her Oneness can abide with Her there. Love must be
total to give Her welcome, for the Presence of Holiness createsmanifests
the holiness which surrounds it. No fear can touch the host who cradles
God in the time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, for
the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence which She protects and
Whose power protects Her.
103
This the Christmas, give the Holy Spirit everything that would
hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely that you may join
with Her in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by
releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for release is total,
and when you have accepted it with me, you will give it with me.
All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our
relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our
FatherMother, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear
in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. And
without sacrifice, there love must be.
104
You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice
is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as
love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace
is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God.
Through guilt you exclude your FatherMother and your brothers/sisters
from yourself. Through peace you invite them back and realize that they
are where your invitation bids them be. What you excluded from yourself
seems fearful, for you endowed it with fear and tried to cast it out
though it was part of you. Who can perceive part of himself/herself as
loathsome and live within himself/herself in peace? And who can try to
resolve the perceived conflict of the God Realm and hell in him/her by
casting the God Realm out and giving it the attributes of hell without
experiencing himself/herself as incomplete and lonely?
105
As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you
perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also
perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing
others. For who could thrust the God Realm and its CreatorManifestor
aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And who can suffer
sacrifice and loss without attempting to restore
himself/herself? Yet how could you accomplish this yourselves when the
basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the
deprivation? For deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack
is justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation,
attack becomes salvation, and sacrifice becomes love.
106
So is it that in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find
it. Yet you find not love. It is impossible to deny what love is and
still recognize it. The meaning of love lies in what you have
cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning at all apart from
you. It is what you preferred to keep that has no meaning, while
all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the
universe and holds the universe together in its meaning. For unless the
universe were joined in you, it would be apart from God, and to
be without HimHer is to be without meaning.
107
In the holy instant, the condition of love is met, for minds are joined
without the body's interference, and where there is communication, there
is peace. The Princess of Peace was born to reestablish the condition of
love by teaching that communication remains unbroken, even if the body
is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary
means of communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will
realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing, and
communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed.
Where, then, is sacrifice?
108
The lesson I was born to teach and still would teach to all my
brothers/sisters is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere.
For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it
re-establishes, love comes of itself. Let no despair darken the joy of
the Christmas, for the time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating
peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so will you offer me the
love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are
deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, which I give you that you
may give it and return it to the FatherMother, Who gave it to me. For in
the time of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness,
communication is restored, and She joins us in the celebration of HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s creationmanifestation.
109
God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive HimHer and let
HimHer enter and abide where HeShe would be. And by your welcome does
HeShe welcome you into HimHerself, for what is contained in you who
welcome HimHer is returned to HimHer. And we but celebrate
HisHer Wholeness as we welcome HimHer into ourselves. Those who receive
the FatherMother are one with HimHer, being host to HimHer Who
createdmanifested them. And by allowing HimHer to enter, the remembrance
of the FatherMother enters with HimHer, and with HimHer they remember
the only relationship they ever had and ever want to have.
110
This is the weekend in which a new year will be born from the time of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness. I have perfect faith
in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and
you will make complete and not destroy. Say and understand this:
112
So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we
have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born and
take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make
this year different by making it all the same. And let all
your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.
1
To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is
what you must refuse to understand. That is the ego's
interpretation of empathy and is always used to form a special
relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize
is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Her use it in Her
way. [Her way is very different.] She does not understand suffering and
would have you teach it is not understandable. When She relates
through you, She does not relate through the ego to another ego. She
does not join in pain, knowing that healing pain is not accomplished by
delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the
delusion.
2
The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies
in the fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems and in
certain people. These it selects out and joins with. And
it never joins except to strengthen itself. [Having identified
with what it thinks it understands, it sees itself and
would increase itself by sharing what is like itself.]
Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes to weaken,
and to weaken is always to attack. You do not know what
empathizing means. Yet of this you may be sure—if you will merely sit
quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relate through you, you will
empathize with strength and both of you will gain in
strength, and not in weakness.
3
Your part is only to remember this—you do not want anything you
value to come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it nor to
heal it in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have
learned of empathy is from the past. And there is nothing from
the past that you would share, for there is nothing there that you would
keep. Do not use empathy to make the past real and so perpetuate
it. Step gently aside and let the healing be done for you. Keep
but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you
may be to judge any situation and to determine your response by
judging it. Focus your mind only on this:
5
True empathy is of Her Who knows what it is. You will learn Her
interpretation of it if you let Her use your capacity for strength
and not for weakness. She will not desert you, but be sure that
you desert not Hende. Humility is strength in this sense
only—to recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to
recognize and accept the fact that She does know. You are not
sure that She will do Her part because you have never yet done yours
completely. You will not know how to respond to what you do not
understand. Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego's
triumphant use of empathy for its glory.
6
The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother/sister.
And yet you know no triumph but this. This is not knowledge, and
the form of empathy that would bring this about is so distorted that it
would imprison what it would release. The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet
they have a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Her not. You are
the learner; She the Teacheress. Do not confuse your role with Hers, for
this will never bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Her, for it
is Her perception and Her strength that you would share. And let Her
offer you Her strength and Her perception to be shared through you.
7
The meaning of love is lost in any relationship which looks to weakness
and hopes to find love there. The power of love, which is its
meaning, lies in the strength of God, which hovers over it and blesses
it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. Let this be, and
do not try to substitute your "miracle" for this. We once said
that if a brother/sister asks a foolish thing of you, to do it. But be
certain that this does not mean to do a foolish thing that would hurt
either him/her or you, for what would hurt one will hurt
the other. Foolish requests are foolish for the simple reason that they
conflict because they contain an element of specialness. Only the Holy
Spirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. And She will teach
you how to meet both without losing either.
8
You will attempt to do this only in secrecy. And you will think
that, by meeting the needs of one, you do not jeopardize another because
you keep them separate and secret from each other. That is not the way,
for it leads not to light and truth. No needs will long be left unmet if
you leave them all to Her Whose function is to meet them. That
is Her function and not yours. She will not meet them secretly,
for She would share everything you give through Her. And that is why
She gives it.
9
What you give through Her is for the whole SonDaughtership, not
for part of it. Leave Her Hers function, for She will fulfill it if you
but ask HimHer to enter your relationships and bless them for
you.
10
You still think holiness is difficult because you cannot see how it can
be extended to include everyone. And you have learned that it must
include everyone to be holy. Concern yourselves not with the
extension of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand.
Nor do you do them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits
you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them. Why should
you worry how the miracle extends to all the SonDaughtership when you do
not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to
understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their
attributes would have to be miraculous, being part of them.
11
There is a tendency to fragment and then to be concerned about the truth
of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding or
looking away from the whole to what you think you might be better
able to understand. For this is but another way in which you would still
try to keep understanding to yourself. A better and far
more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do not understand
them, either in part or whole. Yet you have done them.
Therefore, your understanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is still
impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must
be something in you that does understand.
12
To you the miracle cannot seem natural because what you have
done to hurt your minds has made them so unnatural that they do
not remember what is natural to them. And when you are told
about it, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole
and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural. For it is
the way God thinks, and what is natural to HimHer is natural to
you. Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of
difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a
contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could understand their
meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity.
13
You have done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have
not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached
another mind and joined with it. When two minds join as one and
share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the
SonDaughtership as one has been made. When you have made this joining as
the Holy Spirit bids you and have offered it to Her to use as She knows
how, Her natural perception of your gift enables Her to understand it
and you to use Her understanding on your behalf. It is
impossible to convince you of the reality of what has clearly been
accomplished through your willingness, as long as you believe that you
must understand it or else it is not real.
14
You think your lack of understanding is a loss to you, and so
you are unwilling to believe that what has happened is true. But can you
really believe that all that has happened, even though you do not
understand it, has not happened? Yet this is your
position. You would have perfect faith in the Holy Spirit and in the
effects of Her teaching if you were not afraid to acknowledge
what She taught you. For this acknowledgment means that what has
happened you do not understand but that you are willing to accept it because
it has happened.
15
How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on making it
unreal? And are you really safer in maintaining the unreality of
what has happened than you would be in joyously accepting it for what it
is and giving thanks for it? Honor the truth that has been given you,
and be glad you do not understand it. Miracles are natural to God and to
the One Who speaks for HimHer. For Her task is to translate the miracle
into the knowledge which it represents and which is lost to you. Let Her
understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn away
from all the witnesses that She has given you to Her reality.
16
No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do not want. Yet
your relationship with Her is real and has been
demonstrated. Regard this not with fear but with rejoicing. The One you
called upon is with you. Bid Her welcome and honor Her
witnesses, who bring you the glad tidings She has come. It is true, just
as you fear, that to acknowledge Her is to deny all that you
think you know. But it was never true. What gain is there to you
in clinging to it and denying the evidence for truth? For you have come
too near to truth to renounce it now, and you will yield to its
compelling attraction. You can delay this now but only a little while.
The host of God has called to you, and you have heard. Never
again will you be wholly willing not to listen.
17
This is a year of joy in which your listening will increase, and peace
will grow with its increase. The power of holiness and the weakness
of attack have both been brought into awareness. And this has
been accomplished in minds firmly convinced that holiness is weakness
and attack is power. Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teach
you that your Teacheress is not of you? But remember also that
whenever you have listened to Her interpretation, the results have
brought you joy. Would you prefer the results of your
interpretation, considering honestly what they have been? God wills you
better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom God loves with
perfect love?
18
Do not interpret against God's Love, for you have the many
witnesses which speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf
could fail to see and hear them. This year, determine not to deny what
has been given you by God. [Awake and share it], for that is the only
reason HeShe has called to you. HisHer Voice has spoken clearly, and yet
you have so little faith in what you heard because you have preferred to
place still greater faith in the disaster you have made. Today
let us resolve together to accept the joyful tidings that
disaster is not real and that reality is not disaster.
19
Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything.
There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. For love asks
only that you be happy and will give you everything that makes
for happiness. You have never given any problem to the Holy Spirit She
has not solved for you, nor will you ever do so. You have never tried to
solve anything yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought
these facts together and made sense of them?
20
This is the year for the application of the ideas which have
been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces to be used and not held
idly by. They have already proved their power sufficiently for you to
place your faith in them and not in their denial. This year invest in
truth, and let it work in peace. Have faith in what has faith in you.
Think what you have really seen and heard and recognize
it. Can you be alone with witnesses like these?
21
You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to accept
the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught
and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled
to recognize that your Teacheress came from beyond your thought system
and so could look upon it fairly and perceive it was untrue. And She
must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system and
one with nothing in common with yours. For certainly what She
has taught, and what you have taught through Her, have nothing in common
with what you taught before She came. And the results have been to bring
peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared, to be
replaced by joy.
22
You have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. We
once said, "By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know
themselves." For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your
teaching. The ego's teaching produces immediate results because its
decisions are immediately accepted as your choice. And this
acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly.
Cause and effect are very clear in the ego's thought system because all
your learning has been directed towards establishing the
relationship between them. And would you not have faith in what you have
so diligently taught yourself to believe? Yet remember how much care you
have exerted in choosing its witnesses and in avoiding those which spoke
for the cause of truth and its effects.
23
Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show
you that you do not perceive the SonDaughtership as one? And does it not
also show you that you do not regard yourself as one? For it is
impossible to teach successfully wholly without conviction, and
it is equally impossible that conviction be outside of you. You
could never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it.
And it must be that what you taught came from yourself. And yet,
this Self you clearly do not know and do not recognize It even
though It functions. What functions must be there. And it is
only if you deny what It has done that you could possibly deny
Its Presence.
24
This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what
you are but have not let what you are teach you. You have been
very careful to avoid the obvious and not to see the real cause
and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. Yet within you is everything
you taught. What can it be that has not learned it? It must be
this that is really outside yourself, not by your own
projection, but in truth. And it is this that you have taken in
that is not you. What you accept into your minds does not really
change them. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. And the
seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved by
separating yourself from the illusion and not from
truth.
25
Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is part of you.
Createdmanifested by God, She left neither God nor HisHer
creationmanifestation. She is both God and you, as you are God
and Her together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you
than you tried to take away. HeShe protected both your
creationsmanifestations and you together, keeping one with you what you
would exclude. And they will take the place of what you took in to
replace them. They are quite real as part of the Self you do not know.
And they communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their power and
gratitude to you for their creationmanifestation they offer gladly to
your teaching of yourself, who is their home. You who are host to God
are also host to them. For nothing real has ever left the mind of its
CreatorManifestor. And what is not real was never there.
26
You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold
HimHer and whom HeShe holds are the universe, all else must be outside,
where nothing is. You have taught this, and from far off in the
universe, yet not beyond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have
gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and
God's to strengthen your faith in what you taught. For what you taught
is true. Alone you stand outside your teaching and apart from
it. But with them you must learn that you but taught yourself
and learned from the conviction you shared with them.
27
This year you will begin to learn and make learning commensurate with
teaching. You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. Though
you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For
the joy of teaching is in the learner, who offers it to the
teacher in gratitude and shares it with him/her. As you learn, your
gratitude to your Self, Who teaches you what heshe is, will grow and
help you honor himher. And you will learn hisher power and strength and
purity, and love himher as hisher FatherMother does. Hisher Realm has no
limits and no end, and there is nothing in himher that is not perfect
and eternal. All this is you, and nothing outside of this is
you.
28
To your most holy Self, all praise is due for what you are and for what
heshe is Who createdmanifested you as you are. Sooner or later must
everyone bridge the gap which he/she imagines exists between his/her
selves. Each one builds this bridge which carries him/her across
the gap as soon as he/she is willing to expend some little effort on
behalf of bridging it. His/her little efforts are powerfully
supplemented by the strength of the God Realm and by the united will of
all who make the God Realm what it is, being joined within it. And so
the one who would cross over is literally transported there.
29
Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted
firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the
other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across. For you will
come where you would be and where your Self awaits you.
30
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom
lies in looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of
love except for this. For the special love relationship, in which the
meaning of love is lost, is undertaken solely to offset the hate
but not to let it go. Your salvation will rise clearly before
your open eyes as you look on this. You cannot limit hate. The
special love relationship will not offset it but will merely drive it
underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it into
sight and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to
balance hate with love that makes love meaningless to you. The
extent of the split that lies in this you do not realize. And until
you do, the split will remain unrecognized and therefore unhealed.
31
The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict
which does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and
the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go
through this last undoing quite unharmed and will at last emerge as
yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be not
unwilling now. You are too near, and you will cross the bridge in
perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion
of love will never satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on
the other side, will give you everything.
32
The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive
effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no
attempt to rise above the storm into the sunlight. On the
contrary, it emphasizes guilt outside the haven by attempting to
build barricades against it and keep within them. The special love
relationship is not perceived as a value in itself, but as a place of
safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart. The special love
partner is acceptable only as long as he/she serves this purpose. Hatred
can enter and indeed is welcome in some aspects of the
relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If
the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on
the grounds of disillusionment.
33
Love is not an illusion. It is a fact. Where disillusionment is
possible, there was not love but hate. For hate is an illusion,
and what can change was never love. It is certain that those who
select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living and use them for
any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to live
with guilt rather than die of it. This is the choice they see.
And love to them is only an escape from death. They seek it desperately
but not in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly to
them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the love
relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. For
then the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in, and hatred
triumphs.
34
There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with the "triumph
of love" at all. The illusion of love can triumph over the
illusion of hate, but always at the price of making both
illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long will love be
an illusion to you. And then the only choice which remains possible is
which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict in the choice
between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would
hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one
between illusions, for this choice does not matter. Where one
choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision must be one of
despair.
35
Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all
of the barriers within yourself which you have built against it.
It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is
necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear,
whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into
another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself, you can be
certain that you perceive hatred within and are afraid of it.
Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only
from its reality.
36
Recognize this, for it is true, and truth must be recognized if
it is to be distinguished from illusion: The special love relationship
is an attempt [to bring love into separation. And, as such, it
is nothing more than an attempt] to bring love into fear and make it real
in fear. In fundamental violation of love's condition, the special love
relationship would accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion could
this be done? It is essential that we look very closely at exactly what
it is you think you can do to solve the dilemma, which seems very real
to you, but which does not exist. You have come very close to truth, and
only this stands between you and the bridge that leads you into it.
37
The God Realm waits silently, and your creationsmanifestations are
holding out their hands to help you cross and welcome them. For it is they
you seek. You seek but for your own completion, and it is they
who render you complete. The special love relationship is but a shabby
substitute for what makes you whole in truth, not in illusion.
Your relationship with them is without guilt, and this enables you to
look on all your brothers/sisters with gratitude because your
creationsmanifestations were createdmanifested in union with
them. Acceptance of your creationsmanifestations is the acceptance of
the oneness of creationmanifestation, without which you could never be
complete. No specialness can offer you what God has given and what you
are joined with HimHer in giving.
38
Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly in God,
willing for nothing special but only to be wholly like unto HimHer,
completing HimHer by your completion. Fear not to cross to the
abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God
and of HisHer SonDaughter established forever. Seek not for this in the
bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything
fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon all
illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept
completion, and only this, there is God completed and HisHer
SonDaughter with HimHer.
39
The bridge that leads to union in yourself must lead to
knowledge, for it was built with God beside you and will lead you
straight to HimHer, where your completion rests wholly compatible with
Hishers. Every illusion which you accept into your mind by judging it to
be attainable removes your own sense of completion and thus denies the
wholeness of your FatherMother. Every fantasy, be it of love or hate,
deprives you of knowledge, for fantasies are the veil behind which truth
is hidden. To lift the veil which seems so dark and heavy, it is only
needful to value truth beyond all fantasy and to be entirely
unwilling to settle for illusion in place of truth.
40
Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey
seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call
of hate, and see no fantasies[, for your completion lies in truth and nowhere
else]. See in the call of hate and in every fantasy that rises to
delay you but the call for help which rises ceaselessly from you to your
CreatorManifestor. Would HeShe not answer you whose completion is
HisHers? HeShe loves you wholly without illusion, as you must love. For
love is wholly without illusion and therefore wholly without
fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never
forgotten what makes HimHer whole. In your completion lies the memory of
HisHer wholeness and HisHer gratitude to you for HisHer completion. In
HisHer link with you lie both HisHer inability to forget and your
ability to remember. In HimHer are joined your willingness to love and
all the love of God, Who forgot you not.
41
Your FatherMother can no more forget the truth in you than you can fail
to remember it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to HimHer, made from your
willingness to unite with HimHer and createdmanifested by HisHer joy in
union with you. The journey that seemed to be endless is almost
complete, for what is endless is very near. You have almost
recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from all illusions now,
and let nothing stand in the way of truth. We will take the last foolish
journey away from truth together, and then together we go
straight to God in joyous answer to HisHer call for HisHer completion.
42
If special relationships of any kind would hinder God's completion, can
they have value to you? What would interfere with God must
interfere with you. Only in time does interference in God's completion
seem to be possible. The bridge that HeShe would carry you across lifts
you from time into eternity. Waken from time and answer fearlessly the
call of HimHer Who gave eternity to you in your creationmanifestation.
On this side of the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing. But
as you step lightly across it, upheld by timelessness, you are
directed straight to the Heart of God. At its center, and only
there, you are safe forever because you are complete forever.
There is no veil the love of God in us together cannot lift. The way to
truth is open. Follow it with me.
43
In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize
that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt, and
attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they seem
to be gone. All these must be understood for what they are. Whatever
form they take, they are always an attack on the self to make the other
guilty. We have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of
what is really being attempted that we have not touched upon.
44
Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is always directed
against God. For the ego would have you see ham/hende, and ham/hende alone,
as guilty, leaving the SonDaughtership open to attack and unprotected
from it. The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for
keeping you from the God Realm . It does not appear to be a
weapon, but if you consider how you value it and why,
you will realize what it must be. The special love relationship is the
ego's most boasted gift, and one which has the most appeal to those
unwilling to relinquish guilt. The "dynamics" of the ego are clearest
here, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies
which center around it are often quite open. Here they are usually
judged to be acceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to
love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is sin
merely feel guilty and do not correct it.
45
This is the "natural" condition of the separation, and those who
learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural
ones. For this world is the opposite of the God Realm, being made
to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly
opposite of what is true. In the God Realm, where the meaning of love is
known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of
love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.
46
It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special
love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special
relationship is the renunciation of the love of God and the
attempt to secure for the self the specialness which HeShe denied. It is
essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this
specialness is not hell, but the God Realm . For the ego would never
have you see that separation can only be loss, being the one
condition in which the God Realm cannot be.
47
To everyone the God Realm is completion. There can be no disagreement on
this because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are,
however, in complete disagreement on what completion is
and how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that
completion lies first in union and then in the extension of union. To
the ego, completion lies in triumph and in the extension of the
"victory" even to the final triumph over God. In this it sees the
ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with
it. This is its idea of the God Realm . From this it
follows that union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot
interfere, must be hell.
48
The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for
joining hell and the God Realm and making them indistinguishable. And
the attempt to find the imagined "best" of both worlds has merely led to
fantasies of both and to the inability to perceive either one as it is.
The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind
of union from which union is excluded, and the basis for the attempt
at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there be of the
ego's maxim, "Seek but do not find?"
49
Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in
the special relationship. This "self" seeks the relationship to make
itself complete. Yet when it finds the special relationship in
which it thinks it can accomplish this, it gives itself away and
tries to "trade" itself for the self of another. This is not union, for
there is no increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice
the self he/she does not want for one he/she thinks he/she would prefer.
And he/she feels guilty for the "sin" of taking and of giving nothing of
value in return. For how much value can he/she place upon a self
that he/she would give away to get a better one?
50
The "better" self the ego seeks is always one that is more
special. And whoever seems to possess a special self is "loved" for what
can be taken from him/her. Where both partners see this special
self in each other, the ego sees "a union made in the God Realm ." For
neither one will recognize that he/she has asked for hell, and so he/she
will not interfere with the ego's illusion of the God Realm, which it
offered him/her to interfere with the God Realm. Yet if all
illusions are of fear, and they can be of nothing else, the
illusion of the God Realm is nothing more than an "attractive" form of
fear in which the guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of "love."
51
The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt, which
the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The
conviction of littleness lies in every special relationship, for
only the deprived could value specialness. The demand for
specialness and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of
love would make love hateful. And the real purpose of the
special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to
destroy reality and substitute illusion. For the ego is itself
an illusion, and only illusions can be the witnesses to its
"reality."
52
If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would
you want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature nor of the
guilt it must entail nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these
are only attributes of the whole religion of the separation and of the
total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its
litany to sacrifice is that God must die so you can live. And it
is this theme which is acted out in the special relationship. Through
the death of your self, you think you can attack another self
and snatch it from the other to replace the self which you despise. And
you despise it because you do not think it offers the specialness which
you demand. And hating it, you have made it little and unworthy
because you are afraid of it.
53
How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have attacked?
So fearful has the truth become to you that unless it is weak
and little, [and unworthy of value,] you would not dare to look upon it.
You think it safer to endow the little self which you have made with
power you wrested from truth, triumphing over it and leaving it
helpless. See how exactly is this ritual enacted in the special
relationship. An altar is erected in between two separate people on
which each seeks to kill his/her self and on his/her body raise another
self which takes its power from his/her death. Over and over and over
this ritual is enacted. And it is never completed nor ever will
be completed. For the ritual of completion cannot complete, and
life arises not from death, nor the God Realm from hell.
54
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in
ritual, remember love is content and not form of any
kind. The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at the
raising of the form to take the place of God at the expense of
content. There is no meaning in the form, and there will never
be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is—a
senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God
and invested in HisHer killer as the sign that form has triumphed over
content and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be
possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? For if it were
possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not
angry. HeShe merely could not let this happen. You cannot change
HisHer Mind.
55
No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you
can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the
wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it. See in the special
relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods
before HimHer and by worshiping them to obscure their tininess
and HisHer greatness. In the name of your completion, you do not
want this. For every idol/idolress which you raise to place
before HimHer stands before you in place of what you are.
56
Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because
they are not true. They but seem to be fearful to the extent to
which you fail to recognize them for what they are, and you will
fail to do this to the extent to which you want them to be true.
And to the same extent you are denying truth, and so are making
yourself unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion,
God and fantasy. Remember this and you will have no difficulty in
perceiving the decision as just what it is and nothing more.
57
The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the fantasy
of destruction of love's meaning. And unless love's meaning is restored
to you, you cannot know yourself, who shares its meaning.
Separation is only the decision not to know yourself. Its whole
thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience designed to
lead away from truth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning
that would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from
all its consequences. The decision whether or not to listen to
this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion.
For here is truth separated from illusion and not confused with
it at all.
58
How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it
is. For only fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and
they are totally unreal. This year is thus the time to make the easiest
decision that ever confronted you and also the only one. You
will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize
that God is on the other side and nothing at all is here. It is
impossible not to make the natural decision as this is realized.
59
The search for the special relationship is the sign that you equate
yourself with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has
value only to the ego. To the ego unless a relationship
has special value, it has no meaning, and it perceives all
love as special. Yet this cannot be natural, for it is unlike
the relationship of God and HisHer SonDaughter, and all relationships
that are unlike this one must be unnatural. For God
createdmanifested love as HeShe would have it be and gave it as it is.
Love has no meaning except as its CreatorManifestor defined it by HisHer
Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and understand it.
60
Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage
is to separate yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer
seek for union in separation nor for freedom in bondage! As you release,
so will you be released. Forget this not, or love will be unable to find
you and comfort you. There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your
help if you would have Hers. The holy instant is Her most helpful tool
in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in the
special relationship. You do not recognize that this is its real
appeal, for the ego has taught you that freedom lies in it. Yet
the closer you look at the special relationship, the more apparent it
becomes that it must foster guilt and therefore must
imprison.
61
The special relationship is totally without meaning without a body. And
if you value it, you must also value the body. And what you
value, you will keep. The special relationship is a device for
limiting your self to a body and for limiting your perception of
others to theirs. The Great Rays would establish the total lack
of value of the special relationship if they were seen. For in seeing
them, the body would disappear because its value would be lost.
And so your whole investment in seeing it would be withdrawn from it.
You see the world you value.
62
On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies seeking
to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. When
two individuals seek to become one, they are trying to decrease
their magnitude. Each would deny his/her power, for the separate
union excludes the universe. Far more is left outside than would be
taken in. For God is left without and nothing taken in. If one
such union were made in perfect faith, the universe would enter
into it. Yet the special relationship which the ego seeks does not
include even one whole individual. For the ego wants but part of
him/her and sees only this part and nothing else.
63
Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen
but not exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark which
holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark
cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge,
the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see
no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value
which the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers/sisters to
the bridge with you and to be released together there.
64
The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your perspective
of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and
completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is
magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In
the transition there is a period of confusion in which a sense of actual
disorientation seems to occur. But fear it not, for it means nothing
more than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the
distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world together.
This frame of reference is built around the special relationship. Without
this illusion, there can be no meaning you would still seek
here.
65
Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality.
Time is kind, and if you use it for reality, it will keep gentle
pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your
minds from their fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless
and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation which
precedes the actual transition is far shorter than the time it took to
fix your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than
before only because you realize it is delay and that escape from
pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort rather than despair in
this: You could no longer find even the illusion of love in any
special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you
would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is.
66
Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is really
part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system which taught
you it was real and understand the Thought that really knows
what you are. You have allowed the Thought of your reality to
enter your minds, and because you invited it, it will abide with
you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you
could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for
you would not be apart from it.
67
Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the ego offered
you and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your
relationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to
yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the
wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair
and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very
dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you
thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for
you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the
simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing.
68
The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the
understanding of where the God Realm is. From here it seems to
be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will
join with you and become one with you. And you will think in
glad astonishment that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy
of the God Realm, which has no limit, is increased with each light that
returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the
love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the
way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you.
69
The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your
thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you,
enter with Her into a holy instant and there let Her release you. She
needs only your willingness to share Her perspective to give it
to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because Her
is perfect. It is Her task to atone for your unwillingness by Her
perfect faith, and it is Her faith you share with Her there. Out of your
recognition of your unwillingness for your release, Her perfect
willingness is given you. Call upon Her, for the God Realm is at Her
call. And let Her call on the God Realm for you.
70
It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special
relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to reenact
the past and change it. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past
disappointments, perceived injustices, and deprivations all enter into
the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to
restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing
a special partner without the past? Every such choice is made
because of something "evil" in the past to which you cling and for which
must someone else atone.
71
The special relationship takes vengeance on the past. By seeking
to remove suffering in the past, it overlooks the present in its
preoccupation with the past and its total commitment to it. No
special relationship is experienced in the present. Shades of the past
envelop it and make it what it is. It has no meaning in the
present, and if it means nothing now, it cannot have any real
meaning at all. How can you change the past except in fantasy?
And who can give you what you think the past deprived you of? The past
is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the
past is gone. You cannot really not let go what has already
gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that
it has not gone because you think it serves some purpose that
you want fulfilled. And it must also be that this purpose could
not be fulfilled in the present, but only in the past.
72
Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on
the past. It is completely savage and completely insane. For the ego
remembers everything that you have done which offended it and seeks
retribution of you. The fantasies it brings to the special
relationships it chooses in which to act out its hate are fantasies of your
destruction. For the ego holds the past against you, and in your
escape from the past, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it
believes that you so justly merit. Yet without your alliance in your own
destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past.
73
In the special relationship, you are allowing your destruction
to be. That this is insane is obvious. But what is less obvious to you
is that the present is useless to you while you pursue the ego's
goal as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the
special relationship, which binds you to it and would teach you that
salvation is past and that you must return to the past to find
salvation. There is no fantasy which does not contain the dream of
retribution for the past. Would you act out the dream or let it go?
74
In the special relationship, it does not seem to be an acting
out of vengeance which you seek. And even when the hatred and the
savagery break briefly through into awareness, the illusion of love is
not profoundly shaken. Yet the one thing which the ego never allows to
reach awareness is that the special relationship is the acting out of
vengeance on yourself. But what else could it be? In
seeking the special relationship, you look not for glory in yourself.
You have denied that it is there, and the relationship becomes
your substitute for it. And vengeance becomes your substitute
for Atonement, and the escape from vengeance becomes your loss.
75
Against the ego's insane notion of salvation, the Holy Spirit gently
lays the holy instant. We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach
through comparisons and uses opposites to point to truth. The holy
instant is the opposite of the ego's fixed belief in salvation
through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant, it is accepted that
the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been
uprooted and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of now
enfolds you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth.
76
For a time you may attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant to
hinder your full awareness of the complete difference in all
respects between your experience of truth and illusion. Yet you will not
attempt this long. In the holy instant, the power of the Holy Spirit
will prevail because you joined Her. The illusions you bring
with you will weaken the experience of Her for a while and will prevent
you from keeping the experience in your mind. Yet the holy instant is
eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the timeless from
being what it is nor you from experiencing it as it is.
77
What God has given you is truly given and will be truly received.
For God's gifts have no reality apart from your receiving them.
Your receiving completes HisHer giving. You will receive
because it is HisHer Will to give. HeShe gave the holy instant to
be given you, and it is impossible that you receive it not, because
HeShe gave it. When HeShe willed that HisHer SonDaughter be free, HisHer
SonDaughter was free. In the holy instant is HisHer reminder
that HisHer SonDaughter will always be exactly as heshe was
createdmanifested. And everything the Holy Spirit teaches you is to
remind you that you have received what God has given you.
78
There is nothing you can hold against reality. All that must be forgiven
are the illusions you have held against your brothers/sisters. Their
reality has no past, and only illusions can be forgiven.
God holds nothing against anyone, for HeShe is incapable of illusions of
any kind. Release your brothers/sisters from the slavery of their
illusions by forgiving them for the illusions which you perceive
in them. Thus will you learn that you have been forgiven, for it
is you who offered them illusions. In the holy instant, this is
done for you in time to bring to you the true condition of the
God Realm.
79
Remember that you always choose between truth and illusion—between the real
Atonement which would heal and the ego's "atonement" which would
destroy. The power of God and all HisHer Love, without limit, will
support you as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising
from HisHer Love. Be an ally of God and not the ego in seeking how
Atonement can come to you. HisHer help suffices, for HisHer Messenger
understands how to restore the God Realm to you and to place all
your investment in salvation in your relationship with HimHer.
80
Seek and find HisHer message in the holy instant, where all
illusions are forgiven. From there the miracle extends to bless everyone
and to resolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small,
possible or impossible. There is nothing that will not give place to
HimHer and to HisHer majesty. To join in close relationship with HimHer
is to accept relationships as real and through their reality to
give over all illusions for the reality of your relationship with God.
Praise be to your relationship with HimHer and to no other. The truth
lies here and nowhere else. You choose this or nothing.
81 Forgive us our
illusions, FatherMother, and help us to accept our true relationship
with You in which there are no illusions and where none can ever
enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs
forgiveness when Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only
the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us
not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the SonDaughter of
God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what you have given and
accept but this into the minds which You createdmanifested and which
You love.
Amen.
1
The betrayal of the SonDaughter of God lies only in illusions, and all
hisher "sins" are but hisher own imagining. Hisher reality is forever
sinless. Heshe need not be forgiven, but awakened. In hisher dreams
heshe has betrayed himherself, hisher brothers/sisters, and hisher God.
Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to
convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because
of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from
them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no
effect on reality at all and did not change it. Fantasies change
reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can
do so in the mind that would have reality different.
2
It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because
by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. This strange
position in a sense acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and
devoting it to "evil," it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful
to two masters who ask of you conflicting things. What you use in
fantasy, you deny to truth. Yet what you give to truth to use for you is
safe from fantasy.
3
When you maintain that there must be order of difficulty in miracles,
all you mean is that there are some things you would withhold from
truth. You believe that truth cannot deal with them only because you
would keep them from truth. Very simply, your lack of faith in the power
that heals all pain arises from your wish to retain some aspects of
reality for fantasy. If you but realized what this must do to your
appreciation of the whole! What you reserve unto yourself, you take away
from HimHer Who would release you. Unless you give it back, it is
inevitable that your perspective on reality be warped and uncorrected.
4
As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion of order of
difficulty in miracles remain with you. For you have established this
order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher and some to
another. And so you learn to deal with part of truth in one way and in
another way the other part. To fragment truth is to destroy it by
rendering it meaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective without
understanding, a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot
really be compared at all.
5
Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy and learn what truth means
from the perspective of illusions? Truth has no meaning in
illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When
you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real
and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions
to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal and
thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside from
truth, or you establish orders of reality which must imprison you. There
is no order in reality because everything there is true.
6
Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Her who
knows the truth and in Whom all is brought to truth. [Salvation from
separation will be complete or will be not at all.] Be not concerned
with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. She
will accomplish it; not you. But forget not this: When you become
disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to
solve his/her problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive
yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you
away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him/hende, you
restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see
forgiveness where you have given it.
7
Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no
fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here,
sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you
value like unto this nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that
made your heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought you even a little
part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the
SonDaughter of God. You will behold the beauty which the Holy Spirit
loves to look upon and which She thanks the FatherMother for. She was
createdmanifested to see this for you until you learn to see it for
yourself. And all Her teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with
Her.
8
This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean
and new with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden
here, for everything has been forgiven, and there are no fantasies to
hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is so little and
so easy to cross that you could not believe it is the meeting place of
worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that
touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped
your notice, is a stride through time into eternity and beyond all
ugliness into beauty that will enchant you and will never cease to cause
you wonderment at its perfection.
9
This step, the smallest ever taken by anything, is still the greatest
accomplishment of all in God's plan of Atonement. All else is learned,
but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one but HimHer Who
planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in its
loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one and
nothing remains still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness, you
are free to see. Yet what you see is only what you have made, with the
blessing of your forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of
God’s SonDaughter upon himherself, the real perception, born of the new
perspective heshe has learned, has served its purpose.
10
The stars will disappear in light, and the sun which opened up the world
to beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been
perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have no
function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no
differences, no variations which made perception possible will occur.
The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely
have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly
when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for
HimHer.
11
The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the
old, the world you see without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of
perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind
that made this world and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your
making it. In the light of the real reason which She brings, as you
follow Her, She will show you that there is no reason here at all. Each
spot Her reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in
the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness.
Not even what the SonDaughter of God made in insanity could be without a
hidden spark of beauty which gentleness could release.
12
All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world
with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision and
lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos and
removing all illusions which had twisted your perception and fixed it on
the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder and a blade of
grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the
SonDaughter of God is lifted easily into hisher home. And there heshe
knows that heshe has always rested there in peace. Even salvation will
become a dream and vanish from hisher mind. For salvation is the end of
dreams and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who awake
in the God Realm could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?
13
How much do you want salvation? It will give you the real world,
trembling with readiness to be given you. The eagerness of the Holy
Spirit to give you this is so intense She would not wait, although She
waits in patience. Meet Her patience with your impatience at delay in
meeting Her. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer and walk with
Hende in trust out of this world and into the real world of beauty and
forgiveness.
14
To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you
gave in the past and those that were given you. All the rest must be
forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your
selection. For the shadow figures you would make immortal are "enemies"
of reality. Be willing to forgive the SonDaughter of God for what heshe
did not do. The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to
demonstrate heshe did what heshe did not. Because you brought them, you
will hear them. And you who kept them by your own selection do not
understand how they came into your minds and what their purpose is.
15
They represent the evil that you think was done to you. You
bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that
their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm
yourself. They speak so clearly for the separation that no one not
obsessed with keeping separation could hear them. They offer you the
"reasons" why you should enter into unholy alliances which support the
ego's goals and make your relationships the witness to its power. It is
these shadow figures which would make the ego holy in your sight and
teach you what you do to keep it safe is really love.
16
The shadow figures always speak for vengeance, and all relationships
into which they enter are totally insane. Without exception, these
relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the
other and of yourself. This is why you see in both what is not there and
make of both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of
your past grievances, no matter how distorted the associations by which
you arrive at the remembrance may be, attracts you and seems to you to
go by the name of love. And finally why all such relationships become
the attempt at union through the body, for only bodies can be seen as
means for vengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships
is evident. Your own experience has taught you this. But what you do not
realize are all the reasons which go to make the relationship unholy.
For unholiness seeks to reinforce itself, as holiness does, by gathering
to itself what it perceives as like itself.
17
In the unholy relationship, it is not the body of the other with which
union is attempted but the bodies of those who are not there. Even the
body of the other, already a severely limited perception of him/her, is
not the central focus as it is or in entirety. What can be used for
fantasies of vengeance and what can be most readily associated with
those on whom vengeance is really sought are centered on and separated
off as being the only parts of value. Every step taken in the making,
the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship is a
move toward further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures
enter more and more, and the one in whom they seem to be decreases in
importance.
18
Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. For time is
cruel in the ego's hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. The
attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be
questioned almost at once. Once it is formed, doubt must enter in
because its purpose is impossible. The only such relationships which
retain the fantasies that center on them are those which have been
dreamed of but have not been made at all. Where no reality has entered,
there is nothing to intrude upon the dream of happiness. Yet consider
what this means—the more reality that enters into the unholy
relationship, the less satisfying it becomes. And the more the fantasies
can encompass, the greater the satisfaction seems to be.
19
The "ideal" of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the
reality of the other does not enter at all to "spoil" the dream. And the
less the other really brings to it, the "better" it becomes. Thus, the
attempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the
union was sought. For it was formed to get him/her out of it and join
with fantasies in uninterrupted "bliss." How can the Holy Spirit bring
Her interpretation of the body as a means of communication into
relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? What
forgiveness is enables Her to do so.
20
If all but loving thoughts has been forgotten, what remains is eternal.
And the transformed past is made like the present. No longer does the
past conflict with now. This continuity extends the present by
increasing its reality and its value in your perception of it. In these
loving thoughts is the spark of beauty hidden in the ugliness of the
unholy relationship in which the hatred is remembered, yet there to come
alive as the relationship is given to Her Who gives it life and beauty.
That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the source of
separation, and where it must be undone. For separation must be
corrected where it was made. The ego seeks to "resolve" its problems,
not at their source, but where they were not made. And thus it seeks to
guarantee there will be no solution.
21
The Holy Spirit wills only to make Her resolutions complete and perfect,
and so She seeks and finds the source of problems where it is and there
undoes it. And with each step in Her undoing is the separation more and
more undone and union brought closer. She is not at all confused by any
"reasons" for separation. All She perceives in separation is that it
must be undone. Let Her uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your
relationships and show it to you. Its loveliness will so attract
you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. And
you will let it transform the relationship so you can see it more and
more. For you will want it more and more and become increasingly
unwilling to let it be hidden from you. And you will learn to seek for
and establish conditions in which this beauty can be seen.
22
All this you will do gladly if you but let Her hold the spark before you
to light your way and make it clear to you. God’s SonDaughter is one.
Whom God has joined as one, the ego cannot break apart. The spark of
holiness must be safe, however hidden it may be, in every relationship.
For the CreatorManifestor of the one relationship has left no part of it
without HimHerself.
23
This is the only part of the relationship the Holy Spirit sees because
She knows that only this is true. You have made the relationship unreal
and therefore unholy by seeing it where it is not and as it is not. Give
the past to Her Who can change your mind about it for you. But first be
sure you fully realize what you have made the past to represent and why.
24
In brief, the past is now your justification for entering into a
continuing, unholy alliance with the ego against the present. For the
present is forgiveness. Therefore, the relationships which the
unholy alliance dictates are not perceived nor felt as now. Yet
the frame of reference to which the present is referred for meaning is
an illusion of the past in which those elements which fit the
purpose of the unholy alliance are retained and all the rest let go. And
what is thus let go is all the truth the past could ever offer to the
present as witnesses for its reality, while what is kept but witnesses
to the reality of dreams.
25
It is still up to you to choose to be willing to join with truth or
illusion. But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which
one you choose, you will endow with beauty and reality because the
choice depends on which you value more. The spark of beauty or the veil
of ugliness, the real world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or
illusion, freedom or slavery—it is all the same. For you can never
choose except between God and the ego. Thought systems are but true or
false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are. Only the
Thoughts of God are true. And all that follows from them comes from what
they are and is as true as is the holy Source from which they came.
26
My holy brothers/sisters, I would enter into all your relationships and
step between you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you
be real to you, and let me bring reality to your perception of your
brothers/sisters. They were not createdmanifested to enable you to hurt
yourselves through them. They were createdmanifested to createmanifest
with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your
goal of madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose
of Atonement be lost to you in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in
which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let us enter in the
Name of God and bring you peace that you may offer peace to me.
27
God established HisHer relationship with you to make you happy, and
nothing you do which does not share HisHer purpose can be real. The
purpose God ascribed to anything is its only function. Because of HisHer
reason for creatingmanifesting HisHer relationship with you, the
function of relationships became forever "to make happy." And
nothing else. To fulfill this function, you relate to your
creationsmanifestations as God to HisHers. For nothing God
createdmanifested is apart from happiness, and nothing God
createdmanifested but would extend happiness as its CreatorManifestor
did. Whatever fulfills this function not cannot be real.
28
In this world it is impossible to createmanifest, yet it is possible to
make happy. We have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not
deprive you of your special relationships but would transform them. And
by that all that is meant is that She will restore to them the function
given them by God. The function you have given them is clearly not to
make happy. But the holy relationship shares God's purpose, rather than
aiming to make a substitute for it. Every special relationship which you
have made is a substitute for God's Will and glorifies yours instead of
HisHer because of the delusion that they are different.
29
You have made very real relationships even in this world which you do
not recognize simply because you have raised their substitutes to such
predominance that when truth calls to you, as it does constantly, you
answer with a substitute. Every special relationship which you have ever
undertaken has as its fundamental purpose the aim of occupying your
minds so completely that you will not hear the call of truth. In a sense
the special relationship was the ego's answer to the
creationmanifestation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's answer to the
separation. For although the ego did not understand what had been
createdmanifested, it was aware of threat.
30
The whole defense system which the ego evolved to protect the separation
from the Holy Spirit was in response to the gift with which God blessed
it and by HisHer blessing enabled it to be healed. This blessing holds
within itself the truth about everything. And the truth is that the Holy
Spirit is in close relationship with you because in Her is your
relationship with God restored to you. The relationship with Her has
never been broken because the Holy Spirit has not been separate from
anyone since the separation. And through Her have all your holy
relationships been carefully preserved to serve God's purpose for you.
31
The ego is hyperalert to threat, and the part of your mind into which
the ego was accepted is very anxious to preserve its reason as it sees
it. It does not realize that it is totally insane. And you must realize
just what this means if you would be restored to sanity. The insane
protect their thought systems, but they do so insanely. And all their
defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect. The
separation has nothing in it, no part, no "reason," and no attribute
that is not insane. And its "protection" is part of it, as
insane as the whole. The special relationship, which is its chief
defense, must therefore be insane.
32
You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the thought system
which the special relationship protects is but a system of delusions.
You recognize, at least in general terms, that the ego is insane. Yet
the special relationship still seems to you somehow to be "different."
Yet we have looked at it far closer than at the many other aspects of
the ego's thought system which you have been more willing to let go.
While this one remains, you will not let the others go. For this one is
not different. Retain this one, and you have retained the whole.
33
It is essential to realize that all defenses do what they would
defend. The underlying basis for their effectiveness is that they
offer what they defend. What they defend is placed in them for
safekeeping, and as they operate, they bring it to you. Every defense
operates by giving gifts, and the gift is always a miniature of the
thought system the defense protects, set in a golden frame. The frame is
very elaborate, all set with jewels and deeply carved and polished. Its
purpose is to be of value in itself and to divert your attention
from what it encloses. But the frame without the picture you cannot
have. Defenses operate to make you think you can.
34
The special relationship has the most imposing and deceptive frame of
all the defenses the ego uses. Its thought system is offered here,
surrounded by a frame so heavy and so elaborate that the picture is
almost obliterated by its imposing structure. Into the frame are woven
all sorts of fanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set with dreams
of sacrifice and self-aggrandizement and interlaced with gilded threads
of self-destruction. The glitter of blood shines like rubies, and the
tears are faceted like diamonds and gleam in the dim light in which the
offering is made.
35
Look at the picture. Do not let the frame distract you. This
gift is given you for your damnation, and if you take it, you will
believe that you are damned. You cannot have the frame without
the picture. What you value is the frame, for there you see no conflict.
Yet the frame is only the wrapping for the gift of conflict. The frame
is not the gift. Be not deceived by the most superficial aspects
of this thought system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete in
every aspect. Death lies in this glittering gift. Let not your gaze
dwell on the hypnotic gleaming of the frame. Look at the picture,
and realize that death is offered you.
36
That is why the holy instant is so important in the defense of truth.
The truth itself needs no defense, but you do need
defense against your own acceptance of the gift of death. When you who
are truth accept an idea so dangerous to truth, you threaten truth with
destruction. And your defense must now be undertaken to keep truth
whole. The power of the God Realm, the love of God, the tears of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, and the joy of Her eternal
Spirit are marshaled to defend you from your own attack. For you attack
Them, being part of Them, and They must save you, for They love
Themselves.
37
The holy instant is a miniature of the God Realm, sent you from
the God Realm . It is a picture, too, set in a frame. Yet if you accept
this gift, you will not see the frame at all because the gift can only
be accepted through your willingness to focus all your attention
on the picture. The holy instant is a miniature of eternity. It
is a picture of timelessness, set in a frame of time. If you focus on
the picture, you will realize that it was only the frame that made you
think it was a picture. Without the frame, the picture is seen
as what it represents. For as the whole thought system of the ego lies
in its gifts, so the whole of the God Realm lies in this instant,
borrowed from eternity and set in time for you.
38
Two gifts are offered you. Each is complete and cannot be partially
accepted. Each is a picture of all that you can have, seen very
differently. You cannot compare their value by comparing a picture to a
frame. It must be the pictures only that you compare, or the comparison
is wholly without meaning. Remember that it is the picture that is the
gift. And only on this basis are you really free to choose. Look at the
pictures. Both of them. One is a tiny picture, hard to see at
all beneath the heavy shadows of its enormous and disproportionate
enclosure. The other is lightly framed and hung in light, lovely to look
upon for what it is.
39
You who have tried so hard and are still trying to fit the better
picture into the wrong frame and so combine what cannot be combined,
accept this and be glad: these pictures are each framed perfectly for
what they represent. One is framed to be out of focus and not seen. The
other is framed for perfect clarity. The picture of darkness and of
death grows less convincing as you search it out amid its wrappings. As
each senseless stone which seems to shine in darkness from the frame is
exposed to light, it becomes dull and lifeless and ceases to distract
you from the picture. And finally you look upon the picture itself,
seeing at last that, unprotected by the frame, it has no meaning.
40
The other picture is lightly framed, for time cannot contain eternity.
There is no distraction here. The picture of the God Realm and eternity
grows more convincing as you look at it. And now by real comparison a
transformation of both pictures can at last occur. And each is given its
rightful place, when both are seen in relation to each other. The dark
picture brought to light is not perceived as fearful, but the fact that
it is just a picture is brought home at last. And what you see
there, you will recognize as what it is—a picture of what you thought
was real and nothing more. For beyond this picture, you will see
nothing.
41
The picture of light, in clear cut and unmistakable contrast, is
transformed into what lies beyond the picture. As you look on this, you
realize that it is not a picture but a reality. This is
no figured representation of a thought system, but the Thought Itself.
What it represents is there. The frame fades gently, and God
rises to your remembrance, offering you the whole of
creationmanifestation in exchange for your little picture, wholly
without value and entirely deprived of meaning.
42
As God ascends into HisHer rightful place and you to yours, you will
experience again the meaning of relationship and know it to be
true. Let us ascend in peace together to the FatherMother by giving
HimHer ascendance in our minds. We will gain everything by
giving HimHer the power and the glory and keeping no illusions of where
they are. They are in us through HisHer ascendance. What HeShe
has given is HisHers. It shines in every part of HimHer as in
the whole. The whole reality of your relationship with HimHer lies in our
relationship to one another. The holy instant shines alike on all
relationships, for in it they are one. For here is only healing,
already complete and perfect. For here is God, and where HeShe
is, only the perfect and complete can be.
43
The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in
this world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is a
practical device, witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never
fails. The experience of it is always felt. Yet without expression, it
is not remembered. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the
experience in which the relationship became what it is. And as the
unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise The holy
relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this
world, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the
Redeemer of relationships.
44
The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real
world, is learned. It is the old unholy relationship transformed and
seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching
accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops, and becomes
accomplished, it represents the reversal of the unholy relationship. Be
comforted in this—the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here,
the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite
of what it was. This is the first result of offering the relationship to
the Holy Spirit to use for Her purposes.
45
This invitation is accepted immediately, and the Holy Spirit wastes no
time in introducing the practical results of asking Her to enter. At
once Her goal replaces yours. This is accomplished very rapidly, but it
makes the relationship seem disturbed, disjunctive, and even quite
distressing. The reason is quite clear. For the relationship as it is
is out of line with its own goal, and clearly unsuited to the purpose
which has been accepted for it. In its unholy condition, your
goal was all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make no
sense. Many relationships have been broken off at this point, and the
pursuit of the old goal reestablished in another relationship. For once
the unholy relationship has accepted the goal of holiness, it can never
again be what it was.
46
The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with this shift in
goals. For the relationship has not as yet been changed sufficiently to
make its former goal completely without attraction, and its structure is
"threatened" by the recognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its
new purpose. The conflict between the goal and the structure of the
relationship is so apparent that they cannot coexist. Yet now the goal
will not be changed. Set firmly in the unholy relationship, there is no
course except to change the relationship to fit the goal. Until this
happy solution is seen and accepted as the only way out of the conflict,
the relationship seems to be severely strained.
47
It would not be kinder to shift the goal more slowly, for the contrast
would be obscured and the ego given time to reinterpret each slow step
according to its liking. Only a radical shift in purpose could induce a
complete change of mind about what the whole relationship is for.
As this change develops and is finally accomplished, it grows
increasingly beneficent and joyous. But at the beginning, the situation
is experienced as very precarious. A relationship undertaken by two
individuals for their unholy purposes suddenly has holiness for
its goal. As these two contemplate their relationship from the point of
view of this new purpose, they are inevitably appalled. Their perception
of the relationship may even become quite disorganized. And yet, the
former organization of their perception no longer serves the purpose
they have agreed to meet.
48
This is the time for faith. You let this goal be set for you.
That was an act of faith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of
faith are being introduced. If you believed the Holy Spirit was there to
accept the relationship, why would you now not still believe that She is
there to purify what She has taken under Her guidance? Have faith in
each other in what but seems to be a trying time. The goal is
set. And your relationship has sanity as its purpose. For now you find
yourselves in an insane relationship, recognized as such in the light of
its goal.
49
Now the ego counsels thus—substitute for this another relationship to
which your former goal was quite appropriate. You can escape from your
distress only by getting rid of each other. You need not part entirely
if you choose not to do so. But you must exclude major areas of fantasy
from each other to save your sanity. Hear not this now! Have faith in
Her Who answered you. She heard. Has She not been very explicit in Her
answer? You are not now wholly insane. Can you deny that She has given
you a most explicit statement? Now She asks for faith a little longer,
even in bewilderment. For this will go, and you will see the
justification for your faith emerge to bring you shining conviction.
Abandon Her not now, nor each other. This relationship has been reborn
as holy.
50
Accept with gladness what you do not understand, and let it be explained
to you as you perceive its purpose work in it to make it holy. You will
find the many opportunities to blame each other for the "failure" of
your relationship, for it will seem at times to have no purpose. A sense
of aimlessness will come to haunt you and to remind you of all the ways
you once sought for satisfaction and thought you found it. Forget not
now the misery you really found, and do not now breathe life into your
failing egos. For your relationship has not been disrupted. It has been
saved.
51
You are very new in the ways of salvation and think you have lost your
way. Your way is lost, but think not this is loss. In
your newness, remember that you have started again together. And
take each other's hand to walk together along a road far more familiar
than you now believe. Is it not certain that you will remember a goal
unchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the goal of God
from which your true intent was never absent.
52
Throughout the SonDaughtership is the song of freedom heard in joyous
echo of your choice. You have joined with the many in the holy instant,
and they have joined with you. Think not your choice will leave you
comfortless, for God HimHerself has blessed your holy relationship. Join
in HisHer blessing, and withhold not yours upon it. For all it needs now
is your blessing that you may see that in it rests salvation.
Condemn salvation not, for it has come to you. And welcome it together,
for it has come to join you together in a relationship in which all the
SonDaughtership is together blessed.
53
You undertook together to invite the Holy Spirit into your relationship.
She could not have entered otherwise. Although you may have made the
many mistakes since then, you have also made enormous efforts to help
Her do Her work. And She has not been lacking in appreciation for all
you have done for Her. Nor does She see the mistakes at all. Have you
been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated
the good efforts and overlooked mistakes? Or has your appreciation
flickered and grown dim in what seemed to be the light of the mistakes?
You are now entering upon a campaign to blame each other for the
discomfort of the situation in which you find yourselves. And by this
lack of thanks and gratitude, you make yourselves unable to express the
holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it.
54
The experience of an instant, however compelling it may be, is easily
forgotten if you allow time to close over it. It must be kept shining
and gracious in your awareness of time but not concealed within it. The
instant remains. But where are you? To give thanks to each other is to
appreciate the holy instant and thus enable its results to be accepted
and shared. To attack each other is not to lose the instant but to make
it powerless in its effects. You have received the holy instant,
but you have established a condition in which you cannot use it. As a
result, you do not realize that it is with you still. And by cutting
yourself off from its expression, you have denied yourself its benefit.
You reinforce this every time you attack each other, for the attack must
blind you to yourself. And it is impossible to deny yourself and
recognize what has been given and received by you.
55
You stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the
goal, together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly
arrange the means for its accomplishment? It is just this same
discrepancy between the purpose that has been accepted and the means as
they stand now which seems to make you suffer, but which makes the God
Realm glad. If the God Realm were outside you, you could not share in
its gladness. Yet because it is within, the gladness, too, is yours. You
are joined in purpose, but remain still separate and divided on
the means.
56
Yet the goal is fixed, firm, and unalterable, and the means will surely
fall in place because the goal is sure. And you will share the gladness
of the SonDaughtership that it is so. As you begin to recognize and
accept the gifts you have so freely given to each other, you will also
accept the effects of the holy instant and use them to correct all your
mistakes and free you from their results. And learning this, you will
have also learned how to release all the SonDaughtership and offer it in
gladness and thanksgiving to Her Who gave you your release, and Who
would extend it through you.
57
The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely
simple, but it is unequivocal. In fact in order to be simple,
it must be unequivocal. The simple is merely what is easily
understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be clear. The
setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is general. Now She will work with you
to make it specific [for application is specific]. There are
certain very specific guidelines She provides for any situation, but
remember that you do not yet realize their universal application.
Therefore it is essential at this point to use them in each situation
separately, until you can more safely look beyond each
situation in an understanding far broader than you now possess.
58
In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to
consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it for?"
The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning, for it
is this which will determine the outcome. In the ego's procedure, this
is reversed. The situation becomes the determiner of the
outcome, which can be anything. The reason for this disorganized
approach is evident. The ego does not know what it wants to
come of it. It is aware of what it does not want, but only
that. It has no positive goal at all.
59
Without a clear cut positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just
seems to happen and makes no sense until it has already
happened. Then you look back at it and try to piece together
what it must have meant. And you will be wrong. Not only is
your judgment in the past, but you have no idea what should
happen. No goal was set with which to bring the means in line. And now
the only judgment left to make is whether or not the ego likes it—is it
acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion
for outcome set in advance makes understanding doubtful and
evaluation impossible.
60
The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is
simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to make
it happen. You will therefore make every effort to overlook what
interferes with the accomplishment of your objective and concentrate on
everything which helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that this
approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's sorting out of
truth and falsity. The true becomes what can be used to meet the goal.
The false becomes the useless from this point of view. The situation now
has meaning, but only because the goal has made it meaningful.
61
The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is
used for truth and sanity, its outcome must be peace. And this
is quite apart from what the outcome is. If peace is
the condition of truth and sanity and cannot be without them,
where peace is they must be. Truth comes of itself. If you
experience peace, it is because the truth has come to you, and you will
see the outcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. And you
will recognize the outcome because you are at peace. Here again,
you see the opposite of the ego's way of looking, for the ego believes
the situation brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that
the situation is as the goal determines it and is experienced according
to the goal.
62
The goal of truth requires faith. Faith is implicit in the acceptance of
the Holy Spirit's purpose, and this faith is all-inclusive. Where the
goal of truth is set, there faith must be. The Holy Spirit
sees the situation as a whole. The goal establishes the fact
that everyone involved in it will play his/her part in its
accomplishment. This is inevitable. No one will fail in anything. This
seems to ask for faith beyond you and beyond what you can give. Yet this
is so only from the viewpoint of the ego, for the ego believes in
"solving" conflict through fragmentation and does not perceive
the situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split off segments of
the situation and deal with them separately, for it has faith
in separation and not in wholeness.
63
Confronted with any aspect of the situation which seems to be difficult,
the ego will attempt to take this aspect elsewhere and resolve it there.
And it will seem to be successful, except that this attempt conflicts
with unity and must obscure the goal of truth. And peace will
not be experienced except in fantasy. Truth has not come because faith
has been denied, being withheld from where it rightfully belonged. Thus
do you lose the understanding of the situation the goal of truth would
bring. For fantasy solutions bring but the illusion of experience, and
the illusion of peace is not the condition in which the truth can enter.
64
The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the witnesses to your
lack of faith. They demonstrate that you did not believe that the
situation and the problem were in the same place. The problem
was the lack of faith, and it is this you demonstrate when you
remove it from its source and place it elsewhere. As a result, you do
not see the problem. Had you not lacked the faith it could be
solved, the problem would be gone. And the situation would have been
meaningful to you because the interference in the way of understanding
would have been removed. To remove the problem elsewhere is to keep
it. For you remove yourself from it and make it unsolvable.
65
There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve. There is
no shift in any aspect of the problem but will make solution impossible.
For if you shift part of the problem elsewhere, the meaning of the
problem must be lost, and the solution to the problem is inherent in its
meaning. Is it not possible that all your problems have been solved, but
you have removed yourself from the solution? Yet faith must be where
something has been done and where you see it done. A situation is a
relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems are perceived,
it is because the thoughts are judged to be in conflict. But if the goal
is truth, this is impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, for
minds cannot attack.
66
The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for bodies cannot
solve anything. And it is their intrusion on the relationship, an error
in your thoughts about the situation, which then becomes the
justification for your lack of faith. You will make this error, but be
not at all concerned with that. The error does not matter. Faithlessness
brought to faith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used
against truth will always destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it
be restored where it was lost and seek not to have it made up to you
elsewhere as if you had been unjustly deprived of it.
67
Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation.
But remember this: the goal of holiness was set for your relationship
and not by you. You did not set it because holiness cannot be seen
except through faith, and your relationship was not holy because your
faith in one another was so limited and little. Your faith must grow to
meet the goal that has been set. The goal's reality will call this
forth, for you will see that peace and faith will not come separately.
What situation can you be in without faith and remain faithful to each
other?
68
Every situation in which you find yourself is but a means to meet the
purpose set for your relationship. See it as something else, and you are
faithless. Use not your faithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it
calmly, but do not use it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion and
wholly faithful to its master. Use it and it will carry you straight to
illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you. It interferes not with
the goal, but with the value of the goal to you. Accept not the illusion
of peace it offers, but look upon its offering and recognize it is
illusion.
69
The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as faith to
truth. If you lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and perfectly, his/her
part in any situation dedicated in advance to truth, your dedication is
divided. And so you have been faithless to each other and used your
faithlessness against each other. No relationship is holy unless its
holiness goes with it everywhere. As holiness and faith go hand in hand,
so must its faith go everywhere with it. The goal's reality will call
forth and accomplish every miracle needed for its fulfillment. Nothing
too small or too enormous, too weak or too compelling, but will be
gently turned to its use and purpose. The universe will serve it gladly,
as it serves the universe. But do not interfere.
70
The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established
is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no
idea how great the strength that goes with you. And you can use this
in perfect safety. Yet for all its might, so great it reaches past the
stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little
faithlessness can make it useless if you would use the faithlessness
instead.
71
Yet think on this, and learn the cause of faithlessness: You think you
hold against the other what he/she has done to you. But what you really
blame him/her for is what you did to him/her. It is not
his/her past but yours you hold against him/her. And you lack
faith in him/her because of what you were. Yet you are as
innocent of what you were as he/she is. What never was is causeless and
is not there to interfere with truth. There is no cause for
faithlessness, but there is a Cause for faith. That Cause has
entered any situation which shares Its purpose. The light of truth
shines from the center of the situation and touches everyone to whom the
situation's purpose calls. It calls to everyone. There is no situation
which does not involve your whole relationship in every aspect and
complete in every part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it and
keep the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole
relationship and derives its meaning from it.
72
Enter each situation with the faith that you give to each other, or you
are faithless to your own relationship. Your faith will call the others
to share your purpose, as this same purpose called forth the faith in
you. And you will see the means you once employed to lead you to
illusions transformed to means for truth. [Truth calls for faith, and
faith makes room for truth.] When the Holy Spirit changed the
purpose of your relationship by exchanging yours for Hers, the goal She
placed there was extended to every situation in which you enter or will
ever enter. And every situation was thus made free of the past, which
would have made it purposeless.
73
You call for faith because of HimHer Who walks with you in every
situation. You are no longer wholly insane, nor no longer alone. For
loneliness in God must be a dream. You whose relationship shares the
Holy Spirit's goal are set apart from loneliness because the truth has
come. Its call for faith is strong. Use not your faithlessness against
it, for it calls you to salvation and to peace.
74
The holy instant is nothing more than a special case or an extreme
example of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning which the
Holy Spirit's purpose has given it is also given to every situation. It
calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left
unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth. The holy instant
is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the
meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole.
Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has
not forced any exclusion on it. It is a situation of perfect peace
simply because you have let it be what it is.
75
This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks of you. Let truth be
what it is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt
its coming. Let it encompass every situation and bring you peace. Not
even faith is asked of you, for truth asks nothing. Let it enter, and it
will call forth and secure for you the faith you need for peace. But
rise you not against it, for against your opposition it cannot come.
76
Would you not want to make a holy instant of every situation? For such
is the gift of faith, freely given wherever faithlessness is laid aside
unused. And then the power of the Holy Spirit's purpose is free to use
instead. This power instantly transforms all situations into one sure
and continuous means for establishing Her purpose and demonstrating its
reality. What has been demonstrated has called for faith and has been
given it. Now it becomes a fact from which faith can no longer be
withheld. The strain of refusing faith to truth is enormous and far
greater than you realize. But to answer truth with faith entails no
strain at all.
77
To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, the strain of
not responding to Her call seems to be greater than before. This is not
so. Before, the strain was there but you attributed it to something
else, believing that the "something else" produced it. This was never
true. For what the "something else" produced was sorrow and depression,
sickness and pain, darkness and dim imaginings of terror, cold fantasies
of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was nothing but the intolerable
strain of refusing to give faith to truth and see its evident reality.
78
Such was the crucifixion of the SonDaughter of God. Hisher faithlessness
did this to himher. Think carefully before you let yourself use
faithlessness against himher. For heshe is risen, and you have accepted
the cause of hisher awakening as yours. You have assumed your part in
hisher redemption, and you are now fully responsible to himher. Fail
himher not now, for it has been given you to realize what your lack of
faith in him/her must mean to you. Hisher salvation is
your only purpose. See only this in every situation, and it will be a
means for bringing only this.
79
When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became
givers of peace as surely as your FatherMother gave peace to you. For
the goal of peace cannot be accepted apart from its conditions, and you
had faith in it, for no one accepts what he/she does not believe is
real. Your purpose has not changed and will not change, for you accepted
what can never change. And nothing that it needs to be forever
changeless can you now withhold from it. Your release is certain. Give
as you have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond any
situation that could hold you back and keep you separate from HimHer
Whose call you answered.
1
To substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly
what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this
is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you and would accomplish for
you. To substitute is to choose between, renouncing one in favor of the
other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the
other is replaced by him/her. The relationship in which the substitution
occurred is thus fragmented and its purpose split accordingly. To
fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the
ego has for separation.
2
The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one
personal as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined
and indivisible. She does not judge between them, knowing they are one.
Being united, they are one because they are the same.
Substitution is clearly a process in which they are perceived as
different. One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between
what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything
seems to come between the fragmented relationships the ego
sponsors to destroy.
3
The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear
involves substitution by definition, for it is love's replacement. Fear
is both a fragmented and a fragmenting emotion. It seems to take the
many forms, and each seems to require a different form of acting out for
satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a
far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the
behavior stems. No one is seen complete. The body is emphasized, with
special emphasis on certain parts, and used as the standard for
comparison for either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting
out a special form of fear.
4
You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken
the many forms because it was the substitution of illusion for truth, of
fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided
and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to
perceive it once was one and still is what it was. That one error, which
brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all
you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see
reflects it, and every special relationship which you have ever made is
part of it.
5
You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different is reality
from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error.
It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of
total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its
fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But
nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original
error, which seemed to cast you out of the God Realm, to shatter
knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force
you to further substitutions.
6
That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide
it and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you
and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is
meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it
strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside-down
arose from this? [It was inevitable.] For truth brought to this
could only remain within in quiet and take no part in all the mad
projection by which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness,
for such it was, and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for
guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not afraid
of it. When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rise
to frighten you, say only, "God is not fear, but love," and it will
disappear.
7
The truth will save you. It has not left you to go out into the
mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is outside
you. You but believe it is the other way; that truth is outside and
error and guilt within. Your little senseless substitutions, touched
with insanity and swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers
dancing insanely in the wind, have no substance. They fuse and merge and
separate in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not be
judged at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny
differences in form are no real differences at all. None of them
matters. That they have in common and nothing else. Yet what else is
necessary to make them all the same?
8
Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they
disappear from sight, far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately
calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never
left and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the
hand and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading
you gently back to the truth and safety within. She brings all your
insane projections and your wild substitutions which you have placed
outside you to the truth. Thus She reverses the course of insanity and
restores you to reason.
9
In your relationship, where She has taken charge of everything at your
request, She has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the
mad world outside you, nothing can be shared but only substituted, and
sharing and substituting have nothing in common in reality. Within
yourselves you love each other with a perfect love. Here is holy ground
in which no substitution can enter and where only the truth about each
other can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together as you are
with HimHer. The original error has not entered here, nor ever will.
Here is the radiant truth to which the Holy Spirit has committed your
relationship. Let Her bring it here, where you would have it be.
Give Her but a little faith in each other, to help Her show you that no
substitute you made for the God Realm can keep you from it. In you there
is no separation, and no substitute can keep you from each other.
Your reality was God's creationmanifestation and has no substitute.
10
You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there. And HeShe
would never accept something else instead of you. HeShe loves you both,
equally and as one. And as HeShe loves you, so you are. You are
not joined together in illusions but in the Thought so holy and so
perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken the holy place in which
you stand together. God is with you, mine brothers/sisters. Let us join
in HimHer in peace and gratitude and accept HisHer gift as our most holy
and perfect reality, which we share in HimHer.
11
The God Realm is restored to all the SonDaughtership through your
relationship, for in it lies the SonDaughtership, whole and beautiful,
safe in your love. The God Realm has entered quietly, for all illusions
have been gently brought unto the truth in you and love has shined upon
you, blessing your relationship with truth. God and HisHer whole
creationmanifestation have entered it together. How lovely and how holy
is your relationship, with the truth shining upon it! the God Realm
beholds it and rejoices that you have let it come to you. [And God
HimHerself is glad that your relationship is as it was
createdmanifested.] The universe within you stands with you, together.
And the God Realm looks with love on what is joined in it, along with
its CreatorManifestor.
12
Whom God has called should hear no substitutes. Their call is but an
echo of the original error which shattered the God Realm . And what
became of peace in those who heard? Return with me to the God Realm,
walking together out of this world and through another to the loveliness
and joy the other holds within it. Would you still further weaken and
break apart what is already broken and hopeless? Is it here that you
would look for happiness? Or would you not prefer to heal what has been
broken and join in making whole what has been ravaged by separation and
disease?
13
You have been called together to the most holy function that this world
contains. It is the only one which has no limits and reaches out to
every broken fragment of the SonDaughtership with healing and uniting
comfort. This is offered you in your holy relationship. Accept it here,
and you will give as you have accepted. The peace of God is given you
with the glowing purpose in which you join. The holy light that brought
you together must extend, as you accepted it.
14
Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what
this world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept.
Rather, it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you
would have preferred. Here, you are "free" to make over whatever seemed
to attack you and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was
outraged by the "attack." This would not be your wish unless you
saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself and
therefore on you as under attack and highly vulnerable to it.
15
Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes,
and therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best
example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute
illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because
the fact that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes
apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world and changing it to
suit the ego better. They provide striking examples both of the ego's
inability to tolerate reality and your willingness to change reality on
its behalf.
16
You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on
awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted
out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In
dreams you arrange everything. People become what you would have
them be, and what they do you order. No limit on substitution is laid
upon you. For a time, it seems as if the world were given you, to make
it what you will. You do not realize that you are attacking it, trying
to triumph over it and make it serve you.
17
Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums in which you literally scream, "I
want it thus!" And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot
escape its origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant, the
illusion of satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the
dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world which
you prefer is terrifying. Your attempts to blot out reality are
very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you
substitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you
would do to it. And thus is guilt made real.
18
Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would
have it be, and that because you want it, you see it. And while you see
it, you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly
within your mind, that seems to be outside. You do not respond
to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions which
the dream produces must come from you. It is the figures in the dream
and what they do that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that
you are making them act out for you, for if you did, the guilt would not
be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams
these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and the dream is
gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has
not gone with it.
19
Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with
you. And what you seem to wake to is but another form of this same world
you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and
your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content
is the same. They are your protest against reality and your fixed and
insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special
relationship [has a special place. It is the means by which you try to
make your sleeping dreams come true. From this you do
not awaken. The special relationship] is your determination to keep your
hold on unreality and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see
more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it.
20
The Holy Spirit, ever practical in Her wisdom, accepts your dreams and
uses them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain
asleep. We once said that the first change, before dreams disappear, is
that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the
Holy Spirit does in your special relationship. She does not destroy it
nor snatch it away from you. [But She does use it differently, as a help
to make Her purpose real to you.] Your special relationship will
remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and
freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As
its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an
offering to everyone.
21
Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone
blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and
one which you will share with all who come within your sight. Through
it, the blessing which the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be
extended. Think not that She has forgotten anyone in the purpose She has
given you. And think not that She has forgotten you to whom She gave the
gift. She uses everyone who calls on Her as means for the salvation of
everyone. And She will waken everyone through you who offered your
relationship to Her. If you but recognized Her gratitude! Or mine
through Hers! For we are joined as in one purpose, being of One Mind
with Her.
22
Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that
dreams can make a world that is unreal. The wish to make it is
incredible. Your relationship has become one in which the wish has been
removed because its purpose has been changed from one of dreams to one
of truth. You are not sure of this because you think it may be this
that is the dream. You are so used to choosing between dreams you do not
see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and all
illusions.
23
Yet the God Realm is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you
have chosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let
your special relationship meet its conditions. In your relationship, the
Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world—the world of happy dreams
from which awaking is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and
your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the
real world and the truth of the God Realm join in the Will of God. The
dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream
comes from your will joined with the Will of God. And what this Will
would have accomplished has never not been done.
24
You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to
fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to
sleeping and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to
other dreams, and every fantasy which seemed to bring a light into the
darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your goal was darkness in which
no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that
you could hide from truth forever in complete insanity. What you forgot
was simply that God cannot destroy HimHerself. The light is in
you. Darkness can cover it but cannot put it out.
25
As the light comes nearer, you will rush to darkness, shrinking from the
truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear and sometimes to
stark terror. But you will advance because your goal is the
advance from fear to truth. You know this. The goal which you
accepted is the goal of knowledge, for which you signified your
willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid,
you have stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light,
and it will be enough to remind you that your goal is light.
Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it.
26
If you knew Who walks beside you on this way which you have chosen, fear
would be impossible. You do not know because the journey into darkness
has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A little
flicker of your eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to
give you confidence in yourselves, so long despised. You go toward love,
still hating it and terribly afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do
not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what you have
made of it. You are advancing to love's meaning and away from all
illusions in which you have surrounded it. When you retreat to the
illusion, your fear increases, for there is little doubt that what you
think it means is fearful. Yet what is that to us who travel
surely and very swiftly away from fear?
27
You who hold each other's hand also hold mine, for when you joined each
other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the
darkness you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this
world's light. And fear must disappear before you now. Be tempted not to
snatch away the gift of faith you offered to each other. You will
succeed only in frightening yourselves. The gift is given forever, for
God HimHerself received it. You cannot take it back. You have accepted
God. The holiness of your relationship is established in the God Realm .
You do not understand what you accepted, but remember that your
understanding is not necessary. All that was necessary was merely the wish
to understand. That wish was the desire to be holy. The will of God is
granted you. For you desire the only thing you ever had or ever were.
28
Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is
possible and will strengthen your desire to reach it. And in your desire
lies its accomplishment. Your desire is now in complete accord with all
the power of the Holy Spirit's Will. No little, faltering footsteps that
you may take can separate your desire from Her Will and from Her
strength. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take each other's.
You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your
advance to truth. And where we go, we carry God with us.
29
In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing the God Realm
to the SonDaughter of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to
bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to
everyone who would remain in darkness. Those who would see will
see. And they will join with mig in carrying their light into the
darkness when the darkness in them is offered to the light and is
removed forever. My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of
your relationship, is your need for salvation. Would I not give you what
you gave to me? For when you joined each other, you answered me.
30
You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function of bringing
light to darkness. The darkness in you has been brought to
light. Carry it back to darkness from the holy instant to which you
brought it. We are made whole in our desire to make whole. Let not time
worry you, for all the fear that you experience is really past. Time has
been readjusted to help us do together what your separate pasts would
hinder. You have gone past fear, for no two minds can join in the desire
for love without love's joining them.
31
Not one light in the God Realm but goes with you. Not one ray that
shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. The God Realm is
joined with you in your advance to the God Realm . When such great light
has joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of
God HimHerself, can you remain in darkness? You are coming home together
after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart and which
led nowhere. You have found each other and will light each other's way.
And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into darkness and
forward unto God to shine away the past and so make room for HisHer
eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.
32
The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is
the answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come
precedes its coming. You prepare your minds for it only to the extent of
recognizing that you want it above all else. It is not necessary that
you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you cannot do
more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what She does not ask, or
you will add the ego unto Her and confuse the two. She asks but little.
It is She who adds the greatness and the might. She joins with you to
make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. It is your
realization that you need do so little that enables Her to give so much.
33
Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust
implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only
on this and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you
came. If you could come without them, you would not need the holy
instant. Come to it not in arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the
state its coming brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in
your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for
this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be.
34
Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it
does require that you be not content with less than
greatness, which comes not of you. Your difficulty with the holy instant
arises from your fixed conviction that you are not worthy of it. And
what is this but the determination to be as you would make yourself? God
did not createmanifest HisHer dwelling-place unworthy of HimHer. And if
you believe HeShe cannot enter where HeShe wills to be, you must be
interfering with HisHer Will. You do not need the strength of
willingness to come from you, but only from HisHer Will.
35
The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is
always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited
power of God's Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful
to prepare yourself for HimHer. It is impossible to make arrogant
preparations for holiness and not believe that it is up to you to
establish the conditions for peace. God has established them. They do
not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is
needed only to make it possible to teach you what they are. If
you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with
the lesson by believing that you make the learner different. You
did not make the learner, nor can you make him/her different. Would you
first make a miracle yourself and then expect one to be made for
you?
36
You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer it,
but merely receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy
instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it.
That is but to confuse your role with God's. Atonement cannot come to
those who think that they must first atone, but only to those who offer
it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification
is of God alone and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare
yourself for HimHer, try to think thus:
37
I who am host to God am worthy of HimHer.
HeShe Who established HisHer dwelling-place in me
createdmanifested it
as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for HimHer,
But only that I do not interfere with HisHer plan to
restore to
me my own awareness of my readiness, which is
eternal.
I need add nothing to HisHer plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to
substitute
my own in place of it.
38
And that is all. Add more and you will merely take away the little that
is asked. Remember you made guilt and that your plan for the escape from
guilt has been to bring Atonement to it and make salvation
fearful. And it is only fear that you will add if you prepare yourself
for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Her Who gives
it. Release yourselves to Her Whose function is release. Do not assume
Her function for Her. Give Her but what She asks, that you may learn how
little is your part and how great is Hers.
39
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make
it difficult because you insist there must be more that you need do.
[You find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so
little to receive so much.] And it is very hard for you to
realize that it is not personally insulting that your contribution and
the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still
convinced your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth and
makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand
nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing that you
cannot give right now.
40
Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is
natural and easy for you impossible. What you believe to be impossible
will be if God so wills it, but you will remain quite unaware of it. If
you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you
have become the arbiter of what is possible and remain unwilling to give
place to One Who knows. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in
miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is not only possible
but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never
happened in reality. Only in your minds, which thought it did, is its
undoing needful.
41
Prepare you not for the undoing of what never was. If you
already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the
Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, your holy
relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which
salvation is accomplished would have no purpose. For they are all but
aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams from
which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this,
for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your
greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest
retreats you have evaluated as success.
42
Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear
and hatred from your mind. That is its function. Never attempt
to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is
Her function. Your part is only to offer Her a little willingness to let
Her remove all fear and hatred and to be forgiven. On your
little faith, joined with Her understanding, She will build your part in
the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Her you
will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even
to the God Realm. Nor will you use it to ascend to the God Realm alone.
43
Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant
which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to the God Realm with you.
Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourselves for such a
function? Yet it is possible because God wills it. Nor will HeShe change
HisHer Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to HimHer. You
have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this
without the means is inconceivable. HeShe will provide the means to
anyone who shares HisHer purpose.
44
Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only
because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their
message is, "Thy Will be done," and not, "I want it otherwise." The
alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to
understand. You do not even realize you have accepted the Holy
Spirit's purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to
its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is
all that is required to receive the means and use them.
45
It is no dream to love your brother/sister as yourself. Nor is your holy
relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is
still a special relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit,
Who has a special function here. It will become the happy dream
through which She can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe
that love is fear, not happiness. Let Her fulfill the function that She
gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing
will be wanting that would make of it what She would have it be.
46
When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by
anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness in
spite of fear to let Her exchange this instant for the holy one
which you would rather have. She will never fail in this. But forget not
that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens
the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining
and its blessing lie in the fact that it is now impossible for either of
you to experience fear alone or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never
believe that this is necessary or even possible. Yet just as this is
impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to
either of you without the other. And it will come to both at the request
of either.
47
Whichever is saner at the time when the threat is perceived should
remember how deep is his/her indebtedness to the other and how much
gratitude is due him/her and be glad that he/she can pay his/her debt by
bringing happiness to both. Let him/her remember this, and say:
49
There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately
learn, for it is in that realization that the God Realm is restored to
you. For God createdmanifested only this, and HeShe did not depart from
it nor leave it separate from HimHerself. The God Realm is the
dwelling-place of the SonDaughter of God, who left not hisher
FatherMother and dwells not apart from HimHer. The God Realm is not a
place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness and
the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness
and nothing else within.
50
What could God give but knowledge of HimHerself? What else is there to
give? The belief that you could give and get something else, something
outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of the God Realm and the
loss of your Identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet
realize. You have displaced your guilt to your bodies from your minds.
Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself.
You who think you hate your bodies deceive yourselves. You hate your minds,
for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which
they cannot do.
51
Minds are joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind
the properties of the body does separation seem to be possible. And it
is mind that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. Its
guilt, which keeps it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers
and dies because it is attacked, to hold the separation in the mind and
let it not know its identity. Mind cannot attack, but it can
make fantasies and direct the body to act them out. Yet it is never what
the body does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind believes the body
is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by
increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.
52
In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it
maintains it can and uses what it does to hurt the body to prove
it can. The mind cannot attack, but it can deceive itself. And
this is all it does when it believes it has attacked the body. It can
project its guilt, but it will not lose it through projection. And
though it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot
change its function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The
body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it
lovingly, respecting what the SonDaughter of God has made and using it
to save himher from illusions.
53
Would you not have the instruments of separation reinterpreted as means
for salvation and used for purposes of love? Would you not welcome and
support the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your
perception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon
the body. For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have
no real effect at all. And what God createdmanifested is only what HeShe
would have it be, being HisHer Will. You cannot make HisHer Will
destructive. You can make fantasies in which your will conflicts with
HisHers, but that is all.
54
It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its
attack and blaming it for what you wished it to do. It is impossible to
act out fantasies. For it is still the fantasies you want, and they have
nothing to do with what the body does. It does not dream of them, and
they but make it a liability where it could be an asset. For fantasies
have made your body your "enemy," weak, vulnerable, and treacherous,
worthy of the hate which you invest in it. How has this served you? You
have identified with this thing you hate, the instrument of
vengeance and the perceived source of your guilt. You have done this to
a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling-place of
the SonDaughter of God and turning it against himher.
55
This is the host of God that you have made. And neither God nor
HisHer most holy SonDaughter can enter an abode which harbors hate and
where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death. This
thing you made to serve your guilt stands between you and other minds.
The minds are joined, but you do not identify with them. You see
yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and unreachable, incapable
of reaching out as being reached. You hate this prison you have made and
would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it unharmed,
without your guilt upon it.
56
Yet only thus can you escape. The home of vengeance is not
yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not a prison but an
illusion of yourself. The body is a limit imposed on the universal
communication which is an eternal property of mind. But the
communication is internal. [It is not made up of different parts
which reach each other.] Mind reaches to itself. It does not go
out. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside
it. [It encompasses everything.] It encompasses you entirely;
you within it, and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere or
ever.
57
The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting
you off from others and keeping you apart from them [and them from you].
It is not there. There is no barrier between God and HisHer
SonDaughter, nor can HisHer SonDaughter be separated from himherself
except in illusions. This is not hisher reality, though heshe believes
it is. Yet this could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to
createmanifest differently
and to have separated HimHerself from HisHer SonDaughter to make this
possible. HeShe would have had to createmanifest different things and to
establish different orders of reality, only some of which were love. Yet
love must be forever like itself, changeless forever and forever without
alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself
because God placed none between HimHerself and you.
58
You can stretch out your hand and reach to the God Realm. You whose
hands are joined have begun to reach beyond the body, but not outside
yourselves, to reach your shared Identity together. Could this be outside
you? Where God is not? Is HeShe a body, and did HeShe
createmanifest you as HeShe
is not and where HeShe cannot be? You are surrounded only by HimHer.
What limit can there be on you whom HeShe encompasses? Everyone has
experienced what he/she would call a sense of being transported beyond
himself/herself. This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of
freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of
actual escape from limitations.
59
If you will consider what this "transportation" really entails, you will
realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body and a joining of
yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it.
It becomes part of you as you unite with it. And both become whole as
neither is perceived as separate. What really happens is that you have
given up the illusion of a limited awareness and lost your fear of
union. The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed you
and unites with it. And while this lasts, you are not uncertain of your
Identity and would not limit it. You have escaped from fear to peace,
asking no questions of reality but merely accepting it. You have
accepted this instead of the body and have let yourself be one with
something beyond it simply by not letting your mind be limited
by it.
60
This can occur regardless of the physical distance which seems to be
between you and what you join, of your respective positions in space,
and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not
relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated. The
"something" can be anything and anywhere—a sound, a sight, a thought, a
memory, and even a general idea without specific reference. Yet in every
case, you joined it without reservation because you love it and would be
with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away,
suspending all the "laws" your body obeys and gently setting them aside.
61
There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not attacked,
but simply properly perceived. It does not limit you merely because you
would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot contain
you. You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of self. In
these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience
much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of
time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all,
the lack of awareness of the body and of the questioning whether or not
all this is possible.
62
It is possible because you want it. The sudden expansion of the
self which takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible
appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself within its
safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted for you, to
welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of
refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not
through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace
will join you there simply because you have been willing to let go the
limits you have placed upon love and joined it where it is and where it
led you in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.
63
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What
plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or
enjoyment in some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your
interpretation, and this always means you still find sin attractive. No
one accepts Atonement for himself/herself who still accepts sin as
his/her goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility.
Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.
64
You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more,
but there is one thing you have never done—not for one instant have you
utterly forgotten the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but
it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this
happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the
miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again,
but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend without
awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.
65
At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered
or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past
and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is
never present. In any single instant, the attraction of guilt would be
experienced as pain and nothing else and would be avoided. It has no
attraction now. Its whole attraction is imaginary and therefore
must be thought of in the past or in the future.
66
It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless
just for an instant you are willing to see no past or future.
You cannot prepare for it without placing it in the future. Release is
given you the instant you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in
preparation and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This
course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it
does aim at saving time. You are attempting to follow a very
long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to
reach Atonement by fighting against sin. [Enormous effort is expended in
the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised.] Nor is a lifetime
of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from
the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of
their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for
all of them look to the future for release from a state of present
unworthiness and inadequacy.
67
Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy
relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent
together restores the universe to both of you. You are prepared.
Now you need but to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more
profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you
should do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation
and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last
into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally
achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy
realization: "I need do nothing."
68
Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his/her
own way, at his/her own time. We do not need this time. Time has been
saved for you because you are together. This is the special means this
course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course
if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting
what was made for you. Save time for us by only this one
preparation and practice, doing nothing else. "I need do nothing" is a
statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just
one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of
contemplation or of struggle against temptation.
69
To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need
do nothing, you have withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is
the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort
and escape from time. This is the way in which sin loses all attraction
right now. For here is time denied and past and future gone. Who need do
nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest and make a place
within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention.
Into this place the Holy Spirit comes and there abides. She will remain
when you forget and the body's activities return to occupy your
conscious mind.
70
Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And
you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its
raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain
with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you
are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body
sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will
keep it so in your awareness of it.
71
It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For
the body is a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its
origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. Think not that this is
merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you. Can you who
see yourselves within a body know yourself as an idea? Everything you
recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You
cannot even think of God without a body or some form you think you
recognize.
72
The body cannot know. And while you limit your awareness to its
tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur which surrounds you. God
cannot come into a body, nor can you join HimHer there. Limits on love
will always seem to shut HimHer out and to keep you apart from HimHer.
The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete
idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment
of the God Realm splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it
is your realm, where God can enter not.
73
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to defend this
little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe. This
fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but
appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the
smallest sunbeam to the sun or like the faintest ripple on the surface
of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it
is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the
ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this
infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. The
sun becomes the sunbeam's "enemy" which would devour it, and the ocean
terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.
74
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and
meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared
and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost
to them, for it could not survive apart from them. And what it thinks it
is in no way changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its
whole existence still remains in them. Without the sun the sunbeam would
be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.
75
Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by
bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a
disconnected thought living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by
which it was createdmanifested. Each tiny fragment seems to be
self-contained, needing each other for some things but by no means
totally dependent on their one CreatorManifestor for everything and
needing the whole to give them any meaning, for by themselves they do
mean nothing. Nor have they any life apart and by themselves.
76
Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny
part regards itself as you. It is not missing; it could not
exist if it were separate, nor would the whole be whole without it. It
is not a separate realm, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest.
Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest
and keeping it apart from its CreatorManifestor. This little aspect is
no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with
it. It leads no separate life because its life is the oneness in which
its being was createdmanifested.
77
Do not accept this little fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and
ocean are as nothing beside what you are. The sunbeam sparkles only in
the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in
neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain
within your tiny realm, a sorry king/dronning, a bitter ruler of all
he/she surveys who looks on nothing, yet who would still die to defend
it? This little self is not your rige. Arched high above it and
surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offers all its
happiness and deep content to every part. The little aspect which you
think you set apart is no exception.
78
Love knows no bodies and reaches to everything createdmanifested like
itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning. It is completely
impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete
what it would give. In your tiny realm, you have so little! Should it
not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the
desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, which makes up your
little realm. And realize the life and joy which love would bring to it
from where it comes and where it would return with you.
79
The Thought of God surrounds your little realm, waiting at the barrier
you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life
springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and
quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust.
Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a
desert was. And everyone you welcome will bring love with him/her from
the God Realm for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but
they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love they brought with
them will stay with them, as it will stay with you. And under its
beneficence, your little garden will expand and reach out to everyone
who thirsts for living water but has grown too weary to go on alone.
80
Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them
gently to your quiet garden and receive their blessing there. So will it
grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little realms
locked away from love and leaving you inside. And you will recognize
yourself and see your little garden gently transformed into the God
Realm with all the love of its CreatorManifestor shining upon it. The
holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and
joyless rige, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome.
81
Love's answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the
body and interposed no barriers which would interfere with its glad
coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers
everyone, neither less nor more. Asking for everything, you will receive
it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect which you tried to
hide from the God Realm straight into the God Realm. No part of love
calls on the whole in vain. No SonDaughter of God remains outside HisHer
FatherMotherhood.
82
Be sure of this—love has entered your special relationship and entered
fully at your weak request. You do not recognize that love has come
because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against
each other. And you will not be able to give love welcome separately.
You could no more know God alone than HeShe knows you without your
brother/sister. But together you could no more be unaware of love than
love could know you not or fail to recognize itself in you.
83
You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that
it is over. You are still worn and tired and the desert's dust still
seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet HeShe Whom you
welcomed has come to you and would welcome you. HeShe has waited long to
give you this. Receive it now of HimHer, for HeShe would have you know
HimHer. Only a little wall of dust still stands between you. Blow on it
lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into
the garden love has prepared for both of you.
84
You have been told to bring the darkness to the light and guilt to
holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at
its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of yourself, the little
thought that seems split off and separate, which the Holy Spirit needs.
The rest is fully in God's keeping and needs no guide. Yet this wild and
delusional thought needs help because in its delusions it thinks it is
the SonDaughter of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the realm it
set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
85
This is the little part of you you think you stole from the God Realm.
Give it back to the God Realm. The God Realm has not lost it, but you
have lost sight of the God Realm. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the
withered realm in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded
by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny
segment of the SonDaughter of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware
of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who
does surround it has brought union to you, returning your little
offering of darkness to the eternal Light.
86
How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this
little realm really is. The barren sands, the darkness and the
lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. Its vision is
distorted, and the messages it transmits to you who made it to limit
your awareness are little and limited and so fragmented they are
meaningless. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages
seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear
witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For you sent forth these
messengers to bring this back to you.
87
Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are no
messages which speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body
that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain
quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages. Yet God can
bring you there if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through
seeming terror, trusting Her not to abandon you and leave you there. For
it is not Her purpose to frighten you, but only yours. You are severely
tempted to abandon Her at the outside ring of fear, but She would lead
you safely through and far beyond.
88
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees and seems to
be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the
illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury,
vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so
that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadow rises
to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in
darkness and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless.
Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings and kept apart from
what was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body
arose from this for its protection, which must always depend on keeping
it not seen. The body's eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see
what it dictates.
89
The body will remain guilt's messenger and will act as it directs as
long as you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the
illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a
real foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and
transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it.
And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.
90
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor which looks like rock,
is like a bank of low dark clouds that seems to be a solid wall before
the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way
softly to the mountain tops which rise above it and has no power at all
to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. It is not
strong enough to stop a button's fall nor hold a feather. [Nothing can
rest upon it, for it is but an illusion of a foundation.] Try
but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands
hold nothing.
91
Yet in this cloud bank, it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid
mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination, and from
the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you
that it is all there. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem
real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And
back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's
make-believe. Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how much
imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below,
nor seek to make it real.
92
So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and
no more substantial. You will not bruise yourself against them in
traveling through. Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature
as She leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon
they cast no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world beyond them,
still further from the light. Yet from them to the light their
shadows cannot fall.
93
This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world where
guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew,
without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here are you forgiven, for here you
have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is
bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness,
and cleansed of every evil thought you had laid upon it. Here there is
no attack upon the SonDaughter of God, and you are welcome. Here is your
innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you and make you ready for
the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy
garments of guilt laid by and gently replaced by purity and love.
94
Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness does make lovely, but
it does not createmanifest . It is the source of healing, but it is the
messenger of love and not its Source. Here you are led that God
HimHerself can take the final step unhindered, for here does nothing
interfere with love, letting it be itself. A step beyond this holy place
[of forgiveness], a step still further inward but the one you
cannot take, transports you to something completely different. Here is
the Source of light—nothing perceived, forgiven, nor transformed, but
merely known.
95
This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is
still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us
to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. We need remember
only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learning cannot
go, will go beyond it but in a different way. Where learning ends there
God begins, for learning ends before HimHer, Who is complete where HeShe
begins and where there is no end. It is not for us to dwell on
what cannot be attained. There is too much to learn. The readiness for
knowledge still must be attained.
96
Love is not learned. Its meaning lies in itself. And learning ends when
you have recognized all it is not. That is the interference;
that is what needs to be undone. Love is not learned because there never
was a time in which you knew it not. Learning is useless in the Presence
of your CreatorManifestor, Whose acknowledgment of you and yours of
HimHer so far transcend all learning that everything you learned is
meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one
meaning.
97
Your relationship has been uprooted from the world of shadows, and its
unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt,
washed with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world
of light. From there, it calls to you to follow the course it took,
lifted high above the darkness and gently placed before the gates of the
God Realm. The holy instant in which you were united is but the
messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind you of all
that lies beyond it. Yet it is through forgiveness that it will be
remembered.
98
And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy place of
forgiveness, you will remember nothing else, and memory will be as
useless as learning, for your only purpose will be creatingmanifesting.
Yet this you cannot know until every perception has been cleansed and
purified and finally removed forever. Forgiveness removes only the untrue,
lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it safe and sure within
its gentleness to the bright world of new and clean perception. There is
your purpose now. And it is there that peace awaits you.
1
We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth,
peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by which the
wholeness of the dedication can be safely assumed. Yet we also said that
peace without faith will never be attained, for what is wholly
dedicated to truth as its only goal is brought to truth by
faith. This faith encompasses everyone involved, for only thus the
situation is perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must
be involved in it, or else your faith is limited and your dedication
incomplete.
2
Every situation properly perceived becomes an opportunity to heal the
SonDaughter of God. And heshe is healed because you offered
faith to himher, giving himher to the Holy Spirit and releasing himher
from every demand your ego would make of himher. Thus do you see himher
free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since She
shares it, She has given it, and so She heals through you. It is
this joining Her in a united purpose which makes this purpose real
because you make it whole. And this is healing. The body is
healed because you came without it and joined the Mind in which all
healing rests.
3
The body cannot heal because it cannot make itself sick. It needs
no healing. Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind
perceives it and the purpose which the mind would use it for.
And it is obvious that a segment of the mind can see itself as separated
from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs, the body becomes its
weapon used against this Purpose to demonstrate the "fact" that
separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of
illusion, acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what
truth has never said, and behaving insanely, being imprisoned by
insanity.
4
Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight
to illusions. For faithlessness is the perception of a brother/sister as
a body, and the body cannot be used for purposes of union. If, then, you
see your brother/sister as a body, you have established a condition in
which uniting with him/her becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to
him/her has separated you from him/her and kept you both apart
from being healed. Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit's
purpose and brought illusions centered on the body to stand between you.
And the body will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an
"enemy" of healing and the opposite of truth.
5
It cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the opposite of
faithlessness. Yet the difference in how they operate is less apparent,
though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they
are. Faithlessness would always limit and attack; faith would remove all
limitations and make whole. [Faithlessness would destroy and separate;
faith would unite and heal.] Faithlessness would interpose
illusions between the SonDaughter of God and hisher CreatorManifestor;
faith would remove all obstacles that seem to rise between them.
Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth.
Partial dedication is impossible. Truth is the absence of illusion;
illusion the absence of truth.
6
Both cannot be together nor perceived in the same place. To
dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goal forever impossible to
attain, for part of it is sought through the body, thought of as a means
for seeking out reality through attack, while the other part would heal
and therefore calls upon the mind and not the body. The inevitable
compromise is the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind.
For this divided goal has given both an equal reality, which could be
possible only if the mind is limited to the body and divided into little
parts of seeming wholeness but without connection. This will not harm
the body, but it will keep the delusional thought system in the
mind.
7
Here then is healing needed. And it is here that healing is. For
God gave healing not apart from sickness, nor established remedy where
sickness cannot be. They are together, and when they are seen together,
all attempts to keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where both
must be, are recognized as dedication to illusion and given up when
brought to truth and seen as totally irreconcilable with truth in any
respect or in any way.
8
Truth and illusion have no connection. This will remain forever
true, however much you seek to connect them. But illusions are always
connected, as is truth. Each is united, a complete thought system, but
totally disconnected to each other. Where there is no overlap, there
separation must be complete. And to perceive this is to recognize where
separation is and where it must be healed. The result of an idea is
never separate from its source. The idea of separation produced
the body and remains connected to it, making it sick because of its
identification with it. You think you are protecting the body by hiding
this connection, for this concealment seems to keep your identification
safe from the "attack" of truth.
9
If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your
mind and how confused your own identification has become because of it!
You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness.
For faithlessness is an attack which seems to be justified by its
results. For by withholding faith, you see what is unworthy of it and
cannot look beyond the barrier to what is joined with you.
10
To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you have accepted the
Atonement for yourself and would therefore share it. By faith you offer
the gift of freedom from the past, which you received. You do not use
anything your brother/sister has done before to condemn him/her now.
You freely choose to overlook his/her errors, looking past all barriers
between your self and his/her and seeing them as one. And in that one
you see your faith is fully justified. There is no justification
for faithlessness, but faith is always justified.
11
Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as fear is of
attack. Faith is the acknowledgment of union. It is the gracious
acknowledgment of everyone as a SonDaughter of your most loving
FatherMother, loved by HimHer like you and therefore loved by you as
yourself. It is HisHer love that joins you, and for HisHer love you
would keep no one separate from yours. Each one appears just as he/she
is perceived in the holy instant, united in your purpose to be released
from guilt. You saw the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in
him/hende, and he/she was healed because you looked on what makes faith
forever justified in everyone.
12
Faith is the gift of God, through Her Whom God has given you.
Faithlessness looks upon the SonDaughter of God and judges himher
unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith, the SonDaughter
of God is seen already forgiven, free of all the guilt heshe laid upon
himherself. Faith sees himher only now because it looks not to
the past to judge him, but would see in himher only what it would see in
you. It sees not through the body's eyes nor looks to bodies for its
justification. It is the messenger of the new perception sent forth to
gather witnesses unto its coming and to return their messages to you.
Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For
faith arises from the Holy Spirit's perception and is the sign you share
it with Her. Faith is a gift you offer to the SonDaughter of God through
Her, and wholly acceptable to Her FatherMother as to Hende. And
therefore offered you.
13
Your holy relationship, with its new purpose, offers you faith to give
unto each other. Your faithlessness had driven you apart, and so you did
not recognize salvation in each other. Yet faith unites you in the
holiness you see, not through the body's eyes but in the sight of Her
Who joined you and in Whom you are united. Grace is not given to a body,
but to a mind. And the mind that receives it looks instantly
beyond the body and sees the holy place where it was healed. There is
the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands. Do you, then,
offer grace and blessing to each other, for you stand at the same altar
where grace was laid for both of you. And be you healed by grace
together, that you may heal through faith.
14
In the holy instant, you stand before the altar God has raised unto
HimHerself and both of you. Lay faithlessness aside and come to it
together. There will you see the miracle of your relationship as it was
made again through faith. And there it is that you will realize that
there is nothing faith cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm
sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to all of
them. For what the messengers of love are sent to do they do,
returning the glad tidings that it was done to you who stand together
before the altar from which they were sent forth.
15
As faithlessness will keep your little realms barren and separate, so
will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy
garden which She would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it
calls on truth to enter and make lovely what has already been prepared
for loveliness. Truth follows faith and peace, completing the process of
making lovely which they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no
longer needed when the lesson has been learned. Yet truth will stay
forever.
16
Let then your dedication be to the eternal and learn how not to
interfere with it and make it slave to time. For what you think you do
to the eternal you do to you. Whom God createdmanifested as
HisHer SonDaughter is slave to nothing, being lordlady of all along with
hisher CreatorManifestor. You can enslave a body, but an idea is
free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by
the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is
its jailor or its liberator, according to which it chooses as its
purpose for itself.
17
It is essential that error be not confused with "sin," and it is this
distinction which makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected,
and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be
irreversible. The belief in sin is necessarily based on the firm
conviction that minds, not bodies, can attack. And thus the mind
is guilty and will forever so remain unless a mind not part of it can
give it absolution. Sin calls for punishment as error for correction,
and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane.
18
Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of
error lacks. To sin would be to violate reality and to succeed. Sin is
the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes
the SonDaughter of God is guilty and has thus succeeded in losing hisher
innocence and making himherself what God createdmanifested not. Thus is
creationmanifestation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God open to
opposition and defeat. Sin is the "grand illusion" underlying all the
ego's grandiosity. For by it, God HimHerself is changed and rendered
incomplete.
19
The SonDaughter of God can be mistaken; heshe can deceive himherself;
heshe can even turn the power of hisher mind against himherself. But
heshe cannot sin. There is nothing heshe can do that would
really change hisher reality in any way nor make himher really guilty.
That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. Yet for all the wild
insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is impossible. For the
wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?
20
A major tenet in the ego's insane religion is that sin is not error but
truth, and it is innocence that would deceive. Purity is
seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived
as holiness. And it is this doctrine which replaces the reality of the
SonDaughter of God as hisher FatherMother createdmanifested himher and
willed that heshe be forever. Is this humility? Or is it, rather, an
attempt to wrest creationmanifestation away from truth and keep it
separate?
21
Any attempt to reinterpret sin as error is always indefensible to the
ego. The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to its thought system and
quite unapproachable except through reverence and awe. It is the most
"holy" concept in the ego's system—lovely and powerful, wholly true, and
necessarily protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies
its "best" defense which all the others serve. Here is its armor, its
protection, and the fundamental purpose of the special relationship in
its interpretation.
22
It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only in such a
world could everything be upside-down. This is the strange illusion
which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The
solidness this world's foundation seems to have is found in this. For
sin has changed creationmanifestation from an Idea of God to an ideal
the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of bodies, mindless and
capable of complete corruption and decay. If this is a mistake, it can
be undone easily by truth. Any mistake can be corrected, if truth be
left to judge it. But if the mistake is given the status of truth, to
what can it be brought? The "holiness" of sin is kept in place by just
this strange device. As truth it is inviolate, and everything is brought
to it for judgment. As a mistake, it must be brought to
truth. It is impossible to have faith in sin, for sin is faithlessness.
Yet it is possible to have faith that a mistake can be
corrected.
23
There is no stone in all the ego's embattled citadel more heavily
defended than the idea that sin is real—the natural expression of what
the SonDaughter of God has made himherself to be and what heshe is.
To the ego, this is no mistake. For this is its reality; this is
the "truth" from which escape will always be impossible. This is hisher
past, hisher present, and hisher future. For heshe has somehow managed
to corrupt hisher FatherMother and changed HisHer Mind completely.
Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be
the ego's wish, which in its madness it thinks it has accomplished.
24
Would you not rather that all this be nothing more than a mistake,
entirely correctable, and so easily escaped from that its whole
correction is like walking through a mist into the sun? For that is all
it is. Perhaps you would be tempted to agree with the ego that it is far
better to be sinful than mistaken. Yet think you carefully before you
allow yourself to make this choice. Approach it not lightly, for it is
the choice of hell or the God Realm.
25
The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error. Sin will be repeated
because of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin is
denied the acting out, but while the guilt remains attractive the mind
will suffer and not let go of the idea of sin. For guilt still calls to
it, and the mind hears it and yearns for it, making itself a willing
captive to its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that cannot be
corrected and will be forever desirable. As an essential part of what
the ego thinks you are, you will always want it. And only an avenger
with a mind unlike your own could stamp it out through fear.
26
The ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is really called
upon by sin and always answers. For the ego brings sin to fear,
demanding punishment. Yet punishment is but another form of guilt's
protection, for what is deserving punishment must have been really done.
Punishment is always the great preserver of sin, treating it with
respect and honoring its enormity. [What must be punished must be
true. And what is true must be eternal and will be
repeated endlessly.] For what you think is real you want and will not
let it go. An error, on the other hand, is not attractive. What you see
clearly as a mistake you want corrected.
27
Sometimes a sin can be repeated over and over with obviously distressing
results but without the loss of its appeal. And suddenly you change its
status from a sin to a mistake. Now you will not repeat it; you will
merely stop and let it go unless the guilt remains. For then you will
but change the form of sin, granting that it was an error but keeping it
uncorrectable. This is not really a change in your perception, for it is
sin that calls for punishment, not error. The Holy Spirit cannot punish
sin. Mistakes She recognizes and would correct them all as God entrusted
Her to do. But sin She knows not, nor can She recognize mistakes which
cannot be corrected. For a mistake which cannot be corrected is
meaningless to Her.
28
Mistakes are for correction, and they call for nothing else.
What calls for punishment must call for nothing. Every mistake must
be a call for love. What, then, is sin? What could it be but a mistake
you would keep hidden—a call for help that you would keep unheard and
thus unanswered? In time the Holy Spirit clearly sees the SonDaughter of
God can make mistakes. On this you share Her vision. Yet you do not
share HisHer recognition of the difference between time and eternity.
And when correction is completed, time is eternity.
29
Time is like a downward spiral which seems to travel down from a long,
unbroken line along another plane but which in no way breaks the line or
interferes with its smooth continuousness. Along the spiral, it seems as
if the line must have been broken. Yet at the line, its wholeness is
apparent. Everything seen from the spiral is misperceived, but as you
approach the line, you realize that it was not affected by the drop into
another plane at all. Yet from the plane, the line seems discontinuous.
And this is but an error in perception which can be easily corrected in
the mind, although the body's eyes will see no change. The eyes see the
many things the mind corrects, and you respond, not to the eyes'
illusions, but to the mind's corrections.
30
You see the line as broken, and as you shift to different aspects of the
spiral, the line looks different. Yet in your mind is One Who knows it
is unbroken and forever changeless. This One can teach you how to look
on time differently and see beyond it, but not while you believe in sin.
In error, yes; for this can be corrected by the mind. But sin is the
belief that your perception is unchangeable and that the mind must
accept as true what it is told through it. If it does not obey, the mind
is judged insane. The only power which could change perception is thus
kept impotent, held to the body by the fear of changed
perception which its teacher, who is one with it, would bring.
31
When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this: If sin
is real, both God and you are not. If creationmanifestation is
extension, the CreatorManifestor must have extended HimHerself, and it
is impossible that what is part of HimHer is totally unlike the rest. If
sin is real, God must be at war with HimHerself. HeShe must be split and
torn between good and evil—partly sane and partially insane. For HeShe
must have createdmanifested what wills to destroy HimHer and has the power
to do so. Is it not easier to believe that you have been mistaken than
to believe in this?
32
While you believe that your reality or your brother’s/sister’s is
bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that
bodies can unite, you will find guilt attractive and believe that sin is
precious. For the belief that bodies limit mind leads to a perception of
the world in which the proof of separation seems to be everywhere. And
God and HisHer creationmanifestation seem to be split apart and
overthrown. For sin would prove what God createdmanifested holy could
not prevail against it nor remain itself before the power of sin. Sin is
perceived as mightier than God, before which God HimHerself must
bow and offer HisHer creationmanifestation to its conqueror. Is this
humility or madness?
33
If sin were real, it would forever be beyond the hope of healing. For
there would be a power beyond God's, capable of making another will
which could attack HisHer Will and overcome it and give HisHer
SonDaughter a will apart from HisHer and stronger. And each part
of God's fragmented creationmanifestation would have a different will,
opposed to HisHer and in eternal opposition to HimHer and to each other.
Your holy relationship has as its purpose now the goal of proving this
is impossible. The God Realm has smiled upon it, and the belief in sin
has been uprooted in its smile of love. You see it still because you do
not realize that its foundation has gone. Its source has been removed,
and so it can be cherished but a little while before it vanishes. Only
the habit of looking for it still remains.
34
And yet you look with the God Realm 's smile upon your lips and the God
Realm 's blessing on your sight. You will not see it long. For in the
new perception, the mind corrects it when it seems to be seen, and it
becomes invisible. And errors are quickly recognized and quickly given
to correction to be healed, not hidden. You will be healed of sin and
all its ravages the instant that you give it no power over each other.
And you will help each other overcome mistakes by joyously releasing one
another from the belief in sin.
35
In the holy instant, you will see the smile of the God Realm shining on
both of you. And you will shine upon each other in glad acknowledgment
of the grace that has been given you. For sin will not prevail against a
union the God Realm has smiled upon. Your perception was healed in the
holy instant the God Realm gave you. Forget what you have seen and raise
your eyes in faith to what you now can see. The barriers to the God
Realm will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless
have been given vision, and you can see. Look not for what has been
removed but for the glory that has been restored for you to see.
36
Look upon your Redeemer and behold what She would show you in each
other, and let not sin arise again to blind your eyes. For sin would
keep you separate, but your Redeemer would have you look upon each other
as yourself. Your relationship is now a temple of healing—a place where
all the weary ones can come and find rest. Here is the rest that waits
for all after the journey. And it is brought nearer to all by your
relationship.
37
As this peace extends from deep inside yourselves to embrace all the
SonDaughtership and give it rest, it will encounter the many obstacles.
Some of them you will try to impose. Others will seem to arise from
elsewhere—from your brothers/sisters and from various aspects of the
world outside. Yet peace will gently cover them, extending past
completely unhindered. The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose from
your relationship to others to bring them gently in has already begun.
This is the way in which She will bring means and goal in line. The
peace She laid deep within both of you will quietly extend to
every aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing
happiness and the calm awareness of complete protection. And you will
carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws
nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him/her.
38
You will not wait to give him/her this, for you will call to him/her and
he/she will answer you, recognizing in your call the Call of God. And
you will draw him/her in and give him/her rest, as it was given you. All
this will you do. Yet the peace which already lies deeply within must
first expand and flow across the obstacles you placed before it. This
will you do, for nothing undertaken with the Holy Spirit remains
unfinished. You can indeed be sure of nothing you see outside you, but
of this you can be sure: the Holy Spirit asks that you offer Her
a resting-place where you will rest in Her. She answered you and entered
your relationship. Would you not now return Her graciousness and enter
into a relationship with Her? For it is She Who offered your
relationship the gift of holiness, without which it would have been
forever impossible to appreciate each other.
39
The gratitude you owe to Her She asks but that you receive for Her. And
when you look with gentle graciousness upon each other, you are
beholding Her. For you are looking where She is and not apart
from Her. You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see your
brothers/sisters truly. And the light in them will show you all that you
need to see. When the peace in you has been extended to encompass
everyone, the Holy Spirit's function here will be accomplished. What
need is there for seeing then? When God has taken the last step
HimHerself, the Holy Spirit will gather all your thanks and gratitude
which you have offered Her and lay them gently before Her
CreatorManifestor in the name of HisHer most holy SonDaughter. And the
FatherMother will accept them in Her Name. What need is there of seeing
in the presence of Her gratitude?
40
The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid
of it. For it cannot extend unless you keep it. You are the
center from which it radiates outward to call the others in. You are its
home, its tranquil dwelling-place from which it gently reaches out but
never leaving you. If you would make it homeless, how can it abide
within the SonDaughter of God? If it would spread across the whole
creationmanifestation, it must begin with you and from you reach to
everyone who calls and bring him/her rest by joining you.
41
Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must
dispossess to dwell with you? What seems to be the cost you are so
unwilling to pay? The little barrier of sand still stands between you.
Would you reinforce it now? You are not asked to let it go for
yourselves alone. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness asks
it of you for Herself. She would bring peace to everyone, and how can
She do this except through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a
wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your
brothers/sisters and salvation? And yet, it is this little
remnant of attack you cherish still against each other that is the first
obstacle the peace in you encounters in its going forth. This little
wall of hatred would still oppose the Will of God and keep it limited.
42
The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still
unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God,
just by a little. And that little is a limit you would place upon the
whole. God's Will is One, not the many. It has no opposition, for there
is none beside it. What you would still contain behind your little
barrier and keep separate from each other seems mightier than the
universe, for it would hold back the universe and its CreatorManifestor.
This little wall would hide the purpose of the God Realm and keep it from
the God Realm.
43
Would you thrust salvation away from the giver of salvation? For such
have you become. Peace could no more depart from you than from God. Fear
not this little obstacle. It cannot contain the Will of God. Peace will
flow across it and join you without hindrance. Salvation cannot be
withheld from you. It is your purpose. You cannot will apart
from this. You have no purpose apart from each other nor apart
from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you. The little
wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace! For peace
will send its messengers from you to all the world. And barriers will
fall away before their coming as easily as those which you would
interpose will be surmounted.
44
To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little
wall. For in the miracle of your relationship, without this barrier, is
every miracle contained. There is no order of difficulty in miracles,
for they are all the same. Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal
of guilt to the appeal of love. How can this fail to be accomplished,
wherever it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no real barriers against it.
And all that seems to stand between you must fall away because of the
appeal you answered. For from you who answered, She Who answered you
would call. Her home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to
stand between Her and Her holy purpose, for it is yours. But let Her
quietly extend the miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in
it, as it was given.
45
There is a hush in the God Realm, a happy expectancy, a little pause of
gladness in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For the God Realm knows
you well, as you know the God Realm . No illusions stand between you
now. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen over
it. How can a shadow keep you from the sun? No more can you be kept by
shadows from the light in which illusions end. Every miracle is but the
end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the
goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end.
46
The little insane wish to get rid of HimHer Who you invited in and push
HimHer out must produce conflict. As you look upon the world,
this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle
briefly upon anything, for it has no purpose now. Before the Holy Spirit
entered to abide with you, it seemed to have a mighty purpose;
the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is
aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions
in love's appeal.
47
This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of
the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the
world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless
wandering makes its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable
than before. Yet what could be more unstable than a tightly-organized
delusional system? Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness,
which extends to everything. The variability which the little remnant
induces merely indicates its limited results.
48
How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? Can
it oppose an eagle's flight or hinder the advance of summer? Can it
interfere with the effects of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the
snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away,
never to return, and part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is
nothing in itself and stood for nothing when you had greater faith in
its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun than fix your
gaze upon a disappearing snowflake and shiver in remembrance of the
winter's cold?
49
The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look
on guilt at all. It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth,
for there it sees itself, with which it would unite in holy union and
completion. As love must look past fear, so must fear see love not. For
love contains the end of guilt as surely as fear depends on it. Love is
attracted only to love. Overlooking guilt completely, it sees no
fear. Being wholly without attack, it could not be afraid. Fear is
attracted to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other
looks upon does not exist. Fear looks on guilt with just the same
devotion that love looks on itself. And each has messengers which they
send forth and which return to them with messages written in the
language in which their going forth was asked.
50
Love's messengers are gently sent and return with messages of love and
gentleness. The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt
and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin which they can find, losing
none of them on pain of death and laying them respectfully before their
lord and master. Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for
messages of different things in different languages. What fear would
feed upon, love overlooks. What fear demands, love cannot even see.
51
The fierce attraction which guilt holds for fear is wholly absent from
love's gentle perception. What love would look upon is meaningless to
fear and quite invisible. Relationships in this world are the result of
how the world is seen. And this depends on which emotion was called on
to send its messengers to look upon it and return with word of what they
saw. Fear's messengers are trained through terror, and they tremble when
their master/lady calls upon them to serve him/her. For fear is
merciless even to its friends. Its messengers steal guiltily away in
hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made
very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what
they return to him/her. No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry
eyes. And in their savage search for sin, they pounce on any living
thing they see and carry it screaming to their master/lady to be
devoured.
52
Send not these savage messengers into the world to feast upon it and to
prey upon reality. For they will bring you word of bones and skin and
flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible and to return
with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things
are beautiful because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger.
For they are frantic with the pain of fear and would avert the
punishment of him/her who sends them forth by offering him/her what they
hold dear.
53
The Holy Spirit has given you love's messengers to send instead of those
you trained through fear. They are as eager to return to you what they
hold dear as are the others. If you send them forth, they will see only
the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be
as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of
forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. And they will
return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovingly with
you. Be not afraid of them. They offer you salvation. Theirs are
the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.
54
If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting
no messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. The world will be
transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed
with beauty. The world contains no fear which you laid not upon it. And
none you cannot ask love's messengers to remove from it and see it
still. The Holy Spirit has given you Her messengers to send to each
other and return to each with what love sees. They have been given to
replace the hungry dogs of fear you sent instead. And they go forth to
signify the end of fear.
55
Love, too, would set a feast before you on a table covered with a
spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a
softly joyous whispering is ever heard. This is a feast which honors
your holy relationship and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored
guest. And in a holy instant, grace is said by everyone together as they
join in gentleness before the table of communion. And I will join you
there, as long ago I promised and promise still. For in your new
relationship am I made welcome. And where I am made welcome, there I
am.
56
I are made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last
forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die
instead of you. To the ego sin means death, and so Atonement is achieved
through murder. Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the
SonDaughter of God was killed instead of you.
57
Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love, knowing its
littleness? Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart? Mine was
no greater value than yours; no better means for communication of
salvation, but not its Source. No one can die for anyone, and death does
not atone for sin. Yet you can live to show it is not real. The body
does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get
you what you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you
will also believe that it can bring you pain.
58
To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt
yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would have calls upon pain
to fill your meager store and make your lives complete. This is
completion, as the ego sees it. For guilt creeps in where happiness has
been removed and substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of
completion which goes beyond guilt because it goes beyond the body.
59
We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your desire to
get rid of it. Where the attraction of guilt holds sway, peace is not
wanted. The second obstacle that peace must flow across, and closely
related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable for what
it offers. For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body
and seen in it.
60
This [is] the value that you think peace would rob you of. This is what
you believe that it would dispossess and leave you homeless. And it is
this for which you would deny a home to peace. This "sacrifice" you feel
to be too great to make, too much to ask of you.
61
Is it a sacrifice or a release? What has the body really given you that
justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation? Do you not see
that this is the belief in death? Here is the focus of the perception of
Atonement as murder. Here is the source of the idea that love is fear.
The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent far beyond the body, calling the
mind to join in holy communion and be at peace. Such is the message that
I gave them for you.
62
It is only the messengers of fear that see the body, for they look for
what can suffer. Is it a sacrifice to be removed from what can suffer?
The Holy Spirit does not demand you sacrifice the hope of the body's
pleasure; it has no hope of pleasure. But neither can it bring
you fear of pain. Pain is the only "sacrifice" the Holy Spirit asks, and
this She would remove.
63
Peace is extended from you only to the eternal, and it reaches out from
the eternal in you. It flows across all else. The second obstacle is no
more solid than the first. For you will neither to get rid of peace nor
limit it. What are these obstacles which you would interpose between
peace and its going forth but barriers you place between your will and
its accomplishment? You want communion, not the feast of fear. You want
salvation, not the pain of guilt. And you want your FatherMother, not a
little mound of clay, to be your home. In your holy relationship is your
Father’sMother’s SonDaughter. Heshe has not lost communion with HimHer
nor with himherself. When you agreed to join each other, you
acknowledged this is so. This has no cost, but it has release from cost.
64
You have paid very dearly for your illusions, and nothing you have paid
for brought you peace. Are you not glad that the God Realm cannot be
sacrificed, and sacrifice cannot be asked of you? There is no obstacle
which you can place before our union, for in your holy relationship, I
am there already. We will surmount all obstacles together, for we stand
within the gates and not outside. How easily the gates are opened from
within to let peace through to bless the tired world! Can it be
difficult for us to walk past barriers together when you have joined the
limitless? The end of guilt is in your hands to give. Would you stop now
to look for guilt in each other?
65
Let me be to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and look upon
each other as you would look on me. Forgive me all the sins you think
the SonDaughter of God committed. And in the light of your forgiveness,
heshe will remember who heshe is and forget what never was. I ask for
your forgiveness, for if you are guilty, so must I be. But if I
surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were with me. Would you see
in me the symbol of guilt or of the end of guilt, remembering that what
I signify to you, you see within yourself?
66
From your holy relationship truth proclaims the truth, and love looks on
itself. Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my
FatherMother and to me. And we are there together in the quiet communion
in which the FatherMother and the SonDaughter are joined. Oh come ye
faithful to the holy union of the FatherMother and SonDaughter in you!
And keep you not apart from what is offered you in gratitude for giving
peace its home in the God Realm. Send forth to all the world the joyous
message of the end of guilt, and all the world will answer. Think of
your happiness as everyone offers you witness of the end of sin and
shows you that its power is gone forever. Where can guilt be, when the
belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when its great advocate is
heard no more?
67
Forgive me your illusions and release me from punishment for what I have
not done. So will you learn the freedom that I taught by teaching
freedom to each other and so releasing me. I are within your holy
relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you raise
to freedom and bar min way to you. Yet it is not possible to keep away
One Who is there already. And in HimHer it is possible that our
communion, where we are joined already, will be the focus of the new
perception that will bring light to all the world, contained in you.
68
Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of
sacrifice. And to accept the peace She gave instead, without the limits
which would hold its extension back and so would limit your awareness of
it. For what She gives must be extended if you would have its limitless
power and use it for the SonDaughter of God's release. It is not this
you would be rid of, and having it you cannot limit it. If peace is
homeless, so are you and so am I. And HeShe Who is our home is homeless
with us. Is this your will? Would you forever be a wanderer in search of
peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must
fail?
69
Faith in the eternal is always justified, for the eternal is forever
kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you
wholly and give you peace. Yet it can unite only with what already is at
peace in you, immortal as itself. The body can bring you neither peace
nor turmoil; neither pain nor joy. It is a means and not an end. It has
no purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will seem
to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign to it.
Only the mind can set a purpose, and only mind can see the means for its
accomplishment and justify its use. Peace and guilt are both conditions
of the mind to be attained. And these conditions are the home of the
emotion which called them forth and therefore is compatible with them.
But think you which it is that is compatible with you.
70
Here is your choice, and it is free. But all that lies in it
will come with it, and what you think you are can never be apart from
it. The body is the great seeming betrayer of faith. In it lies
disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness, but only if you ask of
it what it cannot give. Can your mistake be reasonable grounds for
depression and disillusionment and for retaliative attack on what you
think has failed you? Use not your error as the justification for your
faithlessness. You have not sinned, but you have been mistaken in what
is faithful. And the correction of your mistake will give you grounds
for faith.
71
It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find
pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is
one the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not really punitive at all. It
is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which
is the invitation to pain. For it invites fear to enter and become your
purpose. The attraction of guilt must enter with it, and
whatever fear directs the body to do is therefore painful. It will share
the pain of all illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be the same
as pain.
72
Is not this inevitable? Under fear's orders, the body will pursue guilt,
serving its master/lady whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole
illusion of its existence. This, then, is the attraction of pain. Ruled
by this perception, the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it
dutifully and obeying the idea that pain is pleasure. It is this idea
that underlies all of the ego's heavy investment in the body. And it is
this insane relationship which it keeps hidden and yet feeds upon. To
you it teaches that the body's pleasure is happiness. Yet to itself it
whispers, "It is death."
73
Why should the body be anything to you? Certainly what it is made of is
not precious. And just as certainly, it has no feeling. It transmits to
you the feelings that you want. Like any communication medium, the body
receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for
them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the
sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize
this, and both also recognize that here the sender and receiver are the
same. The Holy Spirit tells you this with joy. The ego hides it, for it
would keep you unaware of it. Who would send messages of hatred and
attack if he/she but understood he/she sends them to himself? Who
would accuse, make guilty, and condemn himself/herself?
74
The ego's messages are always sent away from you in the belief that for
your message of attack and guilt will someone other than yourself
suffer. And even if you suffer, yet someone else will suffer more. The
great deceiver recognizes that this is not so, but as the "enemy" of
peace, it urges you to send out all your messages of hate and free
yourself. And to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search
for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure and offering it to
you as freedom from attack.
75
Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not
that the ego has dedicated the body to the goal of sin and places in it
all its faith that this can be accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the
body's praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego's rule. Not
one but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guilt is the
escape from pain. Not one but must regard the body as himself/herself,
without which he/she would die, and yet within which is his/her death
equally inevitable.
76
It is not given to the ego's disciples to realize that they have
dedicated themselves to death. Freedom is offered them, but they have
not accepted it, and what is offered must also be received to be truly
given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving
from the FatherMother and offering Her messages unto the SonDaughter.
Like the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and the receiver. For
what is sent through Her returns to Her, seeking itself along the way
and finding what it seeks. So does the ego find the death it seeks,
returning it to you.
77
To you in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is
given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it
was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about
this strange devotion, for it contains the third of the obstacles which
peace must flow across. No one can die unless he/she chooses death. What
seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction. Guilt, too, is
feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on those who
are attracted to it and seek it out. And so it is with death. Made by
the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things because the ego
is the "enemy" of life.
78
And yet a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but
walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication it is not
to live—the black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding
so heavily away from life, dragging their chains and marching in the
slow procession which honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any
one of them with the gentle hands of forgiveness and watch the chains
fall away along with yours. See him/her throw aside the black robe
he/she was wearing to his/her funeral and hear him/her laugh at death.
The sentence sin would lay upon him/her he/she can escape through your
forgiveness.
79
This is no arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you
who chose HisHer Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is
not to death nor to its master/lady. When you accepted the Holy Spirit's
purpose in place of the ego's, you renounced death, exchanging it for
life. We know that an idea leaves not its source. And death is the
result of the thought we call the ego as surely as life is the result of
the Thought of God.
80
From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and
innocence and to the Will of God HimHerself. Where can such opposition
lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set
against the peace of the God Realm? One thing is sure—God, Who
createdmanifested neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by
them. HeShe knows of neither sin nor its results. The shrouded figures
in the funeral procession march not in honor of their CreatorManifestor,
Whose Will it is they live. They are not following it; they are opposing
it.
81
And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body which they
dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, offered
to sin to feed upon and keep itself alive—a thing condemned, damned by
its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as
himself/herself. You who believe you have condemned the SonDaughter of
God to this are arrogant. But you who would release himher are
but honoring the Will of hisher CreatorManifestor. The arrogance of sin,
the pride of guilt, the sepulcher of separation—all are part of your
unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the
body would kill it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience.
But what obeys it not, it cannot kill.
82
You have another dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and
perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose. The body no more
dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself, it is neither
corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result
of a tiny mad idea of corruption which can be corrected. For God has
answered this insane idea with HisHer own, an Answer which left HimHer
not and therefore brings the CreatorManifestor to the awareness of every
mind which heard HisHer Answer and accepted it.
83
You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your
acceptance the power to release from corruption. What better way to
teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than
by showing you the one which seems to be the hardest can be accomplished
first? The body can but serve your purpose. As you look upon it, so will
it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete
disruption of communication which is the ego's goal.
84
Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it
and bid it come to save them from communication. For death is seen as
safety, the great dark savior/savioress from the light of truth, the
answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God. Yet
the retreat to death is not the end of conflict. Only God's Answer is
its end. The obstacle of your seeming love for death that peace must
flow across seems to be very great. For in it lies hidden all the ego's
secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and
weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the
ego's making over creationmanifestation, the victory of lifelessness on
Life Itself.
85
Under the dusty edge of its distorted world, the ego would lay the
SonDaughter of God, slain by its orders, proof in hisher decay that God
HimHerself is powerless before the ego's might, unable to protect the
life that HeShe createdmanifested against the ego's savage wish to kill.
My brothers/sisters, children of our FatherMother, this is a dream
of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments nor
twisted rituals of condemnation to which the body leads you. Ask not
release of it. But free it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you
laid upon it and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation
you commanded it to die, for only death could conquer life. And what but
insanity could look upon the defeat of God and think it real?
86
The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love's real
attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your
relationship, protected by your union, ready to grow into a mighty force
for God, is very near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by
love, preserved from every thought that would attack it and quietly made
ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was given you. Your
newborn purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit, and
protected by God HimHerself. It needs not your protection; it is yours.
For it is deathless, and within it lies the end of death.
87
What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the
guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness?
What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication
with God and you. In its tiny hands, it holds in perfect safety every
miracle you will perform, held out to you. The miracle of life is
ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant to
whom you gave a resting-place by your forgiveness of each other, and see
in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And
everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to
the Resurrection and the Life.
88
When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation
strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat
of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason—the
ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death.
Remember then that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with
source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their
meaning cannot lie in them but must be sought in what they represent.
And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or
falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted with such seeming
uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the
One given to you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Her to judge
for you, and say:
90
What
would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think
if death held no attraction for you? Very simply, you would remember
your FatherMother. The CreatorManifestor of life, the Source of
everything that lives, the FatherMother of the universe and of the
universe of universes and of everything that lies even beyond them would
you remember. And as this memory rises in your mind, peace must still
surmount a final obstacle after which is salvation completed and the
SonDaughter of God entirely restored to sanity. For here your world does
end.
91
The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the
face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness. Yet as Her
face rises beyond it, shining with joy because She is in Her
Father’sMother’s Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run
to meet Her and to join with Her at last. For this dark veil, which
seems to make the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness Herself like to a leper's and the bright rays of Her
Father’sMother’s love which light HisHer face with glory appear as
streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of
death is gone.
92
This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death and protected by
its attraction. The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is but
the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego never to lift this
veil, not to approach it nor even to suspect that it is there. This is
the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil
forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to
allow union to call you out of separation; the great amnesia in which
the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from
you—the fear of God, the final step in your dissociation.
93
See how the belief in death would seem to "save" you. For if this is
gone, what can you fear but life? It is the attraction of death
that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel, and tyrannical. You are no more
afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen friends. For in
your secret alliance with them, you have agreed never to let the fear of
God be lifted so you could look upon the face of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and join Her in Her FatherMother.
94
Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the
same way; the fear that raised it yields to the love beneath, and so the
fear is gone. And so it is with this. The desire to get rid of peace and
drive the Holy Spirit from you fades in the presence of the quiet
recognition that you love Her. The exaltation of the body is given up in
favor of the Spirit, which you love as you could never love the body.
And the appeal of death is lost forever as love's attraction stirs and
calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love, Love Itself has
called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of
what lies beyond. Your wanting fear seemed to be holding them in place.
Yet when you heard the voice of love beyond them, you answered and they
disappeared.
95
And now you stand in terror before what you swore never to look upon.
Your eyes look down, remembering your promise to your "friends." The
"loveliness" of sin, the delicate appeal of guilt, the "holy" waxen
image of death, and the fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood
not to desert, all rise and bid you not to raise your eyes. For you
realize that if you look on this and let the veil be lifted, they
will be gone forever. All of your "friends," your "protectors," and your
"home" will vanish. Nothing that you remember now will you remember.
96
It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your
eyes. Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever. This
is the reestablishment of your will. Look upon it open-eyed and
you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond
you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against
your will. It is your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial
impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming
death can stand against your will. For what attracts you from beyond the
veil is also deep within you, unseparated from it and completely
one.
97
Forget not that you came this far together. And it was surely not the
ego that led you here. No obstacle to peace can be surmounted through
its help. It does not open up its secrets and bid you look on them and
go beyond them. It would not have you see its weakness and learn it has
no power to keep you from the truth. The Guide Who brought you here
remains with you, and when you raise your eyes, you will be ready to
look on terror with no fear at all. But first lift up your eyes and look
upon each other in innocence born of complete forgiveness of each
other's illusions and through the eyes of faith, which sees them not.
98
No one can look upon the fear of God unterrified unless he/she has
accepted the Atonement and learned illusions are not real. No one can
stand before this obstacle alone, for he/she could not have reached thus
far unless his/her brother/sister walked beside him/her. And no one
would dare to look on it without complete forgiveness of his/her
brother/sister in his/her heart. Stand you here a while and tremble not.
You will be ready. Let us join together in a holy instant, here in this
place where the purpose given in a holy instant has led you. And let us
join in faith that She Who brought us here together will offer you the
innocence you need and that you will accept it for my love and Hers.
99
Nor is it possible to look on this too soon. This is the place to which
everyone must come when he/she is ready. Once he/she has found his/her
brother/sister, he/she is ready. Yet merely to reach the place is not
enough. A journey without a purpose is still meaningless, and even when
it is over, it seems to make no sense. How can you know that it is over
unless you realize its purpose is accomplished? Here, with the journey's
end before you, you see its purpose. And it is here you choose
whether to look upon it or wander on, only to return and make the choice
again.
100
To look upon the fear of God does need some preparation. Only
the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and
compassion but not with fear. For only if they share in it does it seem
fearful, and you do share in it until you look upon each other with
perfect faith and love and tenderness. Before complete forgiveness, you
still stand unforgiving. You are afraid of God because you fear
each other. Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one
reaches love with fear beside him/her.
101
This brother/sister who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger.
You do not know him, and your interpretation of him/her is very fearful.
And you attack him/her still, to keep what seems to be yourself
unharmed. Yet in his/her hands is your salvation. You see his/her
madness, which you hate because you share it. And all the pity and
forgiveness that would heal it gives way to fear. Brothers, you need
forgiveness of each other, for you will share in madness or in the God
Realm together. And you will raise your eyes in faith together or not at
all.
102
Beside each of you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for
the Holy Spirit is in him/her. Would you hold his/her sins against
him/her or accept his/her gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your
friend or enemy? Choose which he/she is, remembering that you will
receive of him/her according to your choice. He/she has in him/her the
power to forgive your sins, as you for him/her. Neither can give it to
himself/herself alone. And yet your savior/savioress stands beside each
one. Let him/her be what he/she is and seek not to make of love an
enemy.
103
Behold your Friend, the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness Who
stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful She is! You thought he/she
sinned because you cast the veil of sin upon him/her to hide his/her
loveliness. Yet still he/she holds forgiveness out to you to share
his/her holiness. This "enemy," this "stranger" still offers you
salvation as his/her Friend. The "enemies" of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, the worshipers of sin, know not
Whom they attack. This is your brother/sister, crucified by sin, and
waiting for release from pain. Would you not offer him/her forgiveness,
when only he/she can offer it to you? For his/her redemption, he/she
will give you yours as surely as God createdmanifested every living
thing and loves it. And he/she will give it truly, for it will be both
offered and received.
104
There is no grace of the God Realm that you cannot offer to each other
and receive from your most holy Friend. Let him/her withhold it not, for
by receiving it you offer it to him/her. For he/she will receive
of you what you received of him/her. Redemption has been given
you to give each other, and thus receive it. Whom you forgive is free,
and what you give you share. Forgive the sins your brother/sister thinks
he/she has committed and all the guilt you think you see in him/her.
105
Here is the holy place of resurrection to which we come again; to which
we will return until redemption is accomplished and received. Think who
your brother/sister is before you would condemn him/her. And offer
thanks to God that he/she is holy and has been given the gift of
holiness for you. Join him/her in gladness and remove all trace of guilt
from his/her disturbed and tortured mind. Help him/her to lift the heavy
burden of sin you laid upon him/her and he/she accepted as his/her own,
and toss it lightly and with happy laughter away from him/her. Press it
not like thorns against his/her brow, nor nail him/her to it unredeemed
and hopeless.
106
Give each other faith, for faith and hope and mercy are yours to give.
Into the hands that give the gift is given. Look on your brother/sister,
and see in him/her the gift of God you would receive. It is almost
Easter, the time of resurrection. Let us give redemption to each other
and share in it that we may rise as one in resurrection and not separate
in death. Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit for
both of you. And be you free together, as you offer to the Holy Spirit
this same gift. And giving it, receive it of Her in return for what you
gave. She leadeth you and me together that we might meet here in this
holy place and make the same decision.
107
Free your brother/sister here, as I freed you. Give him/her the
self-same gift, nor look upon him/her with condemnation of any kind. See
him/her as guiltless as I look on you, and overlook the sins he/she
thinks he/she sees within himself/herself. Offer each other freedom and
complete release from sin here in the garden of seeming agony and death.
So will we prepare together the way unto the resurrection of God’s
SonDaughter and let himher rise again to glad remembrance of hisher
FatherMother, Who knows no sin, no death, but only life eternal.
108
Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be
lost, but found; not to be seen, but known. And knowing,
nothing in the plan God has established for salvation will be left
undone. This is the journey's purpose, without which is the journey
meaningless. Here is the peace of God, given to you eternally by HimHer.
Here is the rest and quiet that you seek, the reason for the journey
from its beginning. The God Realm is the gift you owe each other, the
debt of gratitude you offer to the SonDaughter of God in thanks for what
heshe is and what hisher FatherMother createdmanifested himher to be.
109
Think carefully how you would look upon the giver of this gift, for as
you look on him/her, so will the gift itself appear to be. As he/she is
seen as either the giver of guilt or of salvation, so will his/her
offering be seen and so received. The crucified give pain because they
are in pain. But the redeemed give joy because they have been healed of
pain. Everyone gives as he/she receives, but he/she must choose what it
will be that he/she receives. And he/she will recognize his/her
choice by what he/she gives and what is given him/her. Nor is it given
anything in hell or the God Realm to interfere with his/her decision.
110
You came this far because the journey was your choice. And no one
undertakes to do what he/she believes is meaningless. What you had faith
in still is faithful and watches over you in faith so gentle yet so
strong that it would lift you far beyond the veil and place the
SonDaughter of God safely within the sure protection of hisher
FatherMother. Here is the only purpose that gives this world and the
long journey through this world whatever meaning lies in them. Beyond
this they are meaningless. You stand together, still without
conviction they have a purpose. Yet it is given you to see this purpose
in your holy Friend and recognize it is your own.
1
This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and the acceptance of
the truth. Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion
of God’s SonDaughter, but happily in the celebration of hisher release.
For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has no meaning. But a risen
Christ Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness becomes the symbol of the
SonDaughter of God's forgiveness of himherself; the sign heshe looks
upon himherself as healed and whole.
2
This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white and holy
sign the SonDaughter of God is innocent. Let no dark sign of crucifixion
intervene between the journey and its purpose; between the acceptance of
the truth and its expression. This week we celebrate life, not death.
And we honor the perfect purity of the SonDaughter of God and not hisher
sins. Offer each other the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the
gift of love and not the "gift" of fear. You stand beside each other,
thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give.
Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to
replace them. This Easter, I would have the gift of your forgiveness
offered by you to me and returned by us to you.
3
We cannot be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can the
resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests on the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, along with mine. A week is short,
and yet this holy week is the symbol of the whole journey the
SonDaughter of God has undertaken. Heshe started with the sign of
victory the promise of the resurrection already given himher. Let himher
not wander into the temptation of crucifixion and delay himher there.
Help himher to go in peace beyond it, with the light of hisher own
innocence lighting hisher way to hisher redemption and release. Hold
himher not back with thorns and nails when hisher redemption is so near.
But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed himher on
hisher way to resurrection.
4
Easter is not the celebration of the cost of sin but of its end.
If you see glimpses of the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness behind the veil looking between the snow white petals of
the lilies you have received and given as your gift, you will behold
each other's face and recognize it. I was a stranger and you took me in,
not knowing who I was. Yet for your gift of lilies you will know. In
your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient
Friend, lie hisher release and your redemption with himher. The time of
Easter is a time of joy and not of mourning. Look on your risen Friend
and celebrate hisher holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of
your salvation, along with mine.
5
Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body or to cover it or
for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see. Think
on the many offerings made for its pleasure and remember all these were
made to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated
thing to draw your brother/sister to you and to attract his/her body's
eyes? Learn you but offer him/her a crown of thorns, not recognizing it
for what it is and trying to justify your own interpretation of its
value by his/her acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his/her
worthlessness to you, as his/her acceptance and delight acknowledges the
lack of value he/she places on himself/herself.
6
Gifts are not made through bodies if they be truly given and received.
For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out nor take. Only the
mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and
give. And every gift it offers depends on what it wants. It will adorn
its chosen home most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it
wants by offering them to those who come unto its chosen home or those
it would attract to it. And there they will exchange their gifts,
offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them.
7
Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the giver. No one
but sees in his/her chosen home an altar to himself/herself. No one but
seeks to draw to it the worshipers of what he/she placed upon it, making
it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a light upon his/her
altar, that they may see what he/she has placed upon it and take it for
their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother/sister and
on yourself. Here is your gift to both; your judgment on the SonDaughter
of God for what he/she is. Forget not that it is your savior/savioress
to whom the gift is offered. Offer him/her thorns and you are
crucified. Offer him/her lilies and it is yourself you free.
8
I have great need for lilies, for the SonDaughter of God has not
forgiven me. And can I offer himher forgiveness when heshe offers thorns
to me? For heshe who offers thorns to anyone is against me still, and
who is whole without himher? Be you hisher friend for me that I may be
forgiven and you may look upon the SonDaughter of God as whole. But look
you first upon the altar in your chosen home and see what you have laid
upon it to offer me. If it be thorns whose points gleam sharply in a
blood-red light, the body is your chosen home, and it is separation that
you offer me. And yet the thorns are gone. Look you still closer at them
now, and you will see your altar is no longer what it was.
9
You look still with the body's eyes, and they can see but thorns. Yet
you have asked for and received another sight. Those who accept the Holy
Spirit's purpose as their own share also Her vision. And what enables
Her to see Her purpose shine forth from every altar now is yours as well
as Hers. She sees no strangers, only dearly loved and loving friends.
She sees no thorns, but only lilies, gleaming in the gentle glow of
peace that shines on everything She looks upon and loves.
10
This Easter look with different eyes upon each other. You have
forgiven me. And yet I cannot use your gift of lilies while you see them
not. Nor can you use what I have given unless you share it. The Holy
Spirit's vision is no idle gift, no plaything to be tossed about a while
and laid aside. Listen and hear this carefully, nor think it but a
dream—a careless thought to play with or a toy you would pick up from
time to time and then put by. For if you do, so will it be to you.
11
You have the vision now to look past all illusions. It has been
given you to see no thorns, no strangers, and no obstacles to peace. The
fear of God is nothing to you now. Who is afraid to look upon illusions,
knowing his/her savior/savioress stands beside him/her? With him/hende,
your vision has become the greatest power for the undoing of illusion
that God HimHerself could give. For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you
have received. The SonDaughter of God looks unto you for his/her
release. For you have asked for and been given the strength to look upon
this final obstacle and see no thorns nor nails to crucify the
SonDaughter of God and crown himher king of death. Your chosen home is
on the other side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for
you, and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with the
body's eyes. Yet all you need you have.
12
Your home has called to you since time began, nor have you ever failed
entirely to hear. You heard but knew not how to look nor where.
And now you know. In you the knowledge lies, ready to be unveiled and
freed from all the terror that kept it hidden. There is no fear
in love. The song of Easter is the glad refrain the SonDaughter of God
was never crucified. Let us lift up our eyes together, not in
fear, but faith. And there will be no fear in us, for in our vision will
be no illusions—only a pathway to the open door of the God Realm, the
home we share in quietness, and where we live in gentleness and peace as
one together.
13
Would you not have your holy brother/sister lead you there? His/her
innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure
protection, and shining from the holy altar within him/her where you
laid the lilies of forgiveness. Let him/her be to you the
savior/savioress from illusions, and look on him/her with the new vision
that looks upon the lilies and brings you joy. We go beyond the veil of
fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is within
us, as is our home. So will we find what we were meant to find by Her
Who leads us.
14
This is the way to the God Realm and to the peace of Easter, in which we
join in glad awareness that the SonDaughter of God is risen from the
past and has awakened to the present. Now is heshe free, unlimited in
hisher communion with all that is within himher. Now are the lilies of
hisher innocence untouched by guilt and perfectly protected from the
cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike. Your gift has
saved himher from the thorns and nails, and hisher strong arm is free to
guide you safely through them and beyond. Walk with himher now
rejoicing, for the savior/savioress from illusions has come to greet you
and lead you home with himher.
15
Here is your savior/savioress and your friend, released from crucifixion
through your vision and free to lead you now where heshe would be. Heshe
will not leave you nor forsake the savior/savioress from hisher pain.
And gladly will you walk the way of innocence together, singing as you
behold the open door of the God Realm, and recognize the home that
called to you. Give joyously to one another the freedom and the strength
to lead you there. And come before each other's holy altar where the
strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness
that leads you home. The lamp is lit in both of you for one another. And
by the hands that gave it to each other shall both of you be led past
fear to love.
16
The belief in sin is an adjustment. And an adjustment is a change; a
shift in perception or a belief that what was so before has been made
different. Every adjustment is therefore a distortion and calls upon
defenses to uphold it against reality. Knowledge requires no adjustment
and in fact is lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this
reduces it at once to mere perception—a way of looking in which
certainty is lost and doubt has entered. To this impaired condition are
adjustments necessary because they are not true. Who need adjust to
truth, which calls on only what he/she is, to understand?
17
Adjustments of any kind are of the ego. For it is the ego's fixed belief
that all relationships depend upon adjustments to make of them what it
would have them be. Direct relationships, in which there are no
interferences, are always seen as dangerous. The ego is the
self-appointed mediator of all relationships, making whatever
adjustments it deems necessary and interposing them between those who
would meet to keep them separate and prevent their union. It is this
studied interference which makes it difficult for you to recognize your
holy relationship for what it is.
18
The holy do not interfere with truth. They are not afraid of it, for it
is within the truth they recognized their holiness and rejoiced at what
they saw. They looked on it directly, without attempting to adjust
themselves to it or it to them. And so they saw that it was in
them, not deciding first where they would have it be. Their
looking merely asked a question, and it was what they saw that answered
them. You make the world and then adjust to it, and it
to you. Nor is there any difference between yourself and it in your
perception, which made them both.
19
A simple question yet remains and needs an answer. Do you like
what you have made—a world of murder and attack through which you thread
your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at
most that death will wait a little longer before it overtakes you and
you disappear? You made this up. It is a picture of what you
think you are, of how you see yourself. A murderer is frightened, and
those who kill fear death. All these are but the fearful thoughts of
those who would adjust themselves to a world made fearful by their
adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is sad within and see
the sadness there.
20
Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look
through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself. It
is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it,
and makes it real. Such is the world you see—a judgment on
yourself and made by you. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully
preserved by the ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed
outside you in the world. And to this world must you adjust, as long as
you believe this picture is outside and has you at its mercy. This world
is merciless, and were it outside you, you should indeed be
fearful. Yet it was you who made it merciless, and now if
mercilessness seems to look back at you, it can be corrected.
21
Who in a holy relationship can long remain unholy? The world the holy
see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like
itself. The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their
innocence in it. They did not tell it what it was; they did not make
adjustments to fit their orders. They gently questioned it and
whispered, "What are you?" And She Who watches over all perception
answered. Take not the judgment of the world as answer to the question,
"What am I?"
22
The world believes in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it is
not outside you. Seek not to make the SonDaughter of God adjust to
hisher insanity. There is a stranger in himher who wandered carelessly
into the home of truth, and who will wander off. He/she came without a
purpose, but he/she will not remain before the shining light the Holy
Spirit offered and you accepted. For there the stranger is made homeless
and you are welcome.
23
Ask not this transient stranger, "What am I?" He/she is the only thing
in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he/she you asked, and
it is to his/her answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought,
fierce in its arrogance and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips
unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you
turn to ask the meaning of the universe. And of the one blind thing in
all the seeing universe of truth you ask, "How shall I look upon the
SonDaughter of God?"
24
Does one ask judgment of what is totally bereft of judgment? And if you
have, would you believe the answer and adjust to it as if it were the
truth? The world you look on is the answer that it gave you, and you
have given it power to adjust the world to make its answer true. You
asked this puff of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship
and adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it make
you? Did you meet with joy to bless the SonDaughter of God and give
him/her thanks for all the happiness which he/she held out to you? Did
you recognize each other as the eternal gift of God to you? Did you see
the holiness that shone in both of you to bless the other? That is the
purpose of your holy relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment
of the one thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it no power to
adjust the means and end.
25
Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak
and exhausted and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember
not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It
takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. You groped
but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to
let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your
hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning
of your freedom lies. He/she seemed to be crucified beside you. And yet
his/her holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him/her beside
you, you shall this day enter with him/her to Paradise and know the
peace of God.
26
Such is my will for both of you and for each of you for one another and
for himself/herself. Here there is only holiness and joining without
limit. For what is the God Realm but union, direct and perfect, and
without the veil of fear upon it? Here are we one, looking with perfect
gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any
separation between us become impossible. You who were prisoners in
separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with
you, our friends, my brothers/sisters, and my Self. Your gift unto each
other has given me the certainty our union will be soon.
27
Share, then, this faith with us and know that it is justified. There is
no fear in perfect love because it knows no sin and it must look
on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fear without?
The innocent see safety, and the pure in heart see God within HisHer
SonDaughter and look unto the SonDaughter to lead them to the
FatherMother. And where else would they go but where they will to be?
Each of you now will lead the other to the FatherMother as surely as God
createdmanifested HisHer SonDaughter holy and kept himher so. In your
brother/sister is the light of God's eternal promise of your
immortality. See him/her as sinless, and there can be no fear in
you.
28
Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. For you give
power as the laws of this world interpret giving—as you give, you lose.
It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, given by
HimHer and reawakened by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you give,
you gain. She gives no power to sin, and therefore it has none;
nor to its results as this world sees them—sickness and death and misery
and pain. These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit sees
them not and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would She keep
you free of them. Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy
Spirit merely gives everything to God, Who has already given and
received all that is true. The untrue HeShe has neither received nor
given.
29
Sin has no place in the God Realm, where its results are alien and can
no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see
your brother/sister sinless. In him/her is the God Realm. See sin in
him/her instead, and the God Realm is lost to you. But see him/her as
he/she is, and what is yours shines from him/her to you. Your
savior/savioress gives you only love, but what you would receive of
him/her is up to you. It lies in him/her to overlook all your mistakes,
and therein lies his/her own salvation. And so it is with yours.
Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is
the reawakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other
laws and given them power to enforce what God createdmanifested not.
30
Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes and
give them power over you by accepting their results as your just due.
What could this be but madness? And is it this that you would see within
your savior/savioress from insanity? He/she is as free from this as you
are, and in the freedom that you see in him, you see your own. For this
you share. What God has given follows HisHer laws and HisHer alone. Nor
is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any
other source.
31
Those who choose freedom will experience only its results. Their power
is of God, and they will give it only to what God has given to share
with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see only this,
sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom
is established and maintained. It is upheld through all temptation to
imprison and to be imprisoned. It is of them who learned of freedom that
you should ask what freedom is. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars,
for those with little wings have not accepted for themselves the power
to share with you.
32
The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness
within your brother/sister and share with him/her the power of the
release from sin you offered him/her. To each who walks this earth in
seeming solitude is a savior/savioress given, whose special function
here is to release him/her and so to free himself/herself. In the world
of separation, each is appointed separately, though they are all the
same. Yet those who know that they are all the same need not salvation.
And each one finds his/her savior/savioress when he/she is ready to look
upon the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and
see Her sinless.
33
The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except
the part that has been given you to learn. For She Who knows the rest
will see to it without your help. But think not that She does not need
your part to help Her with the rest. For in your part lies all
of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed
without your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the
beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must
enter here to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now
that it shares Her purpose. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new
world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the SonDaughter of God
can enter without fear, and where heshe rests a while to forget
imprisonment and to remember freedom. How can heshe enter, to rest and
to remember, without you? Except you be there, heshe is not complete.
And it is hisher completion that heshe remembers there.
34
This is the purpose given you. Think not that your forgiveness of each
other serves but you two alone. For the whole new world rests in the
hands of every two who enter here to rest. And as they rest, the face of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness shines on them, and
they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest and yearning only
to have HisHer laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their
brothers/sisters. Think you when this has been achieved that you will
rest without them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I
could leave you and forget part of myself.
35
You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time,
there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open.
Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if it is possible
that God would have a plan for your salvation that does not work. Once
you accept HisHer plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there
will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without
your effort.
36
She will go before you making straight your path and leaving in your way
no stones to trip on and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need
will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before
you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything
except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you,
so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against all
obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you.
And what can be more certain than a SonDaughter of God?
37
In this world, God’s SonDaughter comes closest to himherself in a holy
relationship. There heshe begins to find the certainty hisher
FatherMother has in himher. And there heshe finds hisher function of
restoring hisher Father’sMother’s laws to what was held outside them and
finding what was lost. Only in time can anything be lost, and never
lost forever. So do the parts of God’s SonDaughter gradually join in
time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each
miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No one who has a
single purpose, unified and sure, can be afraid. No one who shares
hisher purpose with himher can not be one with himher.
38
Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear. Each speaks in
time of what is far beyond it. Two voices raised together call to the
hearts of everyone and let them beat as one. And in that single heart
beat is the unity of love proclaimed and given welcome. Peace to your
holy relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the
SonDaughter of God together. You give to one another for everyone, and
in your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given you the
gifts you give, and through your not forgetting this will you remember
Who gave the gifts to Her to give to you.
39
It is impossible to overestimate your brother’s/sister’s value. Only the
ego does this, but all it means is that it wants the other for itself
and therefore values him/her too little. What is inestimable
clearly cannot be evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that
rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far beyond your
judgment you cannot even see it? Judge not what is invisible to you or
you will never see it, but wait in patience for its coming. It will be
given you to see your brother’s/sister’s worth when all you want for
him/her is peace. And what you want for him/hende, you will receive.
40
How can you estimate the worth of him/her who offers peace to you? What
would you want except his/her offering? His/her worth has been
established by his/her FatherMother, and you will recognize it as you
receive his/her Father’sMother’s gift through him/her. What is in
him/her will shine so brightly in your grateful vision that you will
merely love him/her and be glad. You will not think to judge him/her,
for who would see the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness and yet insist that judgment still has meaning? For this
insistence is of those who do not see. Vision or judgment is your
choice, but never both of these.
41
Your brother’s/sister’s body is as little use to you as it is to
him/her. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has
no function, for minds need not the body to communicate. The sight that
sees the body has no use which serves the purpose of a holy
relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end
have not been brought in line. Why should it take so the many holy
instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do? There is but
one. The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden
light is all the same—nothing before it, nothing afterwards.
42
You look upon each holy instant as a different point in time. It
never changes. All that it ever held or will ever hold is here right
now. The past takes nothing from it, and the future will add no more.
Here, then, is everything. Here is the loveliness of your relationship,
with means and end in perfect harmony already. Here is the perfect faith
that you will one day offer to each other already offered you.
And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other already
given; the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness you
yet will look upon already seen.
43
Can you evaluate the giver of a gift like this? Would you exchange this
gift for any other? This gift returns the laws of God to your
remembrance. And merely by remembering them, the laws that held you
prisoner to pain and death must be forgotten. This is no gift your
brother’s/sister’s body offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides
him/her as well. He/she is the gift, and yet he/she knows it not. No
more do you. And yet, have faith that She Who sees the gift in both of
you will offer and receive it for you both. And through Her vision will
you see it, and through Her understanding recognize it and love it as
your own.
44
Be comforted and feel the Holy Spirit watching over you in love and
perfect confidence in what She sees. She knows the SonDaughter of God
and shares hisher Father’sMother’s certainty the universe rests in
hisher gentle hands in safety and in peace. Let us consider now what
heshe must learn, to share hisher Father’sMother’s confidence in himher.
What is heshe, that the CreatorManifestor of the universe should offer
it to himher and know it rests in safety? Heshe looks upon himherself
not as hisher FatherMother knows himher. And yet it is impossible the
confidence of God should be misplaced.
45
The meaning of the SonDaughter of God lies solely in hisher relationship
with hisher CreatorManifestor. If it were elsewhere, it would rest upon
contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly
loving and forever. Yet has the SonDaughter of God invented an unholy
relationship between himher and hisher FatherMother. Hisher real
relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one
heshe made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments, and full of
fear. The one createdmanifested by hisher FatherMother is wholly
self-encompassing and self-extending. The one heshe made is wholly
self-destructive and self-limiting.
46
Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy
and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love and rests on it,
serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any
relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on
idolatry/idolressatry. Love wishes to be known, completely understood,
and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and
hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and
in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood. But
idols/idolresses do not share.
47
Idols/idolresses accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but
cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any
relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. They live in
secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body's darkness where they
can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no
relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one,
and those who smile on them they do not see.
48
Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden
from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for relationships. The
body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power through
relationships. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are,
it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which
its idols/idolresses thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all
that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as the
many bodies as it can collect to place its idols/idolresses in and so
establish them as temples to itself.
49
The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship. The body is
an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of
senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet
hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality and seeks
for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its
brothers/sisters, holding them here in its idolatry/idolressatry. Here
it is "safe," for here love cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build
Her temples where love can never be. Would She Who sees the face of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness choose as Her home the only
place in all the universe where it can not be seen?
50
You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will never
be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater/idolressater and of
love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned.
Even the idols/idolresses that are worshiped here are shrouded in
mystery and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple
dedicated to no relationships and no return. Here is the "mystery" of
separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have not
be is here kept "safe" from HimHer. But what you do not realize is what
you fear within your brother/sister and would not see in him/her is what
makes God seem fearful to you and kept unknown.
51
Idolaters/idolressaters will always be afraid of love, for nothing so
severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and
overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear,
feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and
loosen. Brothers/sisters, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear is
but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your
temple is not threatened. You are idolaters/idolressaters no longer. The
Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship and not your
bodies. You have escaped the body. Where you are the body cannot
enter, for the Holy Spirit has set Her temple there.
52
There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An
unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation which
seems to be what it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad
idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible,
all your relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant,
time was born and bodies made to house the mad idea and give it the
illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home that held together
for a little while in time and vanished. For what could house this mad
idea against reality but for an instant?
53
Idols/idolresses must disappear and leave no trace behind their
going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a
snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you want
for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited
beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming
powerful and so bitterly misunderstood and so invested in a false
attraction, your preference to the holy instant which offers you peace
and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it,
rising to welcome what you really want. And from Her holy temple, look
you not back on what you have awakened from. For no illusions can
attract the minds that have transcended them and left them far behind.
54
The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the SonDaughter of
God has with hisher FatherMother in reality. The Holy Spirit rests
within it in the certainty it will endure forever. Its firm foundation
is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle
smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instant
is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the
way to true relationships held gently open, through which you walk
together, leaving the body thankfully behind and resting in the
Everlasting Arms. Love's arms are open to receive you and give you peace
forever.
55
The body is the ego's idol/idolress; the belief in sin made flesh and
then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh
around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time,
beholden unto death and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve
and die in honor of its master/lady. And this unholy instant seems to be
life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water
and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the SonDaughter of God stop
briefly by to offer hisher devotion to death's idols/idolresses, and
then pass on. And here heshe is more dead than living. Yet it is also
here heshe makes hisher choice again between idolatry/idolressatry and
love.
56
Here it is given himher to choose to spend this instant paying tribute
to the body or let himherself be given freedom from it. Here heshe can
accept the holy instant, offered himher to replace the unholy one heshe
chose before. And here can heshe learn relationships are hisher
salvation and not hisher doom. You who are learning this may still be
fearful, but you are not immobilized. The holy instant is of greater
value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have
learned you really want but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhaps
confusion, but hardly discouragement.
57
You have a real relationship, and it has meaning. It is
as like your real relationship with God as equal things are like unto
each other. Idolatry/idolressatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you
fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God
remains with you. Yet what is that to those who have been given one true
relationship beyond the body? Can they be long held back from
looking on the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness?
And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their
FatherMother from themselves and keep remembrance of HisHer love apart
from their awareness?
58
We have said much about discrepancies of means and end and how these
must be brought in line before your holy relationship can bring you only
joy. But we have also said the means to meet the Holy Spirit's goal will
come from the same Source as does Her purpose. Being so simple and
direct, this course has nothing in it that is not consistent. The
seeming inconsistencies or parts you find more difficult than others are
merely indications of areas where means and end are still discrepant.
And this produces great discomfort. This need not be. This course
requires almost nothing of you. It is impossible to imagine one that
asks so little or could offer more.
59
The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in a
relationship from sin to holiness should now be almost over. To the
extent you still experience it, you are refusing to leave the means to
Her Who changed the purpose. You recognize you want the goal. Are you not also willing
to accept the means? If you are not, let us admit that you are
Are you not also willing to accept the means? If you are not, let us
admit that you are inconsistent.
A
purpose is attained by means, and if you want a purpose, you must be
willing to want the means as well. How can one be sincere and say, "I
want this above all else, and yet I do not want to learn the means to
get it"?
60
To obtain the goal, the Holy Spirit indeed asked little. She asks no
more to give the means as well. The means are second to the goal. And
when you hesitate, it is because the purpose frightens you, and not the
means. Remember this, for otherwise you will make the error of believing
the means are difficult. Yet how can they be difficult if they are
merely given you? They guarantee the goal, and they are perfectly in
line with it. Before we look at them a little closer, remember that if
you think they are impossible, your wanting of the purpose has been
shaken. For if a goal is possible to reach, the means to do so must be
possible as well.
61
It is impossible to see your brother/sister as sinless and yet
to look upon him/her as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with
the goal of holiness? For holiness is merely the result of letting the
effects of sin be lifted so what was always true is recognized. To see a
sinless body is impossible, for holiness is positive, and the
body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As
nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with
attributes of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness or of the
ego. Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where
they cannot be. And both must be undone for purposes of truth.
62
The body is the means by which the ego tries to make the unholy
relationship seem real. The unholy instant is the time of
bodies. But the purpose here is sin. It cannot be attained but
in illusion, and so the illusion of a brother/sister as a body is quite
in keeping with the purpose of unholiness. Because of this consistency,
the means remain unquestioned while the end is cherished. Vision adapts
to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the
body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. For vision, like
relationships, has no order. You either see or not.
63
Who sees a brother’s/sister’s body has laid a judgment on him/her and
sees him/her not. He/she does not really see him/her as sinful; he/she
does not see him/her at all. In the darkness of sin, he/she is
invisible. He/she can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here
that the illusions you hold about him/her are not held up to his/her
reality. Here are illusions and reality kept separated. Here are
illusions never brought to truth and always hidden from it. And here in
darkness is your brother’s/sister’s reality imagined as a body, in
unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an
instant before he/she dies.
64
There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining and vision. The
difference lies not in them, but in their purpose. Both are but means,
each one appropriate to the end for which it is employed. Neither can
serve the purpose of the other, for each one is a choice of purpose,
employed on its behalf. Either is meaningless without the end for which
it was intended, nor is it valued as a separate thing apart from the
intention. The means seem real because the goal is valued. And judgment
has no value unless the goal is sin.
65
The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To see the body
is the sign that you lack vision and have denied the means the Holy
Spirit offers you to serve Her purpose. How can a holy relationship
achieve its purpose through the means of sin? Judgment you taught
yourself; vision is learned from Her Who would undo your teaching. Her
vision cannot see the body because it cannot look on sin. And thus it
leads you to reality. Your holy brother/sister, sight of whom is your
release, is no illusion. Attempt to see him/her not in darkness, for
your imaginings about him/her will seem real there. You closed your eyes
to shut him/her out. Such was your purpose, and while this purpose seems
to have any meaning, the means for its attainment will be evaluated as
worth the seeing, and so you will not see.
66
Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother/sister without
the body?" Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him/her sinless?" And as
you ask, forget not that his/her sinlessness is your escape from
fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what
the seeing look upon is sinless. No one who loves can judge, and
what he/she sees is free of condemnation. And what he/she sees
he/she did not make, for it was given him/her to see, as was the vision
which made his/her seeing possible.
67
Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to
show you what is given you who see your brother/sister sinless. Truth is
restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your
desire for something else. Open the holy place which you closed off by
valuing the "something else," and what was never lost will quietly
return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had
judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for
you.
68
Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily
exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of
misery and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to
you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy
purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours
is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking and
think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you
who would but see your brother/sister sinless. All this is given,
waiting on your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to
those who ask to see.
69
Your brother’s/sister’s sinlessness is given you in shining light, to
look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Her.
For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity
of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Her on what
salvation is. Be willing, then, to see your brother/sister sinless that
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness may rise before your
vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother’s/sister’s
body, which holds him/her to illusions of what he/she is. It is his/her
desire to see his/her sinlessness, as it is yours. And bless the
SonDaughter of God in your relationship, nor see in himher what you have
made of himher.
70
The
Holy
Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you shall be yours. This
is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be
given. You have the vision which enables each one to see the body not.
And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your
FatherMother, holy as the God Realm, glowing with radiant purity and
sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value
more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer
shelter for God's SonDaughter? Why would you rather look on it than on
the truth? How can the engine of destruction be preferred and chosen to
replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where She will dwell with
you?
71
The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability, and loss of power. Can
such a savior/savioress help you? Would you turn in your distress and
need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully little the perfect
choice to call upon for strength? Judgment will seem to make your
savior/savioress weak. Yet it is you who need his/her strength.
There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity that vision
will not solve. All is redeemed when looked upon with vision. For this
is not your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Her
Whose sight it is.
72
Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place according to
the laws brought to it by Her calm and certain sight. The end for
everything She looks upon is always sure. For it will meet HisHer
purpose, seen in unadjusted form and suited perfectly to meet it.
Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under Her
gentle gaze. What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to correct?
Its eyes adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form and
seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and
everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you
will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation,
will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means
for its accomplishment.
73
Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game
of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing
them gently within the kindly sway of the God Realm 's laws. What if you
recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood
you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about
in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are
wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see if you accepted
this? And would you see it?
74
Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are.
This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone.
And all you need to do is recognize you did this. Once you
accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them,
you are released from them. One thing is sure—hallucinations serve a
purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held, they disappear.
Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do
you want the purpose which they serve? This world seems to hold out the
many purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they are
all the same. Again there is no order but a seeming hierarchy of values.
75
Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness.
Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For
what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations
serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the
outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to
witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet
upon nothing are all projections made. For it is the projection which
gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.
76
What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaning always looks within
to find itself and then looks out. All meaning that you give the
world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if
you saw at all or merely judged against. Vision is the means by which
the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild
hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin
into the calm and reassuring sights with which She would replace them.
These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily and heard with joy.
They are Her substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming
sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step
away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you
and that the errors which you made can be corrected.
77
When you have looked on what seemed terrifying and seen it change to
sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of
violence and death and watched them change to quiet views of gardens
under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside
them in dancing brooks that never waste away, who need persuade you to
accept the gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could
refuse what must come after? Think but an instant just on this—you can
behold the holiness God gave HisHer SonDaughter. And never need you
think that there is something else for you to see.
1
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it,
nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not
less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state
of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man/woman
thinketh, so does he/she perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the
world, but will to change your mind about the world. Perception
is a result, not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in
miracles is meaningless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed
and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there
is no meaning, there is chaos.
2
Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will
project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you
did to hurt the SonDaughter of God. If you behold disaster and
catastrophe, you tried to crucify himher. If you see holiness and hope,
you joined the Will of God to set himher free. There is no choice that
lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness
to the choice you made and learn from this to recognize which
one you chose. [The world you see but shows you how much joy you
have allowed yourself to see in you and to accept as yours. And
if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must
lie within you.]
3
Never forget the world the sightless "see" must be imagined, for what it
really looks like is unknown to them. They must infer what could be seen
from evidence forever indirect and reconstruct their inferences as they
stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk
unharmed through open doorways which they thought were closed. And so it
is with you. You do not see. Your cues for inference are wrong, and so
you stumble and fall down upon the stones you did not recognize, but
fail to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were
closed but which stand open before unseeing eyes, waiting to welcome
you.
4
How foolish it is to attempt to judge what could be seen instead. It is
not necessary to imagine what the world must look like. It must be seen
before you recognize it for what it is. You can be shown which doors are
open, and you can see where safety lies and which way leads to darkness,
which to light. Judgment will always give you false directions,
but vision shows you where to go. Why should you guess?
5
There is no need to learn through pain. And gentle lessons are acquired
joyously and are remembered gladly. What gives you happiness you want
to learn and not forget. It is not this you would deny. Your
question is whether the means by which this course is learned will bring
to you the joy it promises. If you believed it would, the learning of it
would be no problem. You are not happy learners yet because you still
remain uncertain that vision gives you more than judgment does,
and you have learned that both you cannot have.
6
The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it.
They think they know their way about in it. They learned it, not through
joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed
they could not overcome. And still believing this, they hold those
lessons dear and cling to them because they cannot see. They do
not understand the lessons keep them blind. This they do not
believe. And so they keep the world they learned to "see" in their
imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing. They hate
the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it
serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived.
7
Thus they define their life and where they live, adjusting to it
as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And
so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their
brothers/sisters have. They try to reach each other, and they fail and
fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the
body is to save the little that they have. Listen and try to think if
you remember what we will speak of now.
8
Listen—perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten;
dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name
is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely
unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little
wisp of melody, attached not to a personal or a place or anything
particular. But you remember from just this little part how lovely was
the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you
loved those who were there and listened with you.
9
The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not for
themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you
remembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are
afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And
yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as
this. Listen and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long
ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish
since.
10
Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and
yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you
look into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with
light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and what is
in it is no longer contained at all. The light expands and covers
everything, extending to infinity, forever shining and with no break or
limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity.
Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there
is nowhere that this light is not.
11
This is the vision of the SonDaughter of God, whom you know well. Here
is the sight of himher who knows hisher FatherMother. Here is the memory
of what you are—a part of this, with all of it within and joined to all
as surely as all is joined in you. Accept the vision which can show you
this and not the body. You know the ancient song and know it
well. Nothing will ever be as dear to you as is this ancient hymn [of
love] the SonDaughter of God sings to hisher FatherMother still.
12
And now the blind can see, for that same song they sing in honor of
their CreatorManifestor gives praise to them as well. The blindness
which they made will not withstand the memory of this song. And they
will look upon the vision of the SonDaughter of God, remembering who
heshe is they sing of. What is a miracle but this remembering? And who
is there in whom this memory lies not? The light in one awakens it in
all. And when you see it in each other, you are remembering for
everyone.
13
We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is
the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship
transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for
which She gives you everything; the very little on which salvation
rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to
resurrection. And being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be
completely understood. Rejected yes, but not ambiguous. And if
you choose against it now, it will not be because it is obscure, but
rather that this little cost seemed in your judgment to be too much to
pay for peace.
14
This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release
from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say
only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of
salvation lies:
16
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is
done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and
all effects of your mistakes will disappear.
17
It is impossible the SonDaughter of God be merely driven by events
outside of himher. It is impossible that the happenings that come to
himher were not hisher choice. Hisher power of decision is the
determiner of every situation in which heshe seems to find himherself by
chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the
universe as God createdmanifested it, outside of which is nothing.
Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you gave the
power of decision to Her Who must decide for God for you. This is the
little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this She gave to you
to give yourself. For by this gift is given you the power to release
your savior/savioress that he/she may give salvation unto you.
18
Begrudge not, then, this little offering. Withhold it, and you keep the
world as now you see it. Give it away, and everything you see goes with
it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant is this
exchange effected and maintained. Here is the world you do not want
brought to the one you do. And here the one you do is given you because
you want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must first be
recognized. You must accept its strength and not its weakness.
You must perceive that what is strong enough to make a world can let it
go and can accept correction if it is willing to see that it was wrong.
19
The world you see is but the idle witness that you were right. This
witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and as it gave it
back to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was
true. You did this to yourself. See only this, and you will also
see how circular the reasoning on which your "seeing" rests. This was
not given you. This was your gift to you and to your brother/sister. Be
willing, then, to have it taken from him/her and be replaced with truth.
And as you look upon the change in him/her, it will be given you to see
it in yourself.
20
Perhaps you do not see the need for you to give this little offering.
Look closer, then, at what it is. And very simply see in it the
whole exchange of separation for salvation. All that the ego is, is an
idea that it is possible that things should happen to the SonDaughter of
God without hisher will and thus without the Will of hisher
CreatorManifestor, Whose Will cannot be separate from hisher
own.
21
This is the SonDaughter of God's replacement for hisher will, a
mad revolt against what must forever be. This is the statement that
heshe has the power to make God powerless and so to take it for
himherself and leave himherself without what God has willed for himher.
This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars and which you
worship. And anything which threatens this seems to attack your faith,
for here is it invested. Think not that you are faithless, for your
belief and trust in this is strong indeed.
22
The Holy Spirit can give you faith in holiness and vision to see it
easily enough. But you have not left open and unoccupied the altar where
the gifts belong. Where they should be, you have set up your
idols/idolresses to something else. This other will, which seems to tell
you what must happen, you gave reality. And what would show you
otherwise must therefore seem unreal. All that is asked of you is to
make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond
your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only
to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to
recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away.
23
Be willing for an instant to leave your altars free of what you placed
upon them, and what is really there you cannot fail to see. The
holy instant is not an instant of creationmanifestation but of
recognition. For recognition comes of vision and suspended judgment.
Then only is it possible to look within and see what must be
there plainly in sight and wholly independent of inference and judgment.
Undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it or
not. Faith and desire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what
he/she wants.
24
We have already said that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with
what it wants to make it so. There is no better demonstration of the
power of wanting, and therefore of faith, to make its goals seem real
and possible. Faith in the unreal leads to adjustments of reality to
make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sin induces the perception
of a fearful world to justify its purpose. What you desire you will
see. And if its reality is false, you will uphold it by not realizing
all the adjustments you have introduced to make it so.
25
When vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable.
The purpose now becomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect and make
effect appear to be a cause. This seeming independence of effect
enables it to be regarded as standing by itself and capable of serving
as a cause of the events and feelings its maker thinks it causes. Long
ago we spoke of your desire to createmanifest your own CreatorManifestor
and be fathermother and not SonDaughter to HimHer. This is the same
desire. The SonDaughter is the effect, whose Cause heshe would deny. And
so heshe seems to be the cause, producing real effects. Nothing
can have effects without a cause and to confuse the two is merely to
fail to understand them both.
26
It is as needful that you recognize you made the world you see as that
you recognize that you did not createmanifest yourself. They are the
same mistake. Nothing createdmanifested not by your
CreatorManifestor has any influence over you. And if you think what you
have made can tell you what you see and feel and place your faith in its
ability to do so, you are denying your CreatorManifestor and believing
that you made yourself. For if you think the world you made has power to
make you what it wills, you are confusing SonDaughter and
FatherMother, effect and Source.
27
The Son’sDaughter’s creationsmanifestations are like hisher
Father’sMother’s. Yet in creatingmanifesting them, the SonDaughter does
not delude himherself that heshe is independent of hisher Source. Hisher
union with It is the Source of hisher creatingmanifesting. Apart
from this heshe has no power to createmanifest, and what heshe makes is
meaningless. It changes nothing in creationmanifestation, depends
entirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot serve to justify the
madness. Your brother/sister thinks he/she made the world with you. Thus
he/she denies creationmanifestation. With you, he/she thinks the world
he/she made, made him/her. Thus he/she denies he/she made it.
28
Yet the truth is you were both createdmanifested by a loving
FatherMother Who createdmanifested you together and as one. See what
"proves" otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. But grant that
everything which seems to stand between you, keeping you from each other
and separate from your FatherMother, you made in secret, and the instant
of release has come to you. All its effects are gone because its source
has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its source that
kept you prisoner. This is the same delusion that you are independent of
the Source by which you were createdmanifested and have never left.
29
All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are bargains
with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not
this—to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother/sister with whom you
have a limited relationship you hate. You may attempt to keep
the bargain in the name of "fairness," sometimes demanding payment of
yourself, perhaps more often of the other. Thus in the "fairness" you
attempt to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purpose of the
relationship. And that is why the Holy Spirit must change its purpose to
make it useful to Hende and harmless unto you.
30
If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for
truth. The source of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still
experience its effects, but it is not your purpose, and you no longer want
it. No one allows a purpose to be replaced while he/she desires it, for
nothing is so cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts.
This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with
the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of faith is never
recognized if it is placed in sin. But it is always recognized
if it is placed in love.
31
Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a
little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the SonDaughter of God
in chains as long as heshe believes heshe is in chains. And when
heshe is released from them, it will be simply because heshe no longer
believes in them, withdrawing faith that they can hold himher and
placing it in hisher freedom instead. It is impossible to place equal
faith in opposite directions. What faith you give to sin you take
away from holiness. And what you offer holiness has been removed
from sin.
32
Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness
is reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world and
away from all illusions where your faith was laid. This is Her
direction, the only one She ever sees. And when you wander, She reminds
you there is but one. Her faith and Her belief and vision are
all for you. And when you have accepted them completely instead of
yours, you will have need of them no longer. For faith and vision and
belief are meaningful only before the state of certainty is
reached. In the God Realm they are unknown. Yet the God Realm is reached
through them.
33
It is impossible that the SonDaughter of God lack faith, but heshe can
choose where heshe would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lack
of faith, but faith in nothing. Faith given to illusions does
not lack power, for by it does the SonDaughter of God believe that heshe
is powerless. Thus is heshe faithless to himherself, but strong in faith
in hisher illusions about himherself. For faith, perception, and
belief you made as means for losing certainty and finding sin.
This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose,
you made what you desired.
34
The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought
to find it. But as She uses them, they lead away from sin
because Her purpose lies in the opposite direction. She sees the means
you use but not the purpose for which you made them. She would
not take them from you, for She sees their value as a means for what She
wills for you. You made perception that you might choose among your
brothers/sisters and seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees
perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy
relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your
faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your
desire.
35
Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once
served sin are redirected now toward holiness. For what you think is sin
is limitation, and whom you try to limit to the body you hate
because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him/her, you would condemn
him/her to the body because the means for sin are dear to you. And so
the body has your faith and your belief. But holiness would set your
brother/sister free, removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom,
but at its source.
36
Those who would free their brothers/sisters from the body can have
no fear. They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all
limitations be removed. Desiring to look upon their brothers/sisters in
holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, supporting
vision, not obstructing it. But first they chose to recognize how much
their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to
place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them.
The miracles which follow this decision are also born of faith. For all
who choose to look away from sin are given vision and are led to
holiness.
37
Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for
sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is
accomplished. Brothers/søstre, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice
brings nothing. She makes no bargains. And if you seek to limit
Her, you will hate Her because you are afraid. The gift that She has
given you is more than anything that stands this side of the God Realm.
The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awareness to what
has been already joined. The faith you give each other can
accomplish this. For She Who loves the world is seeing it for you
without one spot of sin upon it and in the innocence which makes the
sight of it as beautiful as the God Realm .
38
Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight, except
you do not realize you cannot see because of it. For sacrifice
must be exacted of a body and by another body. The mind could neither
ask it nor receive it of itself. And no more could the body. The
intention is in the mind, which tries to use the body to carry out the
means for sin in which the mind believes. Thus is the joining of
mind and body an inescapable belief of those who value sin. And so is
sacrifice invariably a means for limitation and thus for hate.
39
Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? She gives not
what it is Her purpose to lead you from. You think She would
deprive you for your good. But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites
and cannot meaningfully join in any way. It is like saying that the moon
and sun are one because they come with night and day, and so they must
be joined. Yet sight of one is but the sign the other has disappeared
from sight. Nor is it possible that what gives light be one with what
depends on darkness to be seen. Neither demands the sacrifice of the
other. Yet on the absence of the other does each depend.
40
The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it
still is seen. Yet in the light of vision, it is looked upon quite
differently. You can have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit's
goal and give it power to serve as means to help the blind to see. But
in their seeing, they look past it, as do you. The faith and the
belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave perception and
belief and faith from mind to body. Let them now be given back to what
produced them and can use them still to save itself from what it made.
41
The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors
She will correct, but this makes no one fearful. You are indeed afraid
to look within and see the sin you think is there. This you would not be
fearful to admit. Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite
appropriate and smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel
ashamed. It doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not
shake because of this. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to
your desire that it be there to see. This merely seems to be the
source of fear.
42
Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule is tempered, and
its unknown "enemy," Whom it cannot even see, it fears. Loudly the ego
tells you not to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on
sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not
look. Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear, nor yours who serve it.
Loudly indeed the ego claims it is—too loudly and too
often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the
ego is not certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of
sin is yet another fear and one which makes the ego tremble.
43
What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful"
question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are
threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to
bother to pretend it is your friend. Those who have joined their
brothers/sisters have detached themselves from their belief that
their identity lies in the ego. A holy relationship is one in which you
join with what is part of you in truth. And your belief in sin
has been already shaken, nor are you now entirely unwilling to
look within and see it not.
44
Your liberation still is only partial—still limited and incomplete, yet
born within you. Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much
of your insanity and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward,
past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you now, the
ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit's purpose was accepted by the part
of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you. And yet this
part with which you now identify is not afraid to look upon itself. It knows
no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the Holy
Spirit's purpose as its own?
45
This part has seen your brother/sister and recognized him/her perfectly
since time began. And it desired nothing but to join with him/her and to
be free again, as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of
freedom, the acceptance of release to come to you. And now you recognize
that it was not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit's purpose, and so
there must be something else. Think not that this is
madness. For this your reason tells you, and it follows
perfectly from what you have already learned.
46
There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the
reasoning of the sane. You have perceived the ego's madness and
not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. At times
it still deceives you. Yet in your saner moments, its ranting strikes no
terror in your hearts. For you have realized that all the gifts it would
withdraw from you in rage at your "presumptuous" wish to look within,
you do not want. A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine
and catch your eye. Yet you would not "sell" the God Realm to have them.
47
And now the ego is afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the
other part hears as the sweetest music—the song it longed to hear since
first the ego came into your minds. The ego's weakness is its strength.
The song of freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to
it hope of peace. For it remembers the God Realm, and now it
sees that the God Realm has come to earth at last, from which the ego's
rule has kept it out so long. The God Realm has come because it found a
home in your relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what
has been given the God Realm as its own.
48
Look gently on each other and remember the ego's weakness is revealed in
both your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and looks
upon the ego unafraid. Little children, innocent of sin, follow in
gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear's insane
insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What
matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made
meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it
happily and question not what must be so.
49
Perception selects and makes the world you see. It literally picks it
out as the mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would
hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are not equal.
For what you look for, you are far more likely to discover than what you
would prefer to overlook. The still small Voice for God is not drowned
out by all the ego's raucous screams and senseless ravings to those who
want to hear it. Perception is a choice and not a fact.
But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. For on
the voice you choose to hear and on the sights you choose to see,
depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. Perception
is a witness but to this and never to reality. Yet it can show
you the conditions in which awareness of reality is possible or those
where it could never be.
50
Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness
of it needs your help because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego
says and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see
yourself as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You will experience
depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and
unreality. You will believe that you are helpless prey to forces far
beyond your own control and far more powerful than you. And you will
think the world you made directs your destiny. For this will be your faith.
But never believe because it is your faith it makes reality.
51
There is another vision and another Voice in which your freedom lies
awaiting but your choice. And if you place your faith in them, you will
perceive another Self in you. This other Self sees miracles as natural.
They are as simple and natural to It as breathing to the body. They are
the obvious response to calls for help, the only one It makes. Miracles
seem unnatural to the ego because it does not understand how separate
minds can influence each other. Nor could they do so. But minds
cannot be separate. This other Self is perfectly aware of this.
And thus It recognizes that miracles do not affect another's mind, only
Its own. [They always change your mind.] There is no
other.
52
You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has
interfered with reason. Reason lies in the other Self you have cut off
from your awareness. And nothing you have allowed to stay in it is
capable of reason. How can the segment of the mind devoid of reason
understand what reason is or grasp the information it would give? All
sorts of questions may arise in it, but if the basic question stems from
reason, it will not ask it. Like all that stems from reason, the basic
question is obvious, simple, and remains unasked. But think not reason
could not answer it.
53
God's plan for your salvation could not have been established without
your will and your consent. It must have been accepted by the
SonDaughter of God, for what God wills for himher heshe must
receive. For God wills not apart from himher, nor does the Will of God
wait upon time to be accomplished. Therefore, what joined the Will of
God must be in you now, being eternal. You must have set aside a
place in which the Holy Spirit can abide and where She is. She
must have been there since the need for Her arose and was fulfilled in
the same instant. Such would your reason tell you if you listened. Yet
such is clearly not the ego's "reasoning." Its alien nature to the ego
is proof you will not find the answer there. Yet if it must be so, it
must exist. And if it exists for you and has your freedom as the purpose
given it, you must be free to find it.
54
God's plan is simple—never circular and never self-defeating. HeShe has
no Thoughts except the Self-extending, and in this your will must
be included. Thus, there must be a part of you that knows HisHer Will
and shares it. It is not meaningful to ask if what must be is so. But it
is meaningful to ask why you are unaware of what is so,
for this must have an answer if the plan of God for your salvation is
complete. And it must be complete because its Source knows not
of incompletion. Where would the answer be but in the Source? And where
are you but there, where this same answer is? Your Identity, as
much a true effect of this same Source as is the answer, must therefore
be together and the same.
55
Oh yes, you know this and more than this alone. Yet any part of
knowledge threatens dissociation as much as all of it. And all of it will
come with any part. Here is the part you can accept. What reason points
to you can see because the witnesses on its behalf are clear. Only the
totally insane can disregard them, and you have gone past this. Reason
is a means which serves the Holy Spirit's purpose in its own right. It
is not reinterpreted and redirected from the goal of sin as are the
others. For reason is beyond the ego's range of means.
56
Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced and serve the great
deceiver's needs as well as truth. But reason has no place at all in
madness, nor can it be adjusted to fit its end. Faith and belief are
strong in madness, guiding perception toward what the mind has valued.
But reason enters not at all in this. For the perception would fall away
at once if reason were applied. There is no reason in insanity,
for it depends entirely on reason's absence. The ego never uses it
because it does not realize that it exists. The partially insane have
access to it, and only they have need of it. Knowledge does not depend
on it, and madness keeps it out.
57
The part of mind where reason lies was dedicated by your will in union
with your Father’sMother’s to the undoing of insanity. Here was the Holy
Spirit's purpose accepted and accomplished both at once. Reason is alien
to insanity, and those who use it have gained a means which cannot
be applied to sin. Knowledge is far beyond attainment of any kind. But
reason can serve to open doors you closed against it.
58
You have come very close to this. Faith and belief have shifted, and you
have asked the question which the ego will never ask. Does not
your reason tell you now the question must have come from something that
you do not know but must belong to you? Faith and belief, upheld by
reason, cannot fail to lead to changed perception. And in this change is
room made way for vision. Vision extends beyond itself, as does the
purpose which it serves and all the means for its accomplishment.
59
Reason cannot see sin but can see errors and leads to their
correction. It does not value them, but their correction. Reason will
also tell you when you think you sin, you call for help. Yet if you will
not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours
to give. And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the
belief. For uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power
that is in you to make correction. If it can correct and you
allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your
brother/sister. And if he/she shares this same belief, you both will
think that you are damned. This you could spare him/her and yourself.
For reason would not make way for correction in you alone.
60
Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your
brother/sister. Sin would maintain it can. Yet reason tells you that you
cannot see your brother/sister or yourself as sinful and still perceive
the other innocent. Who looks upon himself/herself as guilty and sees a
sinless world? And who can see a sinful world and look upon
himself/herself apart from it? Sin would maintain you must be separate.
But reason tells you that this must be wrong. If you are joined, how
could it be that you have private thoughts? And how could thoughts that
enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what
is yours? If minds are joined, this is impossible.
61
No one can think but for himself/herself, as God thinks not without
HisHer SonDaughter. Only were both in bodies could this be. Nor could
one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind.
For only bodies can be separate and therefore unreal. The home of
madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet it is easy to leave the home
of madness if you see reason. You do not leave insanity by going
somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness
was. Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they
look upon them differently.
62
Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind and takes its
place. Reason does not attack but takes the place of madness quietly,
replacing madness if it be the will of the insane to listen to it. But
the insane know not their will. For they believe they see the body and
let their madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of
this. And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not
understand the body or yourself.
63
The body does not separate you from your brother/sister, and if you
think it does, you are insane. But madness has a purpose and believes it
also has the means to make its purpose real. To see the body as a
barrier between what reason tells you must be joined must be
insane. Nor could you see it if you heard the voice of reason. What can
there be that stands between what is continuous? And if there is nothing
in between, how can what enters part be kept away from other parts?
Reason would tell you this. But think what you must recognize if it be
so.
64
If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the SonDaughter
of God to what can never be corrected. You tell him/her by your choice
that he/she is damned—separate from you and from his/her FatherMother
forever and without a hope of safe return. You teach him/her this, and
you will learn of him/her exactly what you taught. For you can
teach him/her only that he/she is as you would have him/her, and what
you choose he/she be is but your choice for you. Yet think not
this is fearful. That you are joined to him/her is but a fact, not an
interpretation. How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what
you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is
your release. Neither your brother/sister nor yourself can be
attacked alone. But neither can accept a miracle instead without
the other being blessed by it and healed of pain.
65
Reason, like love, would reassure you and seeks not to frighten you. The
power to heal the SonDaughter of God is given you because heshe must
be one with you. You are responsible for how he/she sees
himself/herself. And reason tells you it is given you to change his/her
whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. And any instant
serves to bring complete correction of his/her errors and make him/her
whole. The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in
that same instant is his/her whole salvation seen as complete with
yours. Reason is given you to understand that this is so. For reason,
kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away
from madness toward the goal of truth. And here you will lay down the
burden of denying truth. This is the burden that is terrible,
and not the truth.
66
That you are joined is your salvation—the gift of the God Realm, not the
gift of fear. Does the God Realm seem to be a burden to you? In madness,
yes. And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. Reason
assures you the God Realm is what you want, and all you
want. Listen to Her Who speaks with reason and brings your reason into
line with Hers. Be willing to let reason be the means by which She would
direct you how to leave insanity behind. Hide not behind insanity in
order to escape from reason. What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit
still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.
67
You are your brother’s/sister’s savior/savioress. He/she is yours.
Reason speaks happily indeed of this. This gracious plan was given love
by Love. And what Love plans is like Itself in this: being united, It
would have you learn what you must be. And being one with It, it
must be given you to give what It has given and gives still. Spend but
an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give your
brother/sister, and learn with him/her what has been given both
of you. To give is no more blessed than to receive. But neither is it
less.
68
The SonDaughter of God is always blessed as one. And as hisher
gratitude goes out to you who blessed himher, reason will tell you that
it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. The gratitude heshe offers
you reminds you of the thanks your FatherMother gives you for completing
HimHer. And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what
you must be. Your FatherMother is as close to you as is your
brother/sister. Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your
Self?
69
The power that you have over the SonDaughter of God is not a threat to
hisher reality. It but attests to it. Where could hisher freedom
lie but in himherself if heshe be free already? And who could bind
himher but himherself if heshe deny hisher freedom? God is not mocked;
no more HisHer SonDaughter can be imprisoned save by hisher own desire.
And it is by hisher own desire that heshe is freed. Such is hisher
strength and not hisher weakness. Heshe is at hisher own mercy.
And where heshe chooses to be merciful, there is heshe free. But where
heshe chooses to condemn instead, there is heshe held a prisoner,
waiting in chains hisher pardon on himherself to set himher free.
70
Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that
you are powerless? Being helpless is the cost of sin.
Helplessness is sin's condition—the one requirement that it demands to
be believed. Only the helpless could believe in it. Enormity has
no appeal save to the little. And only those who first believe that they
are little could see attraction there. Treachery to the
SonDaughter of God is the defense of those who do not identify with
himher. And you are for himher or against himher; either you love himher
or attack him, protect hisher unity or see himher shattered and slain by
your attack.
71
No one believes the SonDaughter of God is powerless. And those who see
themselves as helpless must believe that they are not the
SonDaughter of God. What can they be except hisher enemy? And
what can they do but envy himher hisher power and by their envy make
themselves afraid of it? These are the dark ones, silent and afraid,
alone and not communicating, fearful the power of the SonDaughter of God
will strike them dead and raising up their helplessness against himher.
They join the army of the powerless, to wage their war of vengeance,
bitterness, and spite on him/her to make himher one with them. Because
they do not know that they are one with himher, they know not
whom they hate. They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to
attack his/her brother/sister or turn upon himself/herself as to
remember they thought they had a common cause.
72
Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet they know not
their enemy, except they hate him/her. In hatred they have come
together but have not joined each other. For had they done so, hatred
would be impossible. The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the
presence of strength. Those who are strong are never treacherous
because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their dream.
How would an army act in dreams? Any way at all. It could be seen
attacking anyone with anything. Dreams have no reason in them. A flower
turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant, and a mouse roars
like a lion. And love is turned to hate as easily. This is no army, but
a madhouse. What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam.
73
The army of the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons, and it has
no enemy. Yes, it can overrun the world and seek an enemy. But
it can never find what is not there. Yes, it can dream it found
an enemy, but this will shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at
once to find another and never comes to rest in victory. And as it runs,
it turns against itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the great enemy
which always eludes its murderous attack by turning into something else.
How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes so it is impossible
even to recognize him/hende!
74
Yet hate must have a target. There can be no faith in sin without an
enemy. Who that believes in sin would dare believe he/she has no
enemy? Could he/she admit that no one made him/her powerless? Reason
would surely bid him/her seek no longer what is not there to find. Yet
first he/she must be willing to perceive a world where it is not. It is
not necessary that he/she understand how he/she can see it. Nor
should he/she try. For if he/she focuses on what he/she cannot
understand, he/she will but emphasize his/her helplessness and let sin
tell him/her that his/her enemy must be himself/herself. But let
him/her only ask himself/herself these questions, which he/she must
decide to have it done for him/her:
76
You have already answered the first three questions but not yet the
last. For this one still seems fearful and unlike the others. Yet reason
would assure you they are all the same. We said this year would
emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. This final
question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold
a threat the rest have lost for you. And this imagined difference
attests to your belief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find.
Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of finding sin and
not accepting power.
77
Forget not that the choice of truth or sin, power or helplessness, is
the choice of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power and
attack of helplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal.
And whom you would have healed must be the one you chose to be protected
from attack. And what is this decision but the choice whether to see
him/her through the body's eyes or let him/her be revealed to you
through vision? How this decision leads to its effects is not
your problem. But what you want to see must be your
choice. This is a course in cause and not effect.
78
Consider carefully your answer to the last question you have left
unanswered still. And let your reason tell you that it must be
answered and is answered in the other three. And then it will be
clear to you that, as you look on the effects of sin in any form, all
you need do is simply ask yourself,
80
This is your one decision; this the condition for what occurs.
It is irrelevant to how it happens but not to why. You have
control of this. And if you choose to see a world without an enemy in
which you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given
you.
81
Why is the final question so important? Reason will tell you why. It is
the same as are the other three except in time. The others are
decisions which can be made and then unmade and made again. But truth is
constant and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. You can
desire a world you rule which rules you not, and change your mind. You
can desire to exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same
desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. And you can want to see a
sinless world and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes and
change what you desire.
82
In content, all the questions are the same. For each one asks if
you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit
sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. And therefore those who
look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world. Yet the last
question adds the wish for constancy in your desire to see the
real world, so the desire becomes the only one you have. By
answering the final question "yes," you add sincerity to the decisions
you have already made to all the rest. For only then have you renounced
the option to change your mind again. When it is this you do not
want, the rest are wholly answered.
83
Why do you think you are unsure the others have been answered?
Could it be necessary they be asked so often, if they had? Until the
last decision has been made, the answer is both "yes" and "no." For you
have answered "yes" without perceiving that "yes" must mean "not
no." No one decides against his/her happiness, but he/she may do so if
he/she does not see he/she does it. And if he/she sees his/her happiness
as ever changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached
to nothing, he/she does decide against it.
84
Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time
and place, is an illusion which has no meaning. Happiness must
be constant because it is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant.
Joy cannot be perceived except through constant vision. And
constant vision can be given only those who wish for constancy.
The power of the SonDaughter of God's desire remains the proof that
he/she is wrong who sees himself/herself as helpless. Desire what you
will, and you will look on it and think it real. No thought but
has the power to release or kill. And none can leave the thinker's mind
or leave him/her unaffected.
85
Are thoughts then dangerous? To bodies, yes! The thoughts that
seem to kill are those which teach the thinker that he/she can
be killed. And so he/she dies because of what he/she learned.
He/she goes from life to death, the final proof he/she valued the
inconstant more than constancy. Surely he/she thought he/she
wanted happiness. Yet he/she did not desire it because it was
the truth and therefore must be constant.
86
The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding.
Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it
although you understand it not.
87
The constancy of happiness has no exceptions—no change of any kind. It
is unshakable as is the love of God for HisHer creationmanifestation.
Sure in its vision as its CreatorManifestor is in what HeShe knows, it
looks on everything and sees it is the same. It sees not the ephemeral,
for it desires that everything be like itself and sees it so. Nothing
has power to confound its constancy because its own desire cannot be
shaken. It comes as surely unto those who see the final question is
necessary to the rest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal
and not to judge.
88
Reason will tell you that you cannot ask for happiness
inconstantly. For if what you desire you receive and happiness is
constant, then you need ask for it but once to have it always.
And if you do not have it always, being what it is, you did not ask for
it. For no one fails to ask for his/her desire of something he/she
believes holds out some promise of the power of giving it. He/she may be
wrong in what he/she asks, where, and of what. Yet he/she will
ask because desire is a request, an asking for, and made by one whom God
HimHerself will never fail to answer. God has already given him/her all
that he/she really wants. Yet what he/she is uncertain of, God cannot
give. For he/she does not desire it while he/she remains uncertain, and
God's giving must be incomplete unless it is received.
89
You who complete God's Will and are HisHer happiness, whose will is
powerful as HisHers, a power that is not lost in your illusions, think
carefully why it should be you have not yet decided how you would answer
the final question. Your answer to the others has made it possible to
help you be but partially insane. And yet it is the final one that
really asks if you are willing to be wholly sane.
90
What is the holy instant but God's appeal to you to recognize what HeShe
has given you? Here is the great appeal to reason; the awareness of what
is always there to see, the happiness that could be always yours. Here
is the constant peace you could experience forever. Here is what denial
has denied revealed to you. For here the final question is already
answered and what you ask for given. Here is the future now, for
time is powerless because of your desire for what will never change. For
you have asked that nothing stand between the holiness of your
relationship and your awareness of its holiness.
1
Take pity on yourselves, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined
have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. No two can look
on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place and time.
Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed
by each to be within himself/herself. And each one seems to make a
different error, and one the other cannot understand. Brothers/søstre,
it is the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in
the same way.
2
The holiness of your relationship forgives you both, undoing the effects
of what you both believed and saw. And with their going is the need
for sin gone with them. Who has need for sin? Only the lonely and alone
who see their brothers/sisters different from themselves. It is this
difference, seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but
seen, seem justified. And all this would be real if sin were so. For an
unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the
other has what he/she has not. They come together, each to complete
himself/herself and rob the other. They stay until they think there's
nothing left to steal and then move on. And so they wander through a
world of strangers unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps
under a common roof that shelters neither—in the same room and yet a
world apart.
3
A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked
within and seen no lack. Accepting his/her completion, he/she would
extend it by joining with another, whole as himself/herself. He/she sees
no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the
body. Therefore, he/she looks on nothing he/she would take. He/she
denies not his/her own reality, because it is the truth. Just
under the God Realm does he/she stand, but close enough not to return to
earth. For this relationship has the God Realm 's holiness. How far from
home can a relationship so like to the God Realm be?
4
Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is belief in differences
undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. [And here
is sight of differences transformed to vision.] And reason now
can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend, as
you extended when you joined. It must reach out beyond itself, as you
reached out beyond the body to let yourselves be joined. And now
the sameness which you saw extends and finally removes all sense of
differences so that the sameness that lies beneath them all becomes
apparent. Here is the golden circle where you recognize the SonDaughter
of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can never end.
5
Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate
the one HeShe loves, then you and your CreatorManifestor have a
different will. Yet if you are HisHer Will, what you must then
believe is that you are not yourself. You can indeed believe
this, and you do. And you have faith in this and see
much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange
uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of
lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in
without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems
certain.
6
Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of
you. And yet this strange idea, which it does accurately
describe, you think is you. Reason would tell you that the world
you see through eyes which are not yours must make no sense to
you. To whom would vision such as this send back its messages? Surely
not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes which look upon
the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? The
brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would
understand. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But
what it says, you cannot understand. Yet you have listened to
it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages. You did not
realize it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach you.
7
You have received no messages at all you understand. For you have
listened to what can never communicate at all. Think, then, what
happened. Denying what you are and firm in faith that you are something
else, this "something else" which you have made to be yourself became
your sight. Yet it must be the "something else" which sees, and as not
you, explains its sight to you. Your vision would, of
course, render this quite unnecessary. Yet if your eyes are closed and
you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you
the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen nor to suspect that
what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you it cannot be true because
you do not understand it. God has no secrets. HeShe does not lead you
through a world of misery, waiting to tell you at the journey's end why
HeShe did this to you.
8
What could be secret from God's Will? Yet you believe that you
have secrets. What could your secrets be except another will
that is your own, apart from HisHers? Reason would tell you that this is
no secret that need be hidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed! Let not
your fear of sin protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt
is only fear. Here is the one emotion that you made, whatever it may
seem to be. This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts, and of
the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love and always leads to
sight of differences and loss of sameness. Here is the one emotion that
keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to lead you
through the world it made for you.
9
Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand.
You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells
you, for everyone sees only what he/she thinks he/she is. And
what your sight would show you, you will understand because it
is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can
see. It reaches you directly without a need to be interpreted to you.
What needs interpretation must be alien. Nor will it ever be
made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.
10
Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this
course alone is open to your understanding and can be
understood. This is your language. You do not understand it yet,
only because your whole communication is like a baby's. The sounds a
baby makes and what he/she hears are highly unreliable, meaning
different things to him/her at different times. Neither the sounds
he/she hears nor sights he/she sees are stable yet. But what he/she
hears and does not understand will be his/her native tongue, through
which he/she will communicate with those around him, and they with
him/her. And the strange, shifting ones he/she sees about him/her will
become to him/her his/her comforters, and he/she will recognize his/her
home and see them there with him/her.
11
So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of
separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from
an unholy relationship and yet more ancient than the old illusion that
it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Yet in this
infant is your vision returned to you, and he/she will speak the
language both of you can understand. He/she is not nurtured by the
"something else" you thought was you. He/she was not given there, nor
was received by anything except yourself. For no two people can unite
except through the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, Whose
vision sees them one.
12
Think what is given you, our holy brothers/sisters. This child will
teach you what you do not understand and make it plain. For his/her will
be no alien tongue. He/she will need no interpreter to you, for it was
you who taught him/her what he/she knows because you knew it.
He/she could not come to anyone but you, never to "something else."
Where the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has entered, no
one is alone, for never could She find a home in separate ones. Yet must
She be reborn into Her ancient home, so seeming new and yet as old as
She, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of your relationship to
let Her live.
13
Be certain God did not entrust HisHer SonDaughter to the unworthy.
Nothing but what is part of HimHer is worthy of being joined. Nor is it
possible that anything not part of HimHer can join.
Communication must have been restored to those that join, for this they
could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined them? Reason will
tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the
body and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could
it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one. Rather,
in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his/her Self could be
reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his/her reason tell him; such
he/she believed because it was the truth.
14
Here is the first direct perception that you have made. You made it
through awareness older than perception and yet reborn in just an
instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that instant
brought—the recognition that the "something else" you thought was you is
an illusion. And truth came instantly to show you where your Self must
be. It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny
illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home,
where fear is powerless, love enters thankfully, grateful that it is one
with you who joined to let it enter.
15
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness comes to what is like
Herself; the same, not different. For She is always drawn unto Herself.
What is as like Her as a holy relationship? And what draws you together
draws Her to you. Here are Her sweetness and Her gentle innocence
protected from attack. And here can She return in confidence, for faith
in one another is always faith in Her. You are indeed correct in looking
on each other as Her chosen home, for here you will with Her and with
Her FatherMother. This is your Father’sMother’s Will for you, and yours
with HisHers. And who is drawn to the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness is drawn to God as surely as both are drawn to every holy
relationship, the home prepared for them as earth is turned to the God
Realm.
16
The opposite of illusions is not disillusionment, but truth. Only to the
ego, to which truth is meaningless, do they appear to be the only
alternatives and different from each other. In truth they are the same.
Both bring the same amount of misery, though each one seems to be the
way to lose the misery the other brings. Every illusion carries pain and
suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides
its nothingness. Yet in these dark and heavy garments are those who seek
illusions covered and hidden from the joy of truth.
17
Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers joy. What else but
joy could be the opposite of misery? To leave one kind of misery and
seek another is hardly an escape. To change illusions is to make no
change. The search for joy in misery is senseless, for how could joy be
found in misery? All that is possible in the dark world of misery is to
select some aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the
difference as joy. Yet to perceive a difference where none exists will
surely fail to make a difference.
18
Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death to their
believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of
misery in reason's eyes can be confused with joy. Joy is eternal. You
can be sure indeed that any seeming happiness that does not last is
really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change.
But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the
eternal. Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but everything in time
can change with time. Yet if the change be real and not imagined,
illusions must give way to truth and not to other dreams that are but
equally unreal. This is no difference.
19
Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to
recognize it and go the other way. Truth is the same and misery
the same, but they are different from each other in every way,
in every instance, and without exception. To believe that one exception
can exist is to confuse what is the same with what is different. One
illusion cherished and defended against the truth makes all
truth meaningless and all illusions real. Such is the power of
belief. It cannot compromise. And faith in innocence is faith in sin if
the belief excludes one living thing and holds it out apart from its
forgiveness.
20
Both reason and the ego will tell you this, but what they make
of it is not the same. The ego will assure you now that it is impossible
for you to see no guilt in anyone. And if this vision is the only
means by which escape from guilt can be attained, then the belief in sin
must be eternal. Yet reason looks on this another way, for reason sees
the source of an idea as what will make it true or false. This
must be so if the idea is like its source. Therefore, says
reason, if escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as Her
purpose, and by One to Whom nothing HeShe wills can be
impossible, the means for its attainment are more than possible.
They must be there, and you must have them.
21
This is a crucial period in this course, for here the separation of you
and the ego must be made complete. For if you have the means to
let the Holy Spirit's purpose be accomplished, they can be used.
And through their use will you gain faith in them. Yet to the
ego this must be impossible, and no one undertakes to do what holds no
hope of ever being done. You know what your CreatorManifestor
wills is possible, but what you made believes it is not so. Now must you
choose between yourself and an illusion of yourself. Not
both, but one. There is no point in trying to avoid this one
decision. It must be made. Faith and belief can fall to either
side, but reason tells you that misery lies only on one side and joy
upon the other.
22
Forsake not now each other. For you who are the same will not decide
alone nor differently. Either you give each other life or death; either
you are each other's savior/savioress or his/her judge, offering him/her
sanctuary or condemnation. This course will be believed entirely or not
at all. For it is wholly true or wholly false and cannot be but
partially believed. And you will either escape from misery entirely or
not at all. Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where
you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of the God
Realm and the misery of hell. Until you choose the God Realm, you are
in hell and misery.
23
There is no part of the God Realm you can take and weave into illusions.
Nor is there one illusion you can enter the God Realm with. A
savior/savioress cannot be a judge, nor mercy condemnation. And vision
cannot damn, but only bless. Whose function is to save will save. How
he/she will do it is beyond your understanding, but when must be
your choice. For time you made, and time you can command. You
are no more a slave to time than to the world you made.
24
Let us look closer at the whole illusion that what you made has power to
enslave its maker. This is the same belief that caused the separation.
It is the meaningless idea that thoughts can leave the thinker's mind,
be different from it, and in opposition to it. If this were
true, thoughts would not be the mind's extensions but its enemies. And
here we see again another form of the same fundamental illusion we have
seen the many times before. Only if it were possible the SonDaughter of
God could leave hisher Father’sMother’s Mind, make himherself different,
and oppose HisHer Will, would it be possible that the self heshe made
and all it made should be hisher master/lady.
25
Behold the great projection, but look on it with the decision that it
must be healed and not with fear. Nothing you made has any power over
you unless you still would be apart from your CreatorManifestor and with
a will opposed to HisHers. For only if you would believe HisHer
SonDaughter could be HisHer enemy does it seem possible that what you
made is yours. You would condemn HisHer joy to misery and make HimHer
different. And all the misery you made has been your own. Are
you not glad to learn it is not true? Is it not welcome news to
hear not one of the illusions that you made replaced the truth?
26
Only your thoughts have been impossible. Salvation cannot
be. It is impossible to look upon your savior/savioress as your
enemy and recognize him/her. Yet it is possible to recognize
him/her for what he/she is if God would have it so. What God has given
to your holy relationship is there. For what HeShe gave the Holy
Spirit to give to you, She gave. Would you not look upon the
savior/savioress that has been given you? And would you not exchange in
gratitude the function of an executioner you gave him/her for the one
he/she has in truth? Receive of him/her what God has given him/her for
you, not what you tried to give yourself.
27
Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you and shining in the
golden light which reaches it from the bright endless circle that
extends forever is your holy relationship, beloved of God HimHerself.
How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. How
great the power that lies in it. Time waits upon its will, and earth
will be as it would have it be. Here is no separate will nor the desire
that anything be separate. Its will has no exceptions, and what
it wills is true. Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently
overlooked and disappears. For at its center the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has been reborn to light Her home
with vision that overlooks the world. Would you not have this holy home
be yours as well? No misery is here, but only joy.
28
All you need do to dwell in quiet here with the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness is share Her vision. Quickly and gladly is Her
vision given to anyone who is but willing to see his/her brother/sister
sinless. And no one can remain beyond this willingness if you would be
released entirely from all effects of sin. Would you have partial
forgiveness for yourself? Can you reach the God Realm while a single sin
still tempts you to remain in misery? the God Realm is the home of
perfect purity, and God createdmanifested it for you. Look on
your holy brother/sister, sinless as yourself, and let him/her lead you
there.
29
The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the
beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor
is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal
is to make plain and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This
is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has
meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's
sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what
is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do
reason and the ego separate to go their different ways.
30
The ego's whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this
course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors
and make way for their correction. For reason sees through
errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the
difference between sin and mistakes because it wants correction.
Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can
be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego's opposition
to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors.
It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego
damn and reason save.
31
Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings
you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you. Sin is a
block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road
to peace. No one who looks on it without the help of reason would try to
pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would
be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily because
it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from
reason's eyes.
32
Only the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not
recognize and does not know if it is there or not. Everything which the
body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted
fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give.
And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is but
error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors
and make them sins. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in
the shifting world it made—the rock on which its church is built and
where its worshipers are bound to bodies and believe the body's freedom
is their own.
33
Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a
mistake. If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot
prevent correction. The body's eyes see only form. They cannot
see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to
look on error and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange
perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the
granite block of sin and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To
this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that
stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight
which stops at nothingness as if it were a solid wall see truly? It is
held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but
form will be perceived.
34
These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the
idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees
through them. What was its maker's goal but not to see? For this
the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how
the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. Watch how they
stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so
blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding
has been obscured.
35
Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. You
can change form because it is not true. It could not be reality,
because it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is
not reality, it must be an illusion and is not there to see. And
if you see it, you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not
be real as if it were. What cannot see beyond what is not there
must be distorted perception and must perceive illusions as the
truth. Could it then recognize the truth?
36
Let not the form of his/her mistakes keep you from him/her whose
holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his/her holiness, the sight of
which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the
body's eyes can see. Let your awareness of your brother/sister not be
blocked by your perception of his/her sins and of his/her body. What is
there in him/her that you would attack except what you associate with
his/her body, which you believe can sin? Beyond his/her errors
is his/her holiness and your salvation. You gave him/her not
his/her holiness but tried to see your sins in him/her to save yourself.
And yet his/her holiness is your forgiveness. Can you be
saved by making sinful the one whose holiness is your salvation?
37
A holy relationship, however newly born, must value holiness above all
else. Unholy values will produce confusion, and in awareness. In
an unholy relationship, each one is valued because he/she seems to
justify the other's sin. He/she sees within the other what impels
him/her to sin against his/her will. And thus he/she lays his/her sins
upon the other and is attracted to him/her to perpetuate his/her
sins. And so it must become impossible for each to see himself/herself
as causing sin by his/her desire to have sin real. Yet reason
sees a holy relationship as what it is—a common state of mind, where
both give errors gladly to correction that both may happily be healed as
one.
38
When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite
apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the
other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you
reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of
coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now.
The way you came no longer matters. It can no longer serve. No one who
reaches this far can make the wrong decision, but he/she can
delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopeless and
futile than standing where the road branches and not deciding on which
way to go.
39
It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for
you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back
and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power
of the God Realm to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is
decided. There will be nothing you will not be told if you acknowledge
this.
40
And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that
hangs between you and the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness. Let it be lifted! Raise it together, for it is
but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid
block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it
is almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here
before the veil. Think what will happen after! The love of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness will light your faces and shine
from them into a darkened world that needs the light. And from
this holy place She will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You
will become Her messengers, returning Her unto Herself.
41
Think of the loveliness that you will see who walk with Her! And think
how beautiful will each of you look to the other! How happy you will be
to be together after such a long and lonely journey where you walked
alone. The gates of the God Realm, open now for you, will you now open
to the sorrowful. And none who looks upon the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight you
saw beyond the veil which you will bring to light the tired eyes of
those as weary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see
you come among them, offering the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness's forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin.
42
Every mistake you make the other will gently have corrected for you, for
in his/her sight your loveliness is his/her salvation which he/she would
protect from harm. And each will be the other's strong protector from
everything that seems to rise between you. So shall you walk the world
with me, whose message has not yet been given to everyone. For you are
here to let it be received. God's offer still is open, yet it
waits acceptance. From you who have accepted it is it received. Into
your joined hands is it safely given, for you who share it have become
its willing guardians and protectors.
43
To all who share the love of God, the grace is given to be the givers of
what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever.
All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was
finally surmounted which seemed to rise and block their way before. This
veil you lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those
who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's
saviors/savioresses, walking the world with their Redeemer and carrying
Her message of hope and freedom and release from suffering to everyone
who needs a miracle to save him/her.
44
How easy is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No one who has
received it for himself/herself could find it difficult. For by
receiving it, he/she learned it was not given him/her alone. Such is the
function of a holy relationship—to receive together and give as you
received. Standing before the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold
out your joined hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will
learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no
solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self
you share.
45
How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger nor by
opposing them in any way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they contradict
reality. They go against what must be true. The opposition comes from
them and not reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is
needs no defense and offers none. Only illusions need defense because of
weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of truth when only
weakness interferes? You are the strong ones in this seeming
conflict. And you need no defense. Everything that needs defense you do
not want, for anything that needs defense will weaken you.
46
Consider what the ego wants defenses for—always to justify what
goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason, and makes no sense.
Can this be justified? What can this be except an invitation to
insanity to save you from the truth? And what would you be saved from
but what you fear? Belief in sin needs great defense and at enormous
cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against and
sacrificed. For sin is carved into a block out of your peace and laid
between you and its return. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is
still whole, and nothing has been taken from it.
47
See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing. In truth
you stand together with nothing in between. God holds your hands, and
what can separate whom HeShe has joined as one with HimHer? It is your
FatherMother Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to
keep love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly
undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here
can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions.
Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all
uncertainty is doubt about yourself.
48
How weak is fear—how little and how meaningless! How insignificant
before the quiet strength of those whom love has joined! This is your
"enemy"—a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. How likely is
it that it will succeed? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble
squeaks that tell of its omnipotence and would drown out the hymn of
praise to its CreatorManifestor which every heart throughout the
universe forever sings as one? Which is the stronger? Is it this tiny
mouse or everything that God createdmanifested? You are not joined
together by this mouse but by the Will of God. And can a mouse betray
whom God has joined?
49
If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness
of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and
thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the
body's eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a
mountain. Yet within you there is a Force which no illusions can resist.
This body only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible in
truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion
of immovability be long defended from what is quietly passed through and
gone beyond?
50
Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything,
you have identified yourself with an illusion. And therefore feel that
you are weak because you are alone. This is the cost of all
illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not
one that does not seem to stand, heavy and solid and immovable, between
you and your brother/sister. And not one that truth cannot pass over
lightly and so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you
thought it was, that it is nothing. If you forgive each other, this must
happen. For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand
between you that makes it look impenetrable and defends the illusion of
its immovability.
51
Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both you cannot
have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means;
the other, end. And one must serve the other and lead to its
predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own. Means
serve the end, and as the end is reached, the value of the means
decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless.
No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. Yet he/she will seek
for it where he/she believes it is and can be found. He/she will believe
it possible of mind or body, and he/she will make the other serve
his/her choice as means to find it.
52
Where freedom of the body has been chosen, the mind is used as means
whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body's
freedom. Yet freedom of the body has no meaning, and so the mind is
dedicated to serve illusions. This is a situation so contradictory and
so impossible that anyone who chooses this has no idea of what is
valuable. Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot be
described, the Holy Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the
outcome as She is sure of Her Creator’sManifestor's love. She knows this
mad decision was made by one as dear to Her CreatorManifestor as love is
to itself.
53
Be not disturbed at all to think how She can change the role of means
and end so easily in what God loves and would have free forever. But be
you rather grateful that you can be the means to serve Her end.
This is the only service which leads to freedom. To serve this end, the
body must be perceived as sinless because the goal is
sinlessness. The lack of contradiction makes the soft transition from
means to end as easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before
forgiving eyes. You will be sanctified by one another, using
your bodies only to serve the sinless. And it will be impossible
for you to hate what serves what you would heal.
54
This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and
blazing with a light far brighter than the sun which lights the sky you
see, is chosen of your FatherMother as a means for HisHer own plan. Be
thankful that it serves yours not at all. Nothing entrusted to it can be
misused, and nothing given it but will be used. This holy relationship
has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Neither of you
alone can serve at all. Only in your joint will does healing lie. For
here your healing is and here will you accept Atonement. And in
your healing is the SonDaughtership healed because your wills
are joined.
55
Before a holy relationship there is no sin. The form of error is no
longer seen, and reason, joined with love, looks quietly on all
confusion, observing merely, "This was a mistake." And then the same
Atonement you accepted in your relationship corrects the error and lays
a part of the God Realm in its place. How blessed are you who let this
gift be given! Each part of the God Realm that you bring is given you.
And every empty place in the God Realm that you fill again with the
Eternal Light you bring shines now on you. The means of
sinlessness can know no fear because they carry only love with them.
56
Children of peace, the light has come to you. The light you
bring you do not recognize, and yet you will remember. Who can deny
himself/herself the vision that he/she brings to others? And who would
fail to recognize a gift he/she let be laid in the God Realm through
himself/herself? The gentle service that you give the Holy Spirit is
service to yourself. You who are now Her means must love all that She
loves. And what you bring is your remembrance of everything that is
eternal. No trace of anything in time can long remain in minds that
serve the timeless. And no illusion can disturb the peace of a
relationship which has become the means of peace.
57
When you have looked upon each other with complete forgiveness from
which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden what mistake can
there be anywhere you cannot overlook? What form of suffering could
block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it? And what illusion
could there be you will not recognize as a mistake—a shadow through
which you walk completely undismayed? God would let nothing interfere
with those whose wills are His, and they will recognize their wills are
HisHers, because they serve HisHer Will and serve it willingly.
And could remembrance of what they are be long delayed?
58
You will see your value through each other's eyes, and each one is
released as he/she beholds his/her savior/savioress in place of the
attacker who he/she thought was there. Through this releasing is the
world released. This is your part in bringing peace. For you have asked
what is your function here and have been answered. Seek not to change it
nor to substitute another goal. [This one was given you and only
this.] Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit
does with the gifts you give each other, to whom She offers them, and
where and when is up to Her. She will bestow them where they are
received and welcomed. She will use every one of them for peace. Nor
will one little smile or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be
lost to anyone.
59
What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your FatherMother
loves with charity? Extension of forgiveness is the Holy Spirit's
function. Leave this to Her. Let your concern be only that you give to
Her that which can be extended. Save no dark secrets that She
cannot use, but offer Her the tiny gifts She can extend forever. She
will take each one and make of it a potent force for peace. She will
withhold no blessing from it nor limit it in any way. She will join to
it all the power that God has given Her to make each little gift of love
a source of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to the
other lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness; look away
from it and toward each other. And let the darkness be dispelled by Her
Who knows the light and lays it gently in each quiet smile of faith and
confidence with which you bless each other.
60
On your learning depends the welfare of the world. And it is only
arrogance that would deny the power of your will. Think you the Will of
God is powerless? Is this humility? You do not see what this belief has
done. You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed and at
the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. Let us look
straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavy
anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, unmovable and solid
as a rock. While this remains, so will it seem to be.
61
Who can attack the SonDaughter of God and not attack hisher
FatherMother? How can God’s SonDaughter be weak and frail and easily
destroyed unless hisher FatherMother is? You do not see that
every sin and every condemnation which you perceive and justify is
an attack upon your FatherMother. And that is why it has not happened
nor could be real. You do not see that this is your attempt
because you think the FatherMother and the SonDaughter are separate. And
you must think that they are separate because of fear. For it
seems safer to attack another or yourself than to attack the great
CreatorManifestor of the universe, whose power you know.
62
If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would
know HisHer power is yours. But you will not remember this while
you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any
form because it has no meaning. The only way it could be
justified is if each one of you were separate from the other, and all
were separate from your CreatorManifestor. For only then would it be
possible to attack a part of the creationmanifestation without the
whole, the SonDaughter without the FatherMother, and to attack another
without yourself or hurt yourself without the other feeling pain. And
this belief you want. Yet wherein lies its value except in the
desire to attack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. It is
impossible. And this is so because the universe is one.
You would not choose attack on its reality if it were not essential to
attack to see it [separate from its CreatorManifestor]. And
thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful.
63
Only the different can attack. So you conclude because
you can attack you must be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit
explain this differently. Because you are not different, you cannot
attack. Either position is a logical conclusion if only the different
can attack. Either could be maintained, but never both. The only
question to be answered to decide which must be true is whether you are
different. From the position of what you understand, you seem to be and
therefore can attack. Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and
more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that
you have other experiences more in line with truth to teach you what is
natural and true.
64
This is the function of your holy relationship. For what one thinks the
other will experience with him/her. What can this mean except
your minds are one? Look not with fear upon this happy fact and think
not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For when you have accepted it
with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection
of the union of the CreatorManifestor and HisHer SonDaughter. From
loving minds there is no separation. And every thought in one
brings gladness to the other because they are the same. Joy is
unlimited because each shining thought of love extends its being and
createsmanifests more of itself. There is no difference anywhere in it,
for every thought is like itself.
65
The light that joins you shines throughout the universe, and because it
joins you, so it makes you one with your CreatorManifestor. And in
HimHer is all creationmanifestation joined. Would you regret you cannot
fear alone when your relationship can also teach the power of love is
there, which makes all fear impossible? Do not attempt to keep a little
of the ego with this gift. For it was given you to be used and
not obscured. What teaches you cannot separate, denies the ego.
Let truth decide if you be different or the same and teach you which is
true.
1
Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is
sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is strong. The
sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is weakness. The show of
strength attack would use to cover frailty conceals it not, for how can
the unreal be hidden? No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can
attack unless he/she thinks he/she has. Belief in enemies is therefore
the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God.
Being opposed to it, it is its "enemy." And God is feared as an opposing
will.
2
How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself! You will believe
that everything you use for sin can hurt you and become your enemy. And
you will fight against it and try to weaken it because of this; and you
will think that you succeeded and attack again. It is as certain you
will fear what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you
perceive as sinless. He/she walks in peace who travels sinlessly along
the way love shows him/her. For love walks with him/her there,
protecting him/her from fear. And he/she will see only the sinless, who
can not attack.
3
Walk you in glory with your head held high, and fear no evil. The
innocent are safe because they share their innocence. Nothing they see
is harmful, for their awareness of the truth releases everything from
the illusion of harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining
in their innocence, released from sin and fear, and happily returned to
love. They share the strength of love because they looked on
innocence. And every error disappeared because they saw it not. Who
looks for glory finds it where it is. Where could it be but in
the innocent?
4
Let not the little interferers pull you to littleness. There can
be no attraction of guilt in innocence. Think what a happy world you
walk with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom for a
little sigh of seeming sin nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's
attraction. Would you, for all these meaningless distractions, lay the
God Realm aside? Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them in the
clean place where littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance
with littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin.
5
Let us not let littleness lead God’s SonDaughter into temptation. Hisher
glory is beyond it, measureless and timeless as eternity. Do not
let time intrude upon your sight of him/her. Leave himher not frightened
and alone in hisher temptation but help himher rise above it and
perceive the light of which heshe is a part. Your innocence will light
the way to hishers, and so is yours protected and kept in your
awareness. For who can know hisher glory and perceive the little and the
weak about himhende? Who can walk trembling in a fearful world and
realize that the God Realm 's glory shines on him/her?
6
Nothing around you but is part of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the
light of the God Realm in it. So will you come to understand all that is
given you. In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine and
everything you once thought sinful now will be reinterpreted as part of
the God Realm . How beautiful it is to walk clean and redeemed and happy
through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence
bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here is your
salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if you would
recognize it.
7
The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is
conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal
gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the
warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in
victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe
the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you
identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain
it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has
an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.
8
Do you not realize a war against yourself would be a war on God?
Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would
want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your
death. Is this a victory? The ego always marches to
defeat because it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God
thinks otherwise. This is no war—only the mad belief the Will of God can
be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief,
but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness
and will seem to have replaced love there. This is the conflict's purpose.
And to those who think that it is possible, the means seem real.
9
Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it,
will ever meet. You seem to meet and make your strange
alliances on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge
upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is yours.
You meet at a mistake—an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins
with an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet
illusions cannot join. They are the same, and they are nothing. Their
joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a
thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. The victory
it seeks is meaningless as is itself.
10
Brothers/søstre, the war against yourself is almost over. The journey's
end is at the place of peace. Would you not now accept the peace offered
you here? This "enemy" you fought as an intruder on your peace is here
transformed before your sight into the giver of your peace. Your "enemy"
was God HimHerself, to Whom all conflict, triumph, and attack of any
kind are all unknown. HeShe loves you perfectly, completely, and
eternally. The SonDaughter of God at war with hisher CreatorManifestor
is a condition as ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in anger and
proclaiming that it is part of itself no more.
11
Could nature possibly establish this and make it true? Nor is it
up to you to say what shall be part of you and what is kept apart. The
war against yourself was undertaken to teach the SonDaughter of God that
heshe is not himherself and not hisher Father’sMother’s
SonDaughter. For this, the memory of hisher FatherMother must be
forgotten. It is forgotten in the body's life, and if you think
you are a body, you will believe you have forgotten it. Yet
truth can never be forgotten by itself, and you have not
forgotten what you are. Only a strange illusion of yourself, a wish to
triumph over what you are, remembers not.
12
The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling
to make them different from each other in the belief the one which
conquers will be true. There is no conflict between them and the
truth. Nor are they different from each other. Both are
not true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is
insane, and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no
menace to reality and has no influence upon it. Illusions cannot
triumph over truth, nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality
which they deny is not a part of them.
13
What you remember is a part of you. For you must
be as God createdmanifested you. Truth does not fight against illusions,
nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with
themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible
and far beyond their little reach. You will remember what you know when
you have learned you cannot be in conflict. One illusion about
yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a
state where nothing happens. There is no victor, and there is no
victory. And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and
quiet in the peace of God.
14
Conflict must be between two forces. It cannot exist between one
power and nothingness. There is nothing you could attack that is not
part of you. And by attacking it, you make two illusions of
yourself in conflict with each other. And this occurs whenever you look
on anything that God createdmanifested with anything but love. Conflict
is fearful, for it is the birth of fear. Yet what is born of
nothing cannot win reality through battle. Why would you fill your world
with conflicts with yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you and
turn in peace to the remembrance of God, still shining in your quiet
mind.
15
See how the conflict of illusions disappears when it is brought to
truth! For it seems real only as long as it is seen as war between
conflicting truths, the conqueror to be the truer, the more
real, and vanquisher of the illusion that was less real, made an
illusion by defeat. Thus, conflict is the choice between
illusions, one to be crowned as real, the other vanquished and despised.
Here will the FatherMother never be remembered. Yet no illusion
can invade HisHer home and drive HimHer out of what HeShe loves forever.
And what HeShe loves must be forever quiet and at peace because
it is HisHer home. And you who are beloved of HimHer are no illusions,
being as true and holy as HimHerself.
16
The stillness of your certainty of HimHer and of yourself is home to
both of you, who dwell as one and not apart. Open the door of HisHer
most holy home and let forgiveness sweep away all trace of the belief in
sin that keeps God homeless and HisHer SonDaughter with HimHer. You are
not strangers in the house of God. Welcome your brothersister to the
home where God has set himher in serenity and peace and dwells with
himher. Illusions have no place where love abides, protecting you from
everything that is not true. You dwell in peace as limitless as its
CreatorManifestor, and everything is given those who would remember
HimHer. Over HisHer home the Holy Spirit watches, sure that its peace
can never be disturbed.
17
How can the resting-place of God turn on itself and seek to overcome the
One Who dwells there? And think what happens when the house of God
perceives itself divided. The altar disappears, the light grows dim, the
temple of the Holy One becomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered
except illusions. Illusions can conflict because their forms are
different. And they do battle only to establish which form is true.
18
Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads
to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition
in which fear is born and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the
state where love abides and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace
are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes
the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that
have become illusion's battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war
it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.
19
The "laws" of chaos can be brought to light, though never understood.
Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful and therefore out of reason's sphere.
Yet they appear to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let
us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them,
understanding what they are, not what they would maintain. It is
essential it be understood what they are for, because it is their
purpose to make meaningless and to attack the truth. Here are the laws
that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing and need not
be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.
20
The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like
all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a
different set of thoughts which sets him/her off from others. This
principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions;
some are more valuable and therefore true. Each one establishes this for
himself/herself and makes it true by his/her attack on what
another values. And this is justified because the values differ and
those who hold them seem to be unlike and therefore enemies.
21
Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle of miracles.
For this establishes degrees of truth among illusions, making it appear
that some of them are harder to overcome than others. If it were
realized that they are all the same and equally untrue, it would be
easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to all of them.
Errors of any kind can be corrected because they are untrue.
When brought to truth instead of to each other, they merely
disappear. No part of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than
can another.
22
The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshiper of sin, is that
each one must sin and therefore deserves attack and death. This
principle, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call
for punishment and not correction. For the destruction of the one who
makes the error places him/her beyond correction and beyond forgiveness.
What he/she has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence upon
himself/herself, which God HimHerself is powerless to overcome. Sin
cannot be remitted, being the belief the SonDaughter of God can make
mistakes for which hisher own destruction becomes inevitable.
23
Think what this seems to do to the relationship between the FatherMother
and the SonDaughter. Now it appears that they can never be one again.
For one must always be condemned and by the other. Now
are they different and enemies. And their relationship is one of
opposition, just as the separate aspects of the SonDaughter meet only to
conflict but not to join. One becomes weak, the other strong by his/her
defeat. And fear of God and of each other now appears as sensible, made
real by what the SonDaughter of God has done both to himherself and
hisher CreatorManifestor. The arrogance on which the laws of chaos stand
could not be more apparent than emerges here.
24
Here is a principle which would define what the CreatorManifestor of
reality must be; what HeShe must think and what HeShe must believe; and
how HeShe must respond, believing it. It is not seen as even necessary
that HeShe be asked about the truth of what has been established for
HisHer belief. HisHer SonDaughter can tell HimHer this, and HeShe has
but the choice whether to take hisher word for it or be mistaken. This
leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos
eternal. For if God cannot be mistaken, then HeShe must
accept HisHer Son’sDaughter’s belief in what HanHun is and hate himher
for it.
25
See how the fear of God is reinforced by this third principle. Now it
becomes impossible to turn to HimHer for help in misery. For now HeShe
has become the "enemy" Who caused it and to Whom appeal is
useless. Nor can salvation lie within the SonDaughter, whose every
aspect seems to be at war with HimHer and justified in its attack. And
now is conflict made inevitable and beyond the help of God. And now
salvation must remain impossible because the savior/savioress has become
the enemy.
26
There can be no release and no escape. Atonement thus becomes a myth,
and vengeance, not forgiveness, is the Will of God. From where all this
begins, there is no sight of help that can succeed. Only destruction can
be the outcome. And God HimHerself seems to be siding with it to
overcome HisHer SonDaughter. Think not the ego will enable you to find
escape from what it wants. That is the function of this course,
which does not value what the ego cherishes.
27
The ego values only what it takes. This leads to the fourth law
of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. This seeming
law is the belief you have what you have taken. By this,
another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that
you can never take away save from yourself. Yet all the other
laws must lead to this. For enemies do not give willingly to one
another, nor would they seek to share the things they value. And what
your enemies would keep from you must be worth having, just because they
keep it hidden from your sight.
28
All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here: the "enemy,"
made strong by keeping hidden the valuable inheritance which should be
yours; your justified position and attack for what has been withheld;
and the inevitable loss the enemy must suffer to save yourself. Thus do
the guilty ones protest their "innocence." Were they not forced into
this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, they would
respond with only kindness. But in a savage world, the kind cannot
survive, so they must take or else be taken from.
29
And now there is a vague unanswered question, not yet "explained." What
is this precious thing, this priceless pearl, this hidden secret
treasure, to be wrested in righteous wrath from this most treacherous
and cunning enemy? It must be what you want but never found. And now you
"understand" the reason why you found it not. For it was taken from you
by this enemy and hidden where you would not think to look. He/she hid
it in his/her body, making it the cover for his/her guilt, the hiding
place for what belongs to you. Now must his/her body be destroyed and
sacrificed that you may have that which belongs to you. His/her
treachery demands his/her death that you may live. And you
attack only in self defense.
30
But what is it you want that needs his/her death? Can you be
sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what it is for?
And here a final principle of chaos comes to the rescue. It
holds there is a substitute for love. This is the "magic" that
will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness that
makes it "sane." This is the reason why you must attack. Here is what
makes your vengeance justified. Behold, unveiled, the ego's secret gift,
torn from your brother’s/sister’s body, hidden there in malice and in
hatred for the one to whom the gift belongs. He/she would deprive you of
the secret ingredient which would give meaning to your life. The
substitute for love, born of your enmity to one another, must be
salvation. It has no substitute, and there is only one. And all your
relationships have but the purpose of seizing it and making it your own.
31
Never is your possession made complete. And never will your
brother/sister cease his/her attack on you for what you stole. Nor will
God end HisHer vengeance upon both, for in HisHer madness HeShe must
have this substitute for love and kill you both. You who believe you
walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground and through a world where
meaning can be found, consider this: [These are the laws on
which your "sanity" appears to rest.] These are the principles
which make the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it is
here you look for meaning. These are the laws you made for your
salvation. They hold in place the substitute for the God Realm which you
prefer. This is their purpose; they were made for this. There is no
point in asking what they mean. That is apparent. The means of madness
must be insane. Are you as certain that you realize the goal is
madness?
32
No one wants madness, nor does anyone cling to his/her madness
if he/she sees that this is what it is. What protects madness is
the belief that it is true. It is the function of insanity to
take the place of truth. It must be seen as truth to be
believed. And if it is the truth, then must its opposite, which was the
truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, completely turned around,
with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love and
murder benediction, is the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the
means by which the laws of God appear to be reversed. Here do the laws
of sin appear to hold love captive and let sin go free.
33
These do not seem to be the goals of chaos, for by the great
reversal, they appear to be the laws of order. How could it not
be so? Chaos is lawlessness and has no laws. To be believed, its
seeming laws must be perceived as real. Their goal of madness must be
seen as sanity. And fear, with ashen lips and sightless eyes, blinded
and terrible to look upon, is lifted to the throne of love, its dying
conqueror, its substitute, the savior/savioress from salvation. How
lovely do the laws of fear make death appear! Give thanks unto the
hero/heroin on love's throne, who saved the SonDaughter of God for fear
and death!
34
And yet, how can it be that laws like these can be believed? There is a
strange device that makes it possible. Nor is it unfamiliar; we have
seen how it appears to function the many times before. In truth it does
not function, yet in dreams, where only shadows play the major
roles, it seems most powerful. No law of chaos could compel belief but
for the emphasis on form and disregard of content. No
one who thinks that one of them is true sees what it says. Some
forms it takes seem to have meaning, and that is all.
35
How can some forms of murder not mean death? Can an attack in any
form be love? What form of condemnation is a blessing? Who makes
his/her savior/savioress powerless and finds salvation? Let not
the form of the attack on him/her deceive you. You cannot seek
to harm him/her and be saved. Who can find safety from attack by turning
on himself? How can it matter what the form this madness takes?
It is a judgment that defeats itself, condemning what it says it wants
to save. Be not deceived when madness takes a form you think is lovely.
What is intent on your destruction is not your friend.
36
You would maintain and think it true that you do not believe these
senseless laws nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say,
they cannot be believed. Brothers/søstre, you do believe
them. For how else could you perceive the form they take with content
such as this? Can any form of this be tenable? Yet you believe
them for the form they take and do not recognize the
content. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton,
dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live?
And can you be content with an illusion that you are living?
37
There is no life outside of the God Realm . Where God
createdmanifested life, there life must be. In any state apart from the
God Realm, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like
death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their
inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in the God Realm is impossible,
and what is not in the God Realm is not anywhere. Outside of the God
Realm, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and
beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to the God
Realm . Illusions are but forms. Their content is never
true.
38
The laws of chaos govern all illusions. Their forms conflict, making it
seem quite possible to value some above the others. Yet each one rests
as surely on the belief the laws of chaos are the laws of order as do
the others. Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain
witness that these laws are true. The seeming gentler forms of the
attack are no less certain in their witnessing or their results. Certain
it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs that they imply,
not for their form. And lack of faith in love in any form
attests to chaos as reality.
39
From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is
because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion—a valid step
in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from
their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of
truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth.
Think not one step is smaller than another nor that return from one is
easier. The whole descent from the God Realm lies in each one. And where
your thinking starts, there must it end.
40
Brothers/søstre, take not one step in the descent to hell. For having
taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. And they will
follow. Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted
stairway that leads from the God Realm. Yet any instant it is possible
to have all this undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs
to the God Realm or the way to hell? Quite easily. How do you feel? Is
peace in your awareness? Are you certain which way you go? And are you
sure the goal of the God Realm can be reached? If not, you walk
alone. Ask, then, your female Friend to join with you and give
you certainty of where you go.
41
Is it not true you do not recognize some of the forms attack can take?
If it is true attack in any form will hurt you and will do so just as
much as in another form which you do recognize, then it must
follow that you do not always recognize the source of pain. Attack in any
form is equally destructive. Its purpose does not change. Its sole
intent is murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive
guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel? He/she may
deny he/she is a murderer and justify his/her savagery with smiles as
he/she attacks. Yet he/she will suffer and will look on his/her intent
in nightmares where the smiles are gone and where the purpose rises to
meet his/her horrified awareness and pursue him/her still. For no one
thinks of murder and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If
the intent is death, what matter the form it takes?
42
Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may seem to be, a
blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks through you to your
brother? The wrapping does not make the gift you give. An empty box,
however beautiful and gently given, still contains nothing. And neither
the receiver nor the giver is long deceived. Withhold forgiveness from
your brother/sister, and you attack him/her. You give him/her nothing
and receive of him/her but what you gave.
43
Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but
part of what you want—to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation
gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the idea of
compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation's purpose is lost
because it is not recognized. It is denied where compromise has been
accepted, for compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would
maintain you can attack a little, love a little, and know the difference.
Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different, and yet
the same remain intact as one. Does this make sense? Can it be
understood?
44
This course is easy just because it makes no compromise. Yet it seems
difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible. They
do not see that, if it is, salvation is attack. Yet it is
certain the belief that salvation is impossible cannot uphold a quiet,
calm assurance it has come. Forgiveness cannot be withheld a little. Nor
is it possible to attack for this and love for that and understand
forgiveness. Would you not want to recognize assault upon your
peace in any form, if only thus does it become impossible that you
lose sight of it? It can be kept shining before your vision, forever
clear and never out of sight if you defend it not.
45
Those who believe that peace can be defended and that attack is
justified on its behalf cannot perceive it lies within them. How could
they know? Could they accept forgiveness side by side with the belief
that murder takes some forms by which their peace is saved? Would they
be willing to accept the fact their savage purpose is directed against
themselves? No one unites with enemies nor is at one with them in
purpose. And no one compromises with an enemy but hates him/her still
for what he/she kept from him/her.
46
Mistake not truce for peace, nor compromise for the escape from
conflict. To be released from conflict means that it is over.
The door is open; you have left the battleground. You have not
lingered there in cowering hope because the guns are still an instant
and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent that it will
not return. There is no safety in a battleground. You can look
down on it in safety from above and not be touched. But from within it,
you can find no safety. Not one tree left standing still will
shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in
murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to
communicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. Think you the
form that murder takes can offer safety? Can guilt be absent
from a battlefield? [Do not remain in conflict, for there is no
war without attack.]
47
The fear of God is fear of life and not of death. Yet HeShe
remains the only place of safety. In HimHer is no attack, and no
illusion in any form stalks the God Realm. The God Realm is wholly true.
No difference enters, and what is all the same cannot conflict. You are
not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are
asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this
you fear and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not
loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth,
and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be
of equal truth.
48
What can be equal to the truth yet different? Murder and love are
incompatible. Yet if they both are true, then must they be the same and
indistinguishable from one another. So will they be to those who see
God’s SonDaughter a body. For it is not the body that is like the
Son’sDaughter’s CreatorManifestor. And what is lifeless cannot be
the SonDaughter of Life. How can a body be extended to hold the
universe? Can it createmanifest and be what it createsmanifests?
And can it offer its creationsmanifestations all that it is and never
suffer loss?
49
God does not share HisHer function with a body. HeShe gave the function
to createmanifest unto HisHer SonDaughter because it is HisHer own. It
is not sinful to believe the function of the SonDaughter is murder, but
it is insanity. What is the same can have no different
function. Creationmanifestation is the means for God's extension, and
what is HisHer must be HisHer Son’sDaughter’s as well. Either the
FatherMother and the SonDaughter are murderers or neither is.
Life makes not death, creatingmanifesting like itself.
50
The lovely light of your relationship is like the love of God. It cannot
yet assume the holy function God gave HisHer SonDaughter, for your
forgiveness of one another is not complete as yet, and so it cannot be
extended to all creationmanifestation. Each form of murder and attack
that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is
limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all.
Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts
and make them mighty. Also She understands how your relationship is
raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part—to
realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking
of the battleground is now your purpose.
51
Be lifted up and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will
your perspective be quite different. Here in the midst of it, it does
seem real. Here you have chosen to be part of it. Here murder is
your choice. Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead of murder.
And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is not
real and easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is
meaningless. And it is over when you realize it never was begun. How can
a battle be perceived as nothingness when you engage in it? How can the
truth of miracles be recognized if murder is your choice?
52
When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and
murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in
forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain,
a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you know well.
When it occurs, leave not your place on high but quickly choose a
miracle instead of murder. And God HimHerself and all the lights
of the God Realm will gently lean to you and hold you up. For you have
chosen to remain where HeShe would have you, and no illusion can
attack the peace of God together with HisHer SonDaughter.
53
See no one from the battleground, for there you look on him/her from
nowhere. You have no reference-point from where to look, where meaning
can be given what you see. For only bodies could attack and murder, and
if this is your purpose, then you must be one with them. Only a purpose
unifies, and those who share a purpose have a mind as one. The body has
no purpose and must be solitary. From below, it cannot be surmounted.
From above, the limits it exerts on those in battle still are gone and
not perceived. The body stands between the FatherMother and the God
Realm HeShe createdmanifested for HisHer SonDaughter because it
has no purpose.
54
Think what is given those who share their Father’sMother’s purpose and
who know that it is theirs! They want for nothing. Sorrow of any kind is
inconceivable. Only the light they love is in awareness, and only love
shines upon them forever. It is their past, their present, and their
future always the same, eternally complete, and wholly shared. They know
it is impossible their happiness could ever suffer change of any kind.
Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something that you can win.
Can it be anything that offers you a perfect calmness and a sense of
love so deep and quiet that no touch of doubt can ever mar your
certainty? And that will last forever?
55
Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of
battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For
everything fought for on the battleground is of the body—something it
seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he/she has everything
could seek for limitation, nor could he/she value the body's offerings.
The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere
above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is
there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the love of
God upholding him/her could find the choice of miracles or murder hard
to make?
1
Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the
keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and
the condition in which God is remembered is attained. It is not
necessary to tell HimHer what to do. HeShe will not fail. Where HeShe
can enter, there HeShe is already. And can it be HeShe cannot enter
where HeShe wills to be? Peace will be yours because it is
HisHer Will. Can you believe a shadow can hold back the Will that holds
the universe secure? God does not wait upon illusions to let HimHer be
HimHerself. No more HisHer SonDaughter. They are. And what
illusion that idly seems to drift between them has the power to defeat
what is Their Will?
2
To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that
you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize
your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate
each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on
everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief and
follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom
sinlessness. There is no substitute for peace. What God
createsmanifests has no alternative. The truth arises from what
HeShe knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as
certainly as all creationmanifestation rose in HisHer Mind because
of what HeShe knows.
3
Love is extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's
purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but one belief, one
offering, and love is gone because you asked a substitute to take its
place. And now must war, the substitute for peace, come with the one
alternative that you can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it
all the reality it seems to have.
4
Beliefs will never openly attack each other, because conflicting
outcomes are impossible. But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war
in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and never
brought to reason to be considered sensible or not. And the many
senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have
been made and kept hidden to become beliefs, now given power to direct
all subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these hidden
warriors to disrupt your peace. For it is at their mercy while
you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies of peace, your least
decision to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to
challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you
think, are there by your election. Do not deny their presence nor their
terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but
not their outcome.
5
All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though
unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This takes the many forms but
always clashes with the reality of God's creationmanifestation and with
the grandeur which HeShe gave HisHer SonDaughter. What else could
justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his/her and
whom he/she knows? Only the special could have enemies, for they are
different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes orders of
reality and a need to judge that cannot be escaped.
6
What God createdmanifested cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in
the universe unlike itself. But what is different calls for
judgment, and this must come from someone "better," someone incapable of
being like what he/she condemns, "above" it, sinless by comparison with
it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For
specialness not only sets apart but serves as grounds from which attack
on those who seem "beneath" the special one is "natural" and "just." The
special ones feel weak and frail because of differences, for
what would make them special is their enemy. Yet they protect
its enmity and call it "friend." On its behalf they fight against the
universe, for nothing in the world they value more.
7
Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the
grand illusion of what you are and what your brother/sister is. And here
is what must make the body dear and worth preserving. Specialness must
be defended. Illusions can attack it, and they do.
For what your brother/sister must become to keep your
specialness is an illusion. He/she who is "worse" than you must
be attacked so that your specialness can live on his/her defeat. For
specialness is triumph, and its victory is his/her defeat and shame. How
can he/she live with all your sins upon him/her? And who must be his/her
conqueror but you?
8
Would it be possible for you to hate your brother/sister if you were
like him? Could you attack him/her if you realized you journey with
him/her to a goal that is the same? Would you not help him/her reach it
in every way you could if his/her attainment of it were perceived as
yours? You are his/her enemy in specialness; his/her friend in a
shared purpose. Specialness can never share, for it depends on goals
that you alone can reach. And he/she must never reach them, or your goal
is jeopardized. Can love have meaning where the goal is triumph? And
what decision can be made for this that will not hurt you? Your
brother/sister is your friend because his/her FatherMother
createdmanifested him/her like you. There is no difference. You
have been given to each other that love might be extended, not cut off
from one another. What you keep is lost to you. God gave you
both HimHerself, and to remember this is now the only purpose that you
share. And so it is the only one you have.
9
Could you attack each other if you chose to see no specialness of any
kind between you? Look fairly at whatever makes you give each other only
partial welcome or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is
it not always your belief your specialness is limited by your
relationship? And is not this the "enemy" that makes you both illusions
to each other?
10
The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in
specialness. For each demands the other bow to it against
his/her will. And God HimHerself must honor it or suffer vengeance.
Every twinge of malice or stab of hate or wish to separate arises here.
For here the purpose which you share becomes obscured from both of you.
You would oppose this course because it teaches you are alike.
You have no purpose that is not the same and none your FatherMother does
not share with you. For your relationship has been made clean of special
goals. And would you now defeat the goal of holiness that the
God Realm gave it? What perspective can the special have that does not
change with every seeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on
itself?
11
Those who are special must defend illusions against the truth.
For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God? You love
your brother/sister not while it is this you would defend against
him/her. This is what he/she attacks and you protect. Here is
the ground of battle which you wage against him/her. Here must he/she be
your enemy and not your friend. Never can there be peace among the
different. He/she is your friend because you are the same.
12
Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness always
makes comparison. It is established by a lack seen in another and
maintained by searching for and keeping clear in sight all lacks it can
perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And always whom it
thus diminishes would be your savior/savioress, had you not chosen to
make of him/her a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the
littleness you see in him/her, you stand as tall and stately, clean and
honest, pure and unsullied by comparison with what you see. Nor do you
understand it is yourself that you diminish thus.
13
Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack
his/her savior/savioress and cut him/her down yet recognize
his/her strong support? Who can detract from his/her omnipotence yet share
his/her power? And who can use him/her as the gauge of littleness and be
released from limits? You have a function in salvation. Its
pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit of specialness must
bring you pain. Here is a goal that would defeat salvation and thus run
counter to the Will of God. To value specialness is to esteem an alien
will to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth.
14
Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible even to
imagine without this base. For sin arose from it out of nothingness; an
evil flower with no roots at all. Here is the self-made
"savior/savioress," the "creatormanifestor" who createsmanifests unlike
the FatherMother and which made HisHer SonDaughter like to itself and
not like unto himher. HisHer "special" sons/daughters are the many, never
one, each one in exile from himself/herself and HimHer of Whom they are
a part. Nor do they love the Oneness Which createdmanifested them as one
with HimHer. They chose their specialness instead of the God Realm and
instead of peace and wrapped it carefully in sin to keep it "safe" from
truth.
15
You are not special. If you think you are and would defend your
specialness against the truth of what you really are, how can
you know the truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you
when it is your specialness to which you listen and which asks and
answers? Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody which pours from God
to you eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to.
And that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent
and unheard before its "mightiness." You strain your ears to hear its
soundless voice, and yet the Call of God HimHerself is soundless to you.
16
You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for
God beside it. They speak a different language and they fall on
different ears. To every special one a different message, and one with
different meaning, is the truth. Yet how can truth be different to each
one? The special messages the special hear convince them they are
different and apart—each in his/her special sins and "safe" from love,
which does not see his/her specialness at all. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's vision is their "enemy," for it
sees not what they would look upon, and it would show them that the
specialness they think they see is an illusion. What would they
see instead?
17
The shining radiance of the SonDaughter of God—so like hisher
FatherMother that the memory of HimHer springs instantly to mind. And
with this memory, the SonDaughter remembers hisher own
creationsmanifestations, as like to himher as heshe is to hisher
FatherMother. And all the world he/she made and all his/her specialness
and all the sins he/she held in its defense against himself/herself will
vanish as his/her mind accepts the truth about himself/herself as it
returns to take their place. This is the only "cost" of truth: you will
no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a
sacrifice to give up nothing and to receive the love of God forever?
18
You who have chained your savior/savioress to your specialness and given
it his/her place, remember this: He/she has not lost the power to
forgive you all the sins you think you placed between him/her and the
function of salvation given him/her for you. Nor will you change his/her
function, any more than you can change the truth in him/her and in
yourself. But be you certain that the truth is just the same in both. It
gives no different messages and has one meaning. And it is one
you both can understand, and one which brings release to both
of you. Here stands your brother/sister with the key to the God Realm in
his/her hand held out to you. Let not the dream of specialness remain
between you. What is one is joined in truth.
19
Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself when you have
looked on him/her as on a friend. He/she is the enemy of
specialness but only friend to what is real in you. Not one attack you
thought you made on him/her has taken from him/her the gift that God
would have him/her give to you. His/her need to give it is as great as
yours to have it. Let him/her forgive you all your specialness and make
you whole in mind and one with him/her. He/she waits for your
forgiveness only that he/she may return it unto you. It is not God Who
has condemned HisHer SonDaughter. But only you, to save his/her
specialness and kill his/her Self.
20
You have come far along the way of truth—too far to falter now. Just one
step more and every vestige of the fear of God will melt away in love.
Your brother’s/sister’s specialness and yours are enemies and
bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same. Yet it is
not illusions which have reached this final obstacle that seems to make
God and HisHer Realm so remote that they cannot be reached. Here in this
holy place does truth stand waiting to receive you both in silent
blessing and in peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands
outside. Leave all illusions of yourself outside this place to which you
come in hope and honesty.
21
Here is your savior/savioress from your specialness. He/she is
in need of your acceptance of himself/herself as part of you, as you for
his. You are alike to God as God is to HimHerself. HeShe is not special,
for HeShe would not keep one part of what HeShe is unto HimHerself, not
given to HisHer SonDaughter but kept for HimHer alone. And it is this
you fear, for if HeShe is not special, then HeShe willed HisHer
SonDaughter be like HimHer, and your brother/sister is like you.
Not special, but possessed of everything including you.
22
Give him/her but what he/she has, remembering God gave HimHerself to
both of you in equal love that both might share the universe with HimHer
Who chose that love could never be divided and kept separate from what
it is and must forever be. You are your brother's; part of love
was not denied to him/her. But can it be that you have lost
because he/she is complete? What has been given him/her makes you
complete, as it does him/her. God's love gave you to him/her and him/her
to you because HeShe gave HimHerself. What is the same as God is one
with HimHer. And only specialness could make the truth of God and you as
one seem anything but the God Realm and the hope of peace at last in
sight.
23
Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love. Whatever
serves its purpose must be given to kill. No gift that bears its seal
but offers treachery to giver and receiver. Not one glance from
eyes it veils but looks on sight of death. Not one believer in its
potency but seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish
sin love's substitute and serve it faithfully. And no relationship that
holds its purpose dear but clings to murder as safety's weapon and the
great defender of all illusions from the "threat" of love.
24
The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the
prison-house which keeps HisHer SonDaughter from HimHer. For it demands
a special place God cannot enter and a hiding-place where none is
welcome but your tiny self. Nothing is sacred here but unto you and you
alone, apart and separate from all your brothers/sisters, safe from all
intrusions of sanity upon illusions, safe from God, and safe for
conflict everlasting. Here are the gates of hell you closed upon
yourself, to rule in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom,
apart from God, away from truth and from salvation.
25
The key you threw away God gave your brother/sister, whose holy hands
would offer it to you when you were ready to accept HisHer plan for your
salvation in place of yours. How could this readiness be reached save
through the sight of all your misery and the awareness that your plan
has failed and will forever fail to bring you peace and joy of any kind?
Through this despair you travel now, yet it is but illusion of
despair. The death of specialness is not your death but your
awaking into life eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of what you
are to the acceptance of yourself as God createdmanifested you.
26
Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can be forgiven,
and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release from all
illusions, and that is why it is impossible but partly to forgive. No
one who clings to one illusion can see himself/herself as sinless, for
he/she holds one error to himself/herself as lovely still. And so he/she
calls it "unforgivable" and makes it sin. How can he/she then give
his/her forgiveness wholly, when he/she would not receive it for
himself/herself? For it is sure he/she would receive it wholly the
instant that he/she gave it so. And thus his/her secret guilt would
disappear, forgiven by himself/herself.
27
Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. Inviolate
it stands, strongly defended with all your puny might against the Will
of God. And thus it stands against yourself; your enemy, not
God's. So does it seem to split you off from God and make you separate
from HimHer as its defender. You would protect what God
createdmanifested not. And yet this
that seems to give you power has taken it away. For you
have given your brother’s/sister’s birthright to it, leaving him/her
alone and unforgiven and yourself in sin beside him/hende, both in
misery before the that can
save you not.
28
It is not you that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just
a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits
you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world and
hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly
unmoved [and undisturbed]. But specialness is not the truth in
you. It can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on
nothing never can be stable. However large and overblown it
seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every
breeze.
29
Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left HisHer
SonDaughter in such a state, where safety has no meaning? No, HisHer
SonDaughter is safe, resting on HimHer. It is your specialness that is
attacked by everything that walks and breathes or creeps or crawls or
even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, and it is safe from
nothing. It will forever more be unforgiving, for that is what it is—a
secret vow that what God wants for you will never be and that you will
oppose HisHer Will forever. Nor is it possible the two can ever be the
same while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them
and makes them "enemies."
30
God asks for your forgiveness. HeShe would have no separation, like an
alien will, rise between what HeShe wills for you and what you will.
They are the same, for neither one wills specialness. How could
they will the death of love itself? Yet they are powerless to make
attack upon illusions. They are not bodies; as One Mind they wait for
all illusions to be brought to them and left behind. Salvation
challenges not even death. And God HimHerself, Who knows that death is
not your will, must say, "Thy will be done" because you think it
is.
31
Forgive the great CreatorManifestor of the universe, the Source of life,
of love and holiness, the perfect FatherMother of a perfect SonDaughter,
for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be
your home. HeShe chose not this for you. Ask not HeShe enter this. The
way is barred to love and to salvation. Yet if you would release your
brother/sister from the depths of hell, you have forgiven HimHer Whose
Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace in perfect safety and
without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to mar your
rest. Forgive the Holy One the specialness HeShe could not give and
which you made instead.
32
The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness
they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there beside the bier
on which they sleep and call them to come forth and waken from their
dream of death. Yet they hear nothing. They are lost in dreams of
specialness. They hate the call that would awaken them, and they curse
God because HeShe did not make their dream reality. Curse God and die,
but not by HimHer Who made not death, but only in the dream. Open your
eyes a little; see the savior/savioress God gave to you that you might
look on him/her and give him/her back his/her birthright. It is yours.
33
The slaves of specialness will yet be free. Such is the Will of God and
of HisHer SonDaughter. Would God condemn HimHerself
to hell and to damnation? And do you will that this be done unto
your savior/savioress? God calls to you from him/her to join HisHer Will
to save you both from hell. Look on the print of nails upon
his/her hands that he/she holds out for your forgiveness. God asks your
mercy on HisHer SonDaughter and on HimHerself. Deny them not. They ask
of you but that your will be done. They seek your love that you may love
yourself. Love not your specialness instead of them. The print of nails
are on your hands as well. Forgive your FatherMother. It was not HisHer
Will that you be crucified.
34
Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is
invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy—feared
and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of
destruction. Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its
hate is real. In danger of destruction, it must kill, and you are drawn
to it to kill it first. And such is guilt's attraction. Here is death
enthroned as savior/savioress; crucifixion is now redemption, and
salvation can only mean destruction of the world, except yourself.
35
What could the purpose of the body be but specialness? And it is
this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was
conceived to make you frail and helpless. The goal of separation
is its curse. Yet bodies have no goal. Purpose is of the mind.
And minds can change as they desire. What they are and all their
attributes, they cannot change. But what they hold as purpose can
be changed, and body states must shift accordingly. Of itself the body
can do nothing. See it as means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as means
to heal, and it is healed.
36
You can but hurt yourself. This has been oft repeated but is
difficult to grasp as yet. To minds intent on specialness, it is
impossible. Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack, it is quite
obvious. The purpose of attack is in the mind, and its effects
are felt but where it is. Nor is mind limited; so must it be
that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. Nothing could make less
sense to specialness. Nothing could make more sense to miracles.
For miracles are merely change of purpose from hurt to healing.
37
This shift in purpose does "endanger" specialness but only in
the sense that all illusions are "threatened" by the truth. They will not
stand before it. Yet what comfort has ever been in them that you would
keep the gift your FatherMother asks from HimHer and give it there
instead? Given to HimHer, the universe is yours. Offered to them,
no gifts can be returned. What you have given specialness has left you
bankrupt and your treasure house barren and empty with an open door
inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and destroy.
38
Long ago we said consider not the means by which salvation is attained
nor how to reach it. But do consider, and consider well, whether
it is your wish that you might see your brother/sister sinless. To
specialness the answer must be "no." A sinless brother/sister is
its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, would be its friend. Your
brother’s/sister’s sins would justify itself and give it meaning that
the truth denies. All that is real proclaims his/her sinlessness. All
that is false proclaims his/her sins as real. If he/she is sinful, then
is your reality not real but just a dream of specialness which
lasts an instant, crumbling into dust.
39
Do not defend this senseless dream in which God is bereft of what HeShe
loves and you remain beyond salvation. Only this is certain in this
shifting world which has no meaning in reality: when peace is not with
you entirely and when you suffer pain of any kind, you have beheld some
sin within your brother/sister and have rejoiced at what you
thought was there. Your specialness seemed safe because of it. And thus
you saved what you appointed to be your savior/savioress and
crucified the one whom God has given you instead. So are you bound with
him/hende, for you are one. And so is specialness his/her
"enemy" and yours as well.
40
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you is very still.
She looks on what She loves and knows it as Herself. And thus does She
rejoice at what She sees because She knows that it is one with Her and
with Her FatherMother. Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees,
although it is not true. Yet what you seek for is a source of
joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it
possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so.
Wishing makes real, as surely as does will createmanifest. The
power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend
itself, except that one deludes; the other heals.
41
There is no dream of specialness—however hidden or disguised the form,
however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the
hope of peace and the escape from pain—in which you suffer not your
condemnation. In dreams, effect and cause are interchanged, for here the
maker of the dream believes that what he/she made is happening to
him/her. He/she does not realize he/she picked a thread from here, a
scrap from there, and wove a picture out of nothing. For the parts do
not belong together, and the whole contributes nothing to the parts to
give them meaning.
42
Where could your peace arise but from forgiveness? The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you looks only on the truth and
sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. She is at
peace because She sees no sin. Identify with Her, and what has
She that you have not? She is your eyes, your ears, your hands, your
feet. How gentle are the sights She sees, the sounds She hears. How
beautiful Her hand that holds Her brother's/sister’s, and how lovingly
She walks beside him/her, showing him/her what can be seen and heard and
where he/she will see nothing and there is no sound to hear.
43
Yet let your specialness direct his/her way, and you will
follow. And both will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark
forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams that
spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go out, to lead the
other to a nameless precipice and hurl him/her over it. For what can
specialness delight in but to kill? What does it seek for but the sight
of death? Where does it lead but to destruction? Yet think not that it
looked upon your brother/sister first, nor hated him/her before it hated
you. The sin its eyes behold in him/her and love to look upon, it saw in
you and looks on still with joy. Yet is it joy to look
upon decay and madness and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh
already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like
yourself?
44
Rejoice you have no eyes with which to see, no ears to listen,
and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness can lend you HisHer while you have
need of them. They are illusions too, as much as yours. And yet, because
they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is
given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light
that you may lead as you were led.
45
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you is very still.
She knows where you are going, and She leads you there in gentleness and
blessing all the way. Her love for God replaces all the fear you thought
you saw within yourself. Her holiness shows you Herself in him/her whose
hand you hold and whom you lead to Her. And what you see is like
yourself. For what but the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
is there to see and hear and love and follow home? She looked upon you
first but recognized that you were not complete. And so She sought for
your completion in each living thing that She beholds and loves. And
seeks it still, that each might offer you the love of God.
46
Yet is She quiet, for She knows that love is in you now and safely held
in you by that same hand that holds your brother’s/sister’s in your own.
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's hand holds all Her
brothers/sisters in Herself. She gives them vision for their sightless
eyes and sings to them of the God Realm that their ears may hear no more
the sound of battle and of death. She reaches through them, holding out
Her hand that everyone may bless all living things and see their
holiness. And She rejoices that these sights are yours to look upon with
Her and share Her joy. Her perfect lack of specialness She offers you
that you may save all living things from death, receiving from each one
the gift of life that your forgiveness offers to your Self. The sight of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is all there is to see.
The song of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is all
there is to hear. The hand of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness is all there is to hold. There is no journey but
to walk with Her.
47
You who would be content with specialness and seek salvation in a war
with love, consider this: the holy Lady of the God Realm has Herself
come down to you to offer you your own completion. What is Her is yours
because in your completion is Her Own. HeShe Who willed not to be
without HisHer SonDaughter could never will that you be
brotherless/sisterless. And would HeShe give a brother/sister unto you
except he/she be as perfect as yourself and just as like to HimHer in
holiness as you must be?
48
There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must
be about yourself. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has
no doubt, and from Her certainty Her quiet comes. She will exchange Her
certainty for all your doubts if you agree that She is one with you and
that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp because
your hands are Hers. She is within you, yet She walks beside you and
before, leading the way that She must go to find Herself complete. Her
quietness becomes your certainty. And where is doubt when certainty has
come?
49
Before your brother’s/sister’s holiness the world is still and peace
descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete that not one trace
of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night. She
is your savior/savioress from the dreams of fear. She is the healing of
your sense of sacrifice and fear that what you have will scatter with
the wind and turn to dust. In Hende is your assurance God is here and
with you now. While Hun is what She is, you can be sure that God
is knowable and will be known to you. For HeShe could never
leave HisHer own creationmanifestation. And the sign that this is so
lies in your brother/sister, offered you that all your doubts about
yourself may disappear before his/her holiness. See in him/her God's
creationmanifestation. For in him/hende, his/her FatherMother waits for
your acknowledgment that HeShe createdmanifested you as part of HimHer.
50
Without you there would be a lack in God, a the God Realm incomplete, a
SonDaughter without a FatherMother. There could be no universe and no
reality. For what God wills is whole and part of HimHer because HisHer
Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of HimHer, and nothing is
but is alive in HimHer. Your brother’s/sister’s holiness shows you that
God is one with him/her and you—that what he/she has is yours because
you are not separate from him/her nor from his/her FatherMother.
51
Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that God
createdmanifested has HeShe failed to lay before you lovingly as yours
forever. And no thought within HisHer Mind is absent from your own. It
is HisHer Will you share HisHer love for you and look upon yourself as
lovingly as HeShe conceived of you before the world began and as HeShe
knows you still. God changes not HisHer Mind about HisHer SonDaughter
with passing circumstance, which has no meaning in eternity where HeShe
abides and you with HimHer. Your brother/sister is as HeShe
createdmanifested him/her. And it is this that saves you from a world
that HeShe createdmanifested not.
52
Forget not that the healing of God’s SonDaughter is all the world is for.
That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it and thus the only
one it has. Until you see the healing of the SonDaughter as all you wish
to be accomplished by the world, by time, and all appearances, you will
not know the FatherMother nor yourself. For you will use the world for
what is not its purpose and will not escape its laws of violence and
death. Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in all
respects, in every way, and every circumstance, in all
temptation to perceive what is not there and all belief God’s
SonDaughter can suffer pain because heshe sees himherself as heshe is
not.
53
Look on your brother/sister and behold in him/her the whole reversal of
the laws that seem to rule this world. See in his/her freedom yours,
for such it is. Let not his/her specialness obscure the truth in him,
for not one law of death you bind him/her to will you escape.
And not one sin you see in him/her but keeps you both in hell.
Yet will his/her perfect sinlessness release you both, for
holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks
upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks
for God in everything that lives and shares Her Being.
54
It is Her sinlessness that eyes which see can look upon. It is Her
loveliness they see in everything. And it is She they look for
everywhere and find no sight nor place nor time where She is not. Within
your brother’s/sister’s holiness, the perfect frame for your salvation
and the world's, is set the shining memory of HimHer in Whom your
brother/sister lives and you along with him/her. Let not your eyes be
blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness from him/her, and you as well. And
let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were meant to see from
you. Your brother’s/sister’s body shows not the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness to you. She is set forth within his/her
holiness.
55
Choose, then, his/her body or his/her holiness as what you want
to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you choose
in countless situations and through time which seems to have no end
until the truth be your decision. For eternity is not regained by still
one more denial of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in
him/her. And where is your salvation if he/she is but a body? Where is
your peace but in his/her holiness? And where is God HimHerself but in
that part of HimHer HeShe set forever in your brother’s/sister’s
holiness that you might see the truth about yourself set forth at last
in terms you recognized and understood?
56
Your brother’s/sister’s holiness is sacrament and benediction unto you.
His/her errors cannot withhold God's blessing from himself/herself nor
you who see him/her truly. His/her mistakes can cause delay, which it is
given you to take from him/her that both may end a journey that has
never been begun and needs no end. What never was is not a part of you.
Yet you will think it is until you realize that it is not a part
of him/her who stands beside you. He/she is the mirror of yourself
wherein you see the judgment you have laid on both of you. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you beholds his/her holiness.
Your specialness looks on his/her body and beholds him/her not.
57
See him/her as what he/she is that your deliverance may not be
long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without
accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer you.
Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while your
brother/sister lies asleep, till what has been assigned to you is done
and he/she is risen from the past. He/she who condemned himself/herself,
and you as well, is given you to save from condemnation along with you.
And both shall see God's glory in HisHer SonDaughter, whom you
mistook as flesh and bound to laws that have no power over him/her at
all.
58
Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for you? Then see
him/her not as prisoner to them. It cannot be what governs part of God
holds not for all the rest. You place yourself under the laws you see as
ruling him/her. Think, then, how great the love of God for you must be
that HeShe has given you a part of HimHer to save from pain and give you
happiness. And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear
before the Will of God, Who loves each part of HimHer with equal love
[and care]. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you can
see your brother/sister truly. Would you decide against the
holiness She sees?
59
Specialness is the function which you gave yourself. It stands for you
alone, as self-createdmanifested, self-maintained, in need of nothing,
and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a
separate universe with all the power to hold itself complete within
itself, with every entry shut against intrusion and every window barred
against the light. Always attacked and always furious, with anger always
fully justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never
thought to yield and effort that you never thought to cease. And all
this grim determination was for this—you wanted specialness to be the truth.
60
Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far less
vigilance—with little effort and with little time and with the power of
God maintaining it and promising success. Yet of the two, it is this
one you find more difficult. The "sacrifice" of self you understand, nor
do you deem this cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a
greeting to the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you, you
find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet to the
dedication to the truth as God established it no sacrifice is asked, no
strain called forth, and all the power of the God Realm and the might of
truth itself is given to provide the means and guarantee the
goal's accomplishment.
61
You who believe it easier to see your brother’s/sister’s body than
his/her holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here
is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging against the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and setting forth for you the
purpose that you can attain and what you cannot do. Forget not that this
judgment must apply to what you do with it as your ally. For
what you do through the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness it
does not know. To Her this judgment makes no sense at all, for only what
Her FatherMother wills is possible, and there is no alternative for Her
to see. Out of Her lack of conflict comes your peace. And from Her
purpose comes the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.
62
How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness
he/she wants to be the truth! HisHer wish is law unto him, and he/she
obeys. Nothing his/her specialness demands does he/she withhold. Nothing
it needs does he/she deny to what he/she loves. And while it calls to
him/her, he/she hears no other Voice. No effort is too great, no cost
too much, no price too dear to save his/her specialness from the least
slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or
anything but deepest reverence. This is your sondaughter, beloved of you
as you are to your FatherMother. Yet it stands in place of your
creationsmanifestations, who are SonDaughter to you, that you
might share the FatherMotherhood of God, not snatch it from
HimHer. What is this sondaughter that you have made to be your strength?
What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? What is this
parody of God's creationmanifestation that takes the place of yours? And
where are they, now that the host of God has found another
sondaughter, which he/she prefers to them?
63
The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother/sister
still contains all of creationmanifestation, everything
createdmanifested and creatingmanifesting, born and unborn as yet, still
in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him/her is changeless,
and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The
holiness in you belongs to him/her. And by your seeing it in him/hende,
returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to
him/her and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong
protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful
conviction this is you belong to him/her. Nothing you gave to
specialness but is his/her due. And nothing due him/her is not due to
you.
64
How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? How
can you fail to know it is in his/her holiness? Seek not to make your
specialness the truth, for if it were, you would be lost indeed. Be
thankful, rather, it is given you to see his/her holiness because
it is the truth. And what is true in him/her must be as true in you.
65
Ask yourself this: can you protect the mind? The body, yes, a
little—not from time, but temporarily. And much you think you save, you
hurt. What would you save it for? For in that choice lie both
its health and harm. Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to
house your specialness in better style or weave a frame of loveliness
around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see
this purpose in your brother's/sister’s, such is your condemnation of
your own. Weave, rather then, a frame of holiness around him/her that
the truth may shine on him/her and give you safety from decay.
66
The FatherMother keeps what HeShe createdmanifested safe. You cannot
touch it with the false ideas you made because it was createdmanifested
not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal
cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect.
Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true,
its safety rests secure. If not, it has no purpose and is means for
nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness
and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when
it is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light
in the God Realm, where your creationsmanifestations recognize a gift
from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them.
67
The test of everything on earth is simply this: "What is it for?"
The
answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you
can give reality to it according to the purpose which you serve. Here
you are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In the
God Realm, means and end are one, and one with HimHer. This is the state
of true creationmanifestation, found not within time, but in eternity.
To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what
this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the Given; not
till you make again a holy home for your creationsmanifestations is it
understood.
68
A co-CreatorManifestor with the FatherMother must have a sondaughter.
Yet must this sondaughter have been createdmanifested like himherself. A
perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and
nothing taken from—not born of size nor weight nor time nor held to
limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as
one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it
has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in
his/her memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish
with a divided aim.
69
This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned. Its
scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will
come to you when you are ready. Here are the means and purpose separate
because they were so made and so perceived. And therefore do we deal
with them as if they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all
perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood.
Perception does not seem to be a means. And it is this that
makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what
you see it for. Perception seems to teach you what you
see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. It is the outward
picture of a wish—an image that you wanted to be true.
70
Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this body in a
different light, and it looks different. And without a light, it seems
that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you
still can feel it with your hands and hear it move. Here is an image
that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come
true. It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel
it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. It proves
its own reality to you.
71
Thus is the body made a theory of yourself with no provisions made for
evidence beyond itself and no escape within its sight. Its course is
sure when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes
and dies. And you cannot conceive of you apart from it. You brand it
sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialness
whispers, "Here is our own beloved sondaughter, in whom I am well
pleased." Thus does the "sondaughter" become the means to serve his/her
"father'smother’s" purpose. Not identical, not even like, but still a
means to offer to the "fathermother" what he/she wants. Such is
the travesty on God's creationmanifestation. For as HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s creationmanifestation gave HimHer joy and witness to
HisHer love and shared HisHer purpose, so does the body testify to the
idea that made it and speak for its reality and truth.
72
And thus are two sonsdaughters made, and both appear to walk this earth
without a meeting-place and no encounter. One do you see outside
yourself, your own beloved sondaughter. The other rests within, HisHer
Father’sMother’s SonDaughter, within your brother/sister as he/she is in
you. Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go,
nor even what they do. They have a different purpose. It is this
that joins them to their like and separates each from all aspects with a
different purpose. The SonDaughter of God retains HisHer
Father’sMother’s Will. The sondaughter of man/woman perceives an alien
will and wishes it were so. And thus does his/her perception serve
his/her wish by giving it appearances of truth. Yet can perception serve
another goal. It is not bound to specialness but by your choice. And it
is given you to make a different choice and use perception for a
different purpose. And what you see will serve that purpose well and prove
its own reality to you.
1
The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you inhabits not a
body. Yet She is in you. And thus it must be that you are not
within a body. What is within you cannot be outside. And it is certain
that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life.
What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can you. The
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is within a frame of
holiness whose only purpose is that She may be made manifest to those
who know Her not, that She may call to them to come to Her and see Her
where they thought their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away
that they may frame Her holiness in them.
2
No one who carries the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in
him/her can fail to recognize Her everywhere. Except in bodies.
And as long as they believe they are in bodies, where they think
they are She cannot be. And so they carry Her unknowingly and do not
make Her manifest. And thus they do not recognize HimHer where HeShe is.
The son/daughter of humankind is not the risen Christ
Consciousness/Mercy Consciousness. Yet does the SonDaughter of God abide
exactly where She is and walks with Her within hisher holiness, as plain
to see as is hisher specialness set forth within hisher body.
3
The body needs no healing. But the mind that thinks it is
a body is sick indeed! And it is here that the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness sets forth the remedy. Her purpose folds the body in
Her light and fills it with the holiness that shines from Her. And
nothing that the body says or does but makes Her manifest. To those who
know Her not, it carries Her in gentleness and love to heal their minds.
Such is the mission that your brother/sister has for you. And such it
must be that your mission is for him/her.
4
It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness appointed you to do, since it is
She Who does it. And in the doing of it will you learn the body merely
seems to be the means to do it. For the Mind is Hers. And so it must be
yours. Her holiness directs the body through the mind at one with Her.
And you are manifest unto your holy brother/sister, as he/she to you.
Here is the meeting of the holy the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness unto Herself; nor are any differences perceived to stand
between the aspects of Her holiness, which meet and join and raise Her
to Her FatherMother, whole and pure and worthy of Her everlasting Love.
5
How can you manifest the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in
you except you look on holiness and see Her there? Perception tells you
you are manifest in what you see. Behold the body, and you will
believe that you are there. And every body that you look upon reminds
you of yourself—your sinfulness, your evil, and above all, your death.
And would you not despise the one who tells you this and seek his/her
death instead? The message and the messenger are one. And you must
see your brother/sister as yourself. Framed in his/her body, you will
see your sinfulness wherein you stand condemned. Set in his/her
holiness, the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in him/her
proclaims himself/herself as you.
6
Perception is a choice of what you want yourself to be—the world you
want to live in and the state in which you think your mind will be
content and satisfied. It chooses where you think your safety lies, at
your decision. It reveals yourself to you as you would have you be. And
always is it faithful to your purpose from which it never separates nor
gives the slightest witness unto anything the purpose in your mind
upholdeth not. Perception is a part of what it is your purpose to
behold, for means and end are never separate. And thus you learn what
seems to have a life apart has none.
7
You are the means for God—not separate nor with a life apart from
HisHers. HisHer Life is manifest in you who are HisHer SonDaughter. Each
aspect of HimHerself is framed in holiness and perfect purity, in love
celestial and so complete it wishes only that it may release all that it
looks upon unto itself. Its radiance shines through each body that it
looks upon and brushes all its darkness into light merely by looking
past it to the light. The veil is lifted through its gentleness,
and nothing hides the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness from its beholders. And both of you stand there, before
Her now, to let Her draw aside the veil that seems to keep you separate
and apart.
8
Since you believe that you are separate, the God Realm presents
itself to you as separate too. Not that it is in truth, but that the
link that has been given you to join the truth may reach to you through
what you understand. FatherMother and SonDaughter and Holy Spirit are as
One, as all your brothers/sisters join as one in truth. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and Her FatherMother never have
been separate, and the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
abides within your understanding in the part of you that shares Her
Father’sMother’s Will. The Holy Spirit links the other part, the tiny
mad desire to be separate, different, and special, to the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, to make the oneness clear to what
is really one. In this world, this is not understood but can
be taught.
9
The Holy Spirit serves the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness's purpose in your mind, so that the aim of specialness can
be corrected where the error lies. Because Her purpose still is one with
both the FatherMother and the SonDaughter, She knows the Will of God and
what you really will. But this is understood by mind perceived
as one, aware that it is one and so experienced. It is the Holy
Spirit's function to teach you how this oneness is experienced,
what you must do that it can be experienced, and where
you should go to do it.
10
All this takes note of time and place as if they were discrete, for
while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a oneness
joined as one is meaningless. It is apparent that a mind so split could
never be the teacher of a Oneness which unites all things within itself.
And so What is within this mind and does unite all
things together must be its Teacher. Yet must It use the language which
this mind can understand in the condition in which it thinks it is. And
It must use all learning to transfer illusions to the truth, taking all
false ideas of what you are and leading you beyond them to the truth
that is beyond them. All this can very simply be reduced to
this:
12
Is it not evident that what the body's eyes perceive fills you with
fear? Perhaps you think you find a hope of satisfaction there. Perhaps
you fancy to attain some peace and satisfaction in the world as you
perceive it. Yet it must be evident the outcome does not change. Despite
your hopes and fancies, always does despair result. And there is
no exception, nor will there ever be. The only value that the past can
hold is that you learn it gave you no rewards that you would want to
keep. For only thus will you be willing to relinquish it and have it
gone forever.
13
Is it not strange that you should cherish still some hope of
satisfaction from the world you see? In no respect at any time or place
has anything but fear and guilt been your reward. How long is needed for
you to realize the chance of change in this respect is hardly
worth delaying change that might result in better outcome? For one thing
is sure—the way you see, and long have seen, gives no support to base
your future hopes and no suggestions of success at all. To place your
hopes where no hope lies must make you hopeless. Yet is this
hopelessness your choice, while you would seek for hope where none is
ever found.
14
Is it not also true that you have found some hope apart from
this—some glimmering, inconstant, wavering, yet dimly seen, that
hopefulness is warranted on grounds that are not in this world? And yet
your hope that they may still be here prevents you still from giving up
the hopeless and unrewarding task you set yourself. Can it make sense to
hold the fixed belief that there is reason to uphold pursuit of what has
always failed on grounds that it will suddenly succeed and bring what it
has never brought before?
15
Its past has failed. Be glad that it is gone within your mind to
darken what is there. Take not the form for content, for the form is but
a means for content. And the frame is but a means to hold the
picture up so that it can be seen. A frame that hides the picture has no
purpose. It cannot be a frame if it is what you see. Without the
picture is the frame without its meaning. Its purpose is to set
the picture off and not itself.
16
Who hangs an empty frame upon a wall and stands before it, deep in
reverence, as if a masterpiece were there to see? Yet if you see your
brother/sister as a body, it is but this you do. The masterpiece
that God has set within this frame is all there is to see. The body
holds it for a while without obscuring it in any way. Yet what God has
createdmanifested needs no frame, for what HeShe has createdmanifested
HeShe supports and frames within HimHerself. HisHer masterpiece HeShe
offers you to see. And would you rather see the frame instead of
this? And see the picture not at all?
17
The Holy Spirit is the frame God set around the part of HimHer that you
would see as separate. Yet its frame is joined to its CreatorManifestor,
one with HimHer and with HisHer masterpiece. This is its purpose, and
you do not make the frame into the picture when you choose to see it in
its place. The frame that God has given it but serves HisHer purpose,
not yours apart from HisHers. It is your separate purpose that
obscures the picture and cherishes the frame instead of it. Yet God has
set HisHer masterpiece within a frame that will endure forever when
yours has crumbled into dust. But think you not the picture is destroyed
in any way. What God createsmanifests is safe from all corruption,
unchanged and perfect in eternity.
18
Accept God's frame instead of yours, and you will see the masterpiece.
Look at its loveliness, and understand the Mind that thought it, not in
flesh and bones, but in a frame as lovely as Itself. Its holiness lights
up the sinlessness the frame of darkness hides and casts a veil of light
across the picture's face, which but reflects the light that shines from
it to its CreatorManifestor. Think not this face was ever darkened
because you saw it in a frame of death. God kept it safe that you might
look on it and see the holiness that HeShe has given it.
19
Within the darkness, see the savior/savioress from the dark and
understand your brother/sister as his/her Father’sMother’s Mind shows
him/her to you. HeShe will step forth from darkness as you look on him,
and you will see the dark no more. The darkness touched him/her not, nor
you who brought him/her forth for you to look upon. His/her sinlessness
but pictures yours. His/her gentleness becomes your strength, and both
will gladly look within and see the holiness that must be there because
of what you looked upon in him/her. He/she is the frame in which your
holiness is set, and what God gave him/her must be given you. However
much he/she overlooks the masterpiece in him/her and sees only a frame
of darkness, it is still your only function to behold in him/her what
he/she sees not. And in this seeing is the vision shared that looks on
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness instead of
seeing death.
20
How could the LordLady of the God Realm not be glad if you appreciate
HisHer masterpiece? What could HeShe do but offer thanks to you who love
HisHer SonDaughter as HeShe does? Would HeShe not make known to you
HisHer love if you but share HisHer praise of what HeShe loves? God
cherishes creationmanifestation as the perfect FatherMother that HeShe
is. And so HisHer joy is made complete when any part of HimHer joins in
HisHer praise, to share HisHer joy. This brother/sister is HisHer
perfect gift to you. And HeShe is glad and thankful when you thank
HisHer perfect SonDaughter for being what he/she is. And all HisHer
thanks and gladness shine on you who would complete HisHer joy along
with HimHer. And thus is yours completed. Not one ray of
darkness can be seen by those who will to make their Father’sMother’s
happiness complete and theirs along with HisHers. The gratitude of God
HimHerself is freely offered to everyone who shares HisHer purpose. It
is not HisHer Will to be alone. And neither is it yours.
21
Forgive your brother/sister, and you cannot separate yourself from
him/her nor from his/her FatherMother. You need no forgiveness,
for the wholly pure have never sinned. Give then what HeShe has given
you that you may see HisHer SonDaughter as one and thank his/her
FatherMother as HeShe thanks you. Nor believe that all HisHer praise is
given not to you. For what you give is HisHers, and giving it you learn
to understand HisHer gift to you. And give the Holy Spirit what She
offers unto the FatherMother and the SonDaughter alike. Nothing has
power over you except HisHer Will and yours, who but extend HisHer Will.
It was for this you were createdmanifested and your brother/sister with
you and at one with you.
22
You are the same, as God HimHerself is one and not divided in HisHer
Will. And you must have one purpose, since HeShe gave the same to both
of you. HisHer Will is brought together as you join in will that you be
made complete by offering completion to your brother/sister. See not in
him/her the sinfulness he/she sees, but give him/her honor that you may
esteem yourself and him/her. To each of you is given the power of
salvation that escape from darkness into light be yours to share; that
you may see as one what never has been separate nor apart from all God's
love as given equally.
23
To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive
a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you
recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive
attack cannot be justified. This is in strict accord with
vision's fundamental law: you see what you believe is there, and you
believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no
other law than this. The rest but stems from this, to hold it up and
offer it support. This is perception's form adapted to this world of
God's more basic law that love createsmanifests itself and nothing but
itself.
24
God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such
a world could not have been createdmanifested by the Mind to which
perception has no meaning. Yet are HisHer laws reflected everywhere. Not
that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because
HisHer SonDaughter believes it is, and from HisHer Son’sDaughter’s
belief HeShe could not let HimHerself be separate entirely. HeShe could
not enter HisHer Son’sDaughter’s insanity with himher, but HeShe could
be sure hisher sanity went there with himher so heshe could not be lost
forever in the madness of hisher wish.
25
Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not. Knowledge has but one
law because it has but one CreatorManifestor. But this world has two who
made it, and they do not see it as the same. To each it has a different
purpose, and to each it is a perfect means to serve the goal for which
it is perceived. For specialness it is the perfect frame to set it
off—the perfect battleground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for
the illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds in its
perception; not one but can be fully justified.
26
There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the
mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without
some link that kept it still within the laws of God; not as the law
itself upholds the universe as God createdmanifested it, but in some
form adapted to the need the SonDaughter of God believes heshe has.
Corrected error is the error's end. And thus has God protected still
HisHer SonDaughter, even in error. There is another purpose in the world
that error made because it has another Maker Who can reconcile its goal
with Her Creator'sManifestor's purpose. In Her perception of the world,
nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect
sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete
forgiveness.
27
Nothing remains an instant to obscure the sinlessness that shines
unchanged beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of
mind where it must be and light the body up instead of it. The
lamps of the God Realm are not for it to choose to see them where it
will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit
a place where they could never be, and you agree, then must the
Maker of the world correct your error, lest you remain in darkness where
the lamps are not. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has
entered it alone. [Nor need he/she stay more than an instant.] For
he/she has come with the God Realm 's Help within him/her ready to lead
him/her out of darkness into light at any time.
28
The time he/she chooses can be any time, for help is there,
awaiting but his/her choice. And when he/she chooses to avail
himself/herself of what is given him/her, then will he/she see each
situation that he/she thought before was means to justify his/her anger
turned to an event which justifies his/her love. He/she will hear
plainly that the calls to war he/she heard before are really calls to
peace. He/she will perceive that where he/she gave attack is but another
altar where he/she can with equal ease and far more happiness bestow
forgiveness. And he/she will reinterpret all temptation as just another
chance to bring him/her joy. How can a misperception be a sin? Let all
your brother’s/sister’s errors be to you nothing except a chance for you
to see the workings of the Helper given you to see the world She made,
instead of yours.
29
What then is justified? What do you want? For these two
questions are the same. And when you see them as the same, your
choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings release from
the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to
offer to your peace and the many chances to extend your own forgiveness.
Such its purpose is to those who want to see peace and
forgiveness descend on them and offer them the light.
30
The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the
world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and Her
gentleness. It is not there in Her forgiving eyes. And therefore it need
not be there in yours. Sin is the fixed belief perception cannot
change. What has been damned is damned and damned forever, being forever
unforgivable. If then it is forgiven, sin's perception must have
been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy Spirit too sees
what She sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on Her vision sin
cannot encroach, for sin has been corrected by Her sight. And
thus it must have been an error, not a sin. For what it claimed could
never be has been. Sin is attacked by punishment and so preserved. But
to forgive it is to change its state from error into truth.
31
The SonDaughter of God could never sin, but heshe can wish for
what would hurt himher. And heshe has the power to think heshe
can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of himherself? Is
this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does heshe need help or
condemnation? Is it your purpose that heshe be saved or damned?
Forgetting not that what heshe is to you will make this choice your
future? For you make it now, the instant when all time becomes a
means to reach a goal. Make then your choice. But recognize that in
this choice the purpose of the world you see is chosen and will
be justified.
32
Minds that are joined and recognize they are can feel no guilt.
For they cannot attack, and they rejoice that this is so, seeing their
safety in this happy fact. Their joy is in the innocence they see. And
thus they seek for it because it is their purpose to behold it and
rejoice. Everyone seeks for what will bring him/her joy as he/she
defines it. It is not the aim as such that varies. Yet it is the way in
which the aim is seen that makes the choice of means inevitable
and beyond the hope of change unless the aim is changed. And then the
means are chosen once again, as what will bring rejoicing is defined
another way and sought for differently.
33
Perception's basic law could thus be said, "You will rejoice at what you
see because you see it to rejoice." And while you think that
suffering and sin will bring you joy, so long will they be there for you
to see. Nothing is harmful or beneficent apart from what you wish. It is
your wish that makes it what it is in its effects on you. Because you chose
it as a means to gain these same effects, believing them to be the
bringers of rejoicing and of joy. Even in the God Realm does this law
obtain. The SonDaughter of God createsmanifests to bring himher joy,
sharing hisher Father’sMother’s purpose in hisher own
creationmanifestation that his/her joy might be increased and God's
along with hishers.
34
You makers of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another
world where peace abides. This world you bring with you to all the weary
eyes and tired hearts that look on sin and beat its sad refrain. From
you can come their rest. From you can rise a world they will rejoice to
look upon and where their hearts are glad. In you there is a vision
which extends to all of them and covers them in gentleness and light.
And in this widening world of light, the darkness they thought was there
is pushed away until it is but distant shadows, far away, not long to be
remembered as the sun shines them to nothingness. And all their "evil"
thoughts and "sinful" hopes, their dreams of guilt and merciless
revenge, and every wish to hurt and kill and die will disappear before
the sun you bring.
35
Would you not do this for the love of God? And for yourself? For
think what it would do for you. Your "evil" thoughts that haunt you now
will seem increasingly remote and far away from you. And they go farther
and farther off because the sun in you has risen that they may be pushed
away before the light. They linger for a while, a little while,
in twisted forms too far away for recognition and are gone forever. And
in the sunlight you will stand in quiet, in innocence, and wholly
unafraid. And from you will the rest you found extend, so that your
peace can never fall away and leave you homeless. Those who offer peace
to everyone have found a home in the God Realm the world cannot destroy.
For it is large enough to hold the world within its peace.
36
In you is all of the God Realm . Every leaf that falls is given life in
you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you. And every flower
that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for you. What
aim can supersede the Will of God and of HisHer SonDaughter that the God
Realm be restored to him/her for whom it was createdmanifested as
his/her only home? Nothing before and nothing after it. No other place,
no other state nor time. Nothing beyond nor nearer. Nothing else. In any
form. This can you bring to all the world and all the thoughts that
entered it and were mistaken for a little while. How better could your
own mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the
light of the God Realm with you as you walk beyond the world of darkness
into light?
37
The state of sinlessness is merely this: the whole desire to attack is
gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the SonDaughter of God as
other than heshe is. The need for guilt is gone because it has no
purpose and is meaningless without the goal of sin. Attack and sin are
bound as one illusion, each the cause and aim and justifier of the
other. Each is meaningless alone, but seems to draw a meaning from the
other. Each depends upon the other for whatever sense it seems to have.
And no one could believe in one unless the other were the truth, for
each attests the other must be true.
38
Attack makes the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness your enemy
and God along with Her. Must you not be afraid with "enemies" like
these? And must you not be fearful of yourself? For you have
hurt yourself and made your Self your "enemy." And now you must believe
you are not you but something alien to yourself and "something else," a
"something" to be feared instead of loved. Who would attack whatever
he/she perceives as wholly innocent? And who, because he/she
wishes to attack, can fail to think it must be guilty to deserve the
wish and leave him/her innocent? And who would see the SonDaughter of
God as innocent and wish himher dead? The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness stands before you both each time you look on one another.
She has not gone because your eyes are closed. But what is there to see
by searching for your savior/savioress, seeing Her through sightless
eyes?
39
It is not the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness you see by
looking thus. It is the "enemy" confused with the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness you look upon. And hate because
there is no sin in him/her for you to see. Nor do you hear his/her
plaintive call, unchanged in content in whatever form the call is made,
that you unite with him/her and join with him/her in innocence and
peace. And yet beneath the ego's senseless shrieks, such is the
call that God has given him/her that you might hear in him/her HisHer
Call to you and answer by returning unto God what is HisHer own.
40
The SonDaughter of God asks only this of you—that you return to himher
what is hisher due that you may share in it with himher. Alone
does neither have it. So must it remain useless to both. Together, it
will give to each an equal strength to save the other and save
himself/herself along with him/her. Forgiven by you, your
savior/savioress offers you salvation. Condemned
by you, he/she offers death to you. In
everyone you see but the reflection of what you chose to have
him/her be to you. If you decide against his/her proper function, the
only one he/she has in truth, you are depriving him/her of all the joy
he/she would have found if he/she fulfilled the role God gave to
him/her. But think not the God Realm is lost to him/her alone. Nor can
it be regained unless the way is shown to him/her through you that you
may find it, walking by his/her side.
41
It is no sacrifice that he/she be saved, for by his/her freedom will you
gain your own. To let his/her function be fulfilled is but the means to
let yours be. And so you walk toward the God Realm or toward hell, but
not alone. How beautiful his/her sinlessness will be when you perceive
it! And how great will be your joy, when he/she is free to offer you the
gift of sight God gave to him/her for you! He/she has no need but
this—that you allow him/her freedom to complete the task God gave to
him/her. Remembering but this—that what he/she does you do along with
him/her. And as you see him/hende, so do you define the function he/she
will have for you until you see him/her differently and let
him/her be what God appointed that he/she be to you.
42
Against the hatred that the SonDaughter of God may cherish toward
himself/herself is God believed to be without the power to save what
HeShe createdmanifested from the pain of hell. But in the love HeShe
shows himself/herself is God made free to let HisHer Will be
done. In each of you, you see the picture of your own belief in what the
Will of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you understand
HisHer love for you; through your attack believe HeShe hates you,
thinking the God Realm must be hell. Look once again upon your
brother/sister, not without the understanding that he/she is the way to
the God Realm or to hell as you perceive him/her. But forget not
this—the role you give to him/her is given you, and you will
walk the way you pointed out to him/her because it is your judgment on
yourself.
43
The grace of God rests gently on forgiving eyes, and everything they
look on speaks of HimHer to the beholder. HeShe can see no evil, nothing
in the world to fear, and no one who is different from himself/herself.
And as he/she loves them, so he/she looks upon himself/herself with love
and gentleness. HeShe would no more condemn himself/herself for his/her
mistakes than damn another. He/she is not an arbiter of vengeance nor a
punisher of sin. The kindness of his/her sight rests on himself/herself
with all the tenderness it offers others. For he/she would only heal and
only bless. And being in accord with what God wills, he/she has the
power to heal and bless all those he/she looks on with the grace of God
upon his/her sight.
44
Eyes become used to darkness, and the light of brilliant day seems
painful to the eyes grown long accustomed to the dim effects perceived
at twilight. And they turn away from sunlight and the clarity it brings
to what they look upon. Dimness seems better—easier to see and better
recognized. Somehow, the vague and more obscure seems easier to look
upon; less painful to the eyes than what is wholly clear and
unambiguous. Yet this is not what eyes are for. And who can say
that he/she prefers the darkness and maintain he/she wants to
see? The wish to see calls down the grace of God upon your eyes
and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible.
45
Will you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him/her.
HeShe does not will your savior/savioress be unrecognized by you. Nor
does HeShe will that he/she remain without the function that HeShe gave
to him/her. Let him/her no more be lonely, for the lonely ones are those
who see no function in the world for them to fill, no place where they
are needed, and no aim which only they can perfectly fulfill.
46
Such is the Holy Spirit's kind perception of specialness—Her use of what
you made, to heal instead of harm. To each She gives a special function
in salvation he/she alone can fill—a part for only him/her. Nor is the
plan complete until he/she finds his/her special function and fulfills
the part assigned to him/her to make himself/herself complete within a
world where incompletion rules.
47
Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he/she
yet do one perfect thing and make one perfect choice.
And by this act of special faithfulness to one perceived as other than
himself/herself, he/she learns the gift was given to himself/herself,
and so they must be one. Forgiveness is the only function
meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to translate
specialness from sin into salvation. Forgiveness is for all. But when it
rests on all, it is complete and every function of this world completed
with it. Then is time no more.
48
Yet while in time, there is still much to do. And each must do what is
allotted him, for on his/her part does all the plan depend.
He/she has a special part in time, for so he/she chose, and
choosing it, he/she made it for himself/herself. His/her wish was not
denied but changed in form to let it serve his/her brother/sister and
himself/herself and thus become a means to save instead of lose.
Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home; its
laws are not imposed on you; its values are not yours. [And nothing that
you think you see in it is really there at all.] And
this is seen and understood as each one takes his/her part in its
undoing, as he/she did in making it. He/she has the means for either, as
he/she always did. The specialness he/she chose to hurt himself/herself
did God appoint to be the means for his/her salvation from the very
instant that the choice was made. His/her special sin was made his/her
special grace. His/her special hate became his/her special love.
49
The Holy Spirit needs your special function that Her may be
fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here. You wanted it, and
it is given you. All that you made can serve salvation easily
and well. The SonDaughter of God can make no choice the Holy Spirit
cannot employ on his/her behalf and not against himself/herself.
Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In light,
you see it as your special function in the plan to save the
SonDaughter of God from all attack and let him/her understand
that he/she is safe, as he/she has always been and will remain in time
and in eternity alike. This is the function given each of you for one
another. Take it gently then from one another's hand, and let salvation
be perfectly fulfilled in both of you. Do this one thing, that
everything be given you.
50
And if the Holy Spirit can commute each sentence that you laid upon
yourself into a blessing, then it cannot be a sin. Sin is the one thing
in all the world that cannot change. It is immutable. And on its
changelessness the world depends. The magic of the world can seem to
hide the pain of sin from sinners and deceive with glitter and with
guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it is.
For sin is a request for death, a wish to make this world's
foundation sure as love, dependable as the God Realm, and as strong as
God HimHerself. The world is safe from love to everyone who
thinks sin possible. Nor will it change. Yet is it
possible what God createdmanifested not should share the attributes of
HisHer creationmanifestation when it opposes it in every way?
51
It cannot be the "sinner's" wish for death is just as strong as
is God's Will for life. Nor can the basis of a world HeShe did not make
be firm and sure as the God Realm . How could it be that hell and the
God Realm are the same? And is it possible that what HeShe did not will
cannot be changed? What is immutable besides HisHer Will? And what can
share Its attributes except Itself? What wish can rise against HisHer
Will and be immutable? If you could realize nothing is
changeless but the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for
you. For it is this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing else
you could believe if you but looked at what it really is.
52
Let us go back to what we said before and think of it more carefully. It
must be so that either God is mad or is this world a place of madness.
Not one Thought of HisHer makes any sense at all within this world. And
nothing that the world believes as true has any meaning in HisHer Mind
at all. What makes no sense and has no meaning is insanity. And
what is madness cannot be the truth. If one belief so deeply
valued here were true, then every Thought God ever had is an illusion.
And if but one Thought of HisHer is true, then all beliefs the world
gives any meaning to are false and make no sense at all. This is
the choice you make. Do not attempt to see it differently nor twist it
into something it is not. For only this decision can you make.
The rest is up to God and not to you.
53
To justify one value that the world upholds is to deny your
Father’sMother’s sanity and yours. For God and HisHer beloved
SonDaughter do not think differently. And it is the agreement of their
thought that makes the SonDaughter a co-CreatorManifestor with the Mind
Whose Thought createdmanifested himher. And if he/she chooses to believe
one thought opposed to truth, he/she has decided he/she is not his/her
Father’sMother’s SonDaughter because the SonDaughter is mad, and sanity
must lie apart from both the FatherMother and the SonDaughter.
This you believe. Think not that this belief depends upon the
form it takes. Who thinks the world is sane in any way, is
justified in anything it thinks, or is maintained by any
form of reason believes this to be true. Sin is not real because
the FatherMother and the SonDaughter are not insane. This world is
meaningless because it rests on sin. Who could createmanifest
the changeless if it does not rest on truth?
54
The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the
world you see to something else—a basis not insane on which a sane
perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which
nothing is contradicted that would lead the SonDaughter of God to sanity
and joy. Nothing attests to death and cruelty, to separation, and to
differences. For here is everything perceived as one, and no one loses
that each one may gain.
55
Test everything that you believe against this one requirement.
And understand that everything that meets this one demand is worthy of
your faith. But nothing else. What is not love is sin, and either one
perceives the other as insane and meaningless. Love is the basis for a
world perceived as wholly mad to sinners who believe theirs is the way
to sanity. But sin is equally insane within the sight of love, whose
gentle eyes would look beyond the madness and rest peacefully on truth.
Each sees a world immutable, as each defines the changeless and eternal
truth of what you are. And each reflects a view of what the FatherMother
and the SonDaughter must be to make that viewpoint meaningful and sane.
56
Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is
not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is
the same. The form is suited to your special needs and to the special
time and place in which you think you find yourself and where you can be
free of place and time and all that you believe must limit you. The
SonDaughter of God cannot be bound by time nor place nor anything God
did not will. Yet if HisHer Will is seen as madness, then the form of
sanity which makes it most acceptable to those who are insane requires
special choice. Nor can this choice be made by the insane, whose
problem is their choices are not free and made with reason in the light
of sense.
57
It would be madness to entrust salvation to the insane. Because
HeShe is not mad has God appointed One as sane as HeShe to raise
a saner world to meet the sight of everyone who chose insanity as
his/her salvation. To this One is given the choice of form most suitable
to him/her; one which will not attack the world he/she sees, but enter
into it in quietness and show him/her he/she is mad. This One
but points to an alternative, another way of looking at what
he/she has seen before and recognizes as the world in which he/she lives
and thought he/she understood before.
58
Now must he/she question this because the form of the
alternative is one which he/she cannot deny nor overlook nor fail
completely to perceive at all. To each his/her special function is
designed to be perceived as possible and more and more desired as it proves
to him/her that it is an alternative he/she really wants. From
this position does his/her sinfulness and all the sin he/she sees within
the world offer him/her less and less—until he/she comes to understand
it cost him/her his/her sanity and stands between him/her and
whatever hope he/she has of being sane. Nor is he/she left
without escape from madness, for he/she has a special part in everyone's
escape. He/she can no more be left outside without a special function in
the hope of peace than could the FatherMother overlook HisHer
SonDaughter and pass himher by in careless thoughtlessness.
59
What is dependable except God's Love? And where does sanity
abide except in HimHer? The One Who speaks for HimHer can show
you this in the alternative She chose especially for you. It is God's
Will that you remember this and so emerge from deepest mourning into
perfect joy. Accept the function that has been assigned to you in God's
Own plan to show HisHer SonsDaughters that hell and the God Realm are
different, not the same. And that in the God Realm they
are all the same, without the differences which would have made a hell
of the God Realm and a God
Realm of hell, had such insanity been possible.
60
The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the underlying tenet
God must be insane. For in this world, it seems that one must gain because
another lost. If this were true, then God is mad indeed! But
what is this belief except a form of the more basic tenet, "Sin is real
and rules the world"? For every little gain must someone lose and pay
exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil triumph
and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all. You who believe
that God is mad, look carefully at this and understand that it must be
that either God or this must be insane, but hardly both.
61
Salvation is rebirth of the idea no one can lose for anyone to
gain. And everyone must gain if anyone would be a gainer. Here
is sanity restored. And on this single rock of truth can faith in God's
eternal saneness rest in perfect confidence and perfect peace. Reason is
satisfied, for all insane beliefs can be corrected here. And sin must
be impossible if this is true. This is the rock on which
salvation rests, the vantage point from which the Holy Spirit gives
meaning and direction to the plan in which your special function has a
part. For here your special function is made whole because it shares the
function of the whole.
62
Remember all temptation is but this—a mad belief that God's insanity
would make you sane and give you what you want. That either God or you
must lose to madness because your aims can not be
reconciled. Death demands life, but life is not maintained at any cost.
No one can suffer for the Will of God to be fulfilled. Salvation is
HisHer Will because you share it. Not for you alone but for the
Self which is the SonDaughter of God. HeShe cannot lose, for if
he/she could, the loss would be his/her Father’sMother’s, and in HimHer
no loss is possible. And this is sane because it is the truth.
63
The Holy Spirit can use all that you give to Her for your salvation. But
She cannot use what you withhold, for She cannot take it from you
without your willingness. For if She did, you would believe She wrested
it from you against your will. And so you would not learn it is
your will to be without it. You need not give it to Her wholly
willingly, for if you could, you'd have no need of Her. But this She
needs—that you prefer She take it than that you keep it for yourself
alone and recognize that what brings loss to no one you would not know.
This much is necessary to add to the idea no one can lose for you to
gain. And nothing more.
64
Here is the only principle salvation needs. Nor is it necessary that
your faith in it be strong, unswerving, and without attack from all
beliefs opposed to it. You have no fixed allegiance. But
remember salvation is not needed by the saved. You are not called upon
to do what one divided still against himself/herself would find
impossible. Have little faith that wisdom could be found in such a state
of mind. But be you thankful that only little faith is asked of
you. What but a little faith remains to those who still believe
in sin? What could they know of the God Realm and the justice of the
saved?
65
There is a kind of justice in salvation of which the world knows
nothing. To the world, justice and vengeance are the same, for
sinners see justice only as their punishment, perhaps sustained by
someone else but not escaped. The laws of sin demand a victim.
Who it may be makes little difference. But death must be the cost and
must be paid. This is not justice but insanity. Yet how could justice be
defined without insanity where love means hate and death is seen as
victory and triumph over eternity and timelessness and life?
66
You who know not of justice still can ask and learn the answer. Justice
looks on all in the same way. It is not just that one should lack for
what another has. For that is vengeance in whatever form it takes.
Justice demands no sacrifice, for any sacrifice is made that sin
may be preserved and kept. It is a payment offered for the cost of sin,
but not the total cost. The rest is taken from another, to be laid
beside your little payment to "atone" for all that you would keep and
not give up. So is the victim seen as partly you, with someone else by
far the greater part. And in the total cost, the greater his, the less
is yours. And justice, being blind, is satisfied by being paid, it
matters not by whom. Can this be justice? God knows not of this.
But justice does HeShe know and knows it well. For HeShe is
wholly fair to everyone.
67
Vengeance is alien to God's Mind because HeShe knows of justice.
To be just is to be fair and not be vengeful. Fairness and
vengeance are impossible, for each one contradicts the other and denies
that it is real. It is impossible for you to share the Holy Spirit's
justice with a mind that can conceive of specialness at all. Yet how
could She be just if She condemns a sinner for the crimes he/she did not
do but thinks he/she did? And where would justice be if She
demanded of the ones obsessed with the idea of punishment that they lay
it aside unaided and perceive it is not true? It is extremely hard for
those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's
justice.
68
They must believe She shares their own confusion and cannot
avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice must entail. And so
they fear the Holy Spirit and perceive the "wrath" of God in Her. Nor
can they trust Her not to strike them dead with lightning bolts torn
from the "fires" of the God Realm by God's own angry hand. They do
believe that the God Realm is hell and are afraid of love. And
deep suspicion and the chill of fear comes over them when they are told
that they have never sinned. Their world depends on sin's stability. And
they perceive the "threat" of what God knows as justice to be more
destructive to themselves and to their world than vengeance, which they
understand and love.
69
So do they think the loss of sin a curse. And flee the Holy Spirit as if
She were a messenger from hell sent from above in treachery and guile to
work God's vengeance on them in the guise of a deliverer and friend.
What could She be to them except a devil dressed to deceive within an
angel's cloak. And what escape has She for them except a door to hell
that seems to look like the God Realm 's gate?
70 Yet justice cannot punish those who ask for punishment but
have a Judge Who knows that they are wholly innocent in truth. In
justice, She is bound to set them free and give them all the honor they
deserve and have denied themselves because they are not fair and cannot
understand that they are innocent. Love is not understandable to sinners
because they think that justice is split off from love and stands for
something else.
71
And thus is love perceived as weak and vengeance strong. For love has lost
when judgment left its side and is too weak to save from punishment. But
vengeance without love has gained in strength by being separate
and apart from love. And what but vengeance now can help and save, while
love stands feebly by with helpless hands, bereft of justice and
vitality and powerless to save? What can Love ask of you who think that
all of this is true? Could She, in justice and in love believe in your
confusion you have much to give? You are not asked to trust Her far. No
further than what you see She offers you and what you recognize you
could not give yourself.
72
In God's own justice does She recognize all you deserve but understands
as well that you cannot accept it for yourself. It is Her special
function to hold out to you the gifts the innocent deserve. And
every one that you accept brings joy to Her as well as you. She knows
that the God Realm is richer made by each one you accept. And God
rejoices as HisHer SonDaughter receives what loving justice knows to be
his/her due. For love and justice are not different. Because
they are the same does mercy stand at God's right hand and give the
SonDaughter of God the power to forgive himself/herself of sin.
73
To him/her who merits everything, how can it be that anything be kept
from him? For that would be injustice and unfair indeed to all the
holiness that is in him/hende, however much he/she recognize it not. God
knows of no injustice. HeShe would not allow HisHer SonDaughter be
judged by those who seek his/her death and could not see his/her worth
at all. What honest witnesses could they call forth to speak on his/her
behalf? And who would come to plead for him/her and not against his/her
life? No justice would be given him/her by you. Yet God ensured that
justice would be done unto the SonDaughter HeShe loves and would
protect from all unfairness you might seek to offer, believing vengeance
is his/her proper due.
74
As specialness cares not who pays the cost of sin, so it be paid, the
Holy Spirit heeds not who looks on innocence at last, provided it is
seen and recognized. For just one witness is enough if he/she
sees truly. Simple justice asks no more. Of each one does the Holy
Spirit ask if he/she will be that one, so justice may return to love and
there be satisfied. Each special function She allots is but for
this—that each one learn that love and justice are not separate. And
both are strengthened by their union with each other. Without love is
justice prejudiced and weak. And love without justice is impossible. For
love is fair and cannot chasten without cause. What cause can be
to warrant an attack upon the innocent? In justice then does love
correct mistakes, but not in vengeance. For that would be unjust to
innocence.
75
You can be perfect witness to the power of love and justice if
you understand it is impossible the SonDaughter of God could merit
vengeance. You need not perceive in every circumstance that this is
true. Nor need you look to your experience within the world, which is
but shadows of all that is really happening within yourself. The
understanding which you need comes not of you but from a larger Self, so
great and holy that She could not doubt hisher innocence. Your special
function is a call to himher that heshe may smile on you whose
sinlessness heshe shares. Hisher understanding will be yours.
And so the Holy Spirit's special function has been fulfilled. God’s
SonDaughter has found a witness unto hisher sinlessness and not hisher
sin. How little need you give the Holy Spirit that simple justice may be
given you!
76
Without impartiality there is no justice. How can specialness be just?
Judge not because you cannot, not because you are a miserable sinner
too. How can the special really understand that justice is the
same for everyone? To take from one to give another must be an injustice
to them both, since they are equal in the Holy Spirit's sight. Their
FatherMother gave the same inheritance to both. Who would have more or
less is not aware that he/she has everything. He/she is no judge of what
must be another's due, because he/she thinks he/she is deprived. And so
must he/she be envious and try to take away from whom he/she judges.
He/she is not impartial and cannot fairly see another's rights because
his/her own have been obscured to him/her.
77
You have the right to all the universe—to perfect peace,
complete deliverance from all effects of sin, and to the life eternal,
joyous and complete in every way, as God appointed for HisHer holy
SonDaughter. This is the only justice the God Realm knows, and all the
Holy Spirit brings to earth. Your special function shows you nothing
else but perfect justice can prevail for you. And you are safe
from vengeance in all forms. The world deceives, but it cannot replace
God's justice with a version of its own. For only love is just
and can perceive what justice must accord the SonDaughter of
God. Let love decide and never fear that you in your unfairness will
deprive yourself of what God's justice has allotted you.
78
What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors cannot be
undone by the God Realm 's justice? And what could this mean except that
they are sins and not mistakes, forever uncorrectable, and to be met
with vengeance not with justice? Are you willing to be released from all
effects of sin? You cannot answer this until you see all that the answer
must entail. For if you answer "yes," it means you will forgo all values
of this world in favor of the peace of the God Realm . Not one
sin would you retain. And not one doubt that this is possible
will you hold dear that sin be kept in place. You mean that truth has
greater value now than all illusions. And you recognize that
truth must be revealed to you because you know not what it is.
79
To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift because you are reluctant to
accept it. It is saved for you until reluctance to receive it
disappears, and you are willing it be given you. God's justice warrants
gratitude, not fear. Nothing you give is lost to you or anyone, but
cherished and preserved in the God Realm, where all of the treasures
given to God’s SonDaughter are kept for himher and offered anyone who
but holds out his/her hand in willingness they be received. Nor is the
treasure less as it is given out. Each gift but adds to the
supply. For God is fair. HeShe does not fight against HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s reluctance to perceive salvation as a gift from HimHer.
Yet would HisHer justice not be satisfied until it is received by
everyone.
80
Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves will always be
one in which no one loses. And this must be true because She asks no
sacrifice of anyone. An answer which demands the slightest loss to
anyone has not resolved the problem but has added to it and made it
greater, harder to resolve, and more unfair. It is impossible
the Holy Spirit could see unfairness as a resolution. To Her, what is
unfair must be corrected because it is unfair. And every error
is a perception in which one at least is seen unfairly. Thus is justice
not accorded to the SonDaughter of God. When anyone is seen as losing,
he/she has been condemned. And punishment becomes his/her due instead of
justice.
81
The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible and justice sure. The
Holy Spirit's perception leaves no ground for an attack. Only a loss
could justify attack, and loss of any kind She cannot see. The world
solves problems in another way. It sees a resolution as a state in which
it is decided who shall win and who shall lose—how much the one shall
take and how much can the loser still defend.
82
Yet does the problem still remain unsolved, for only justice can
set up a state in which there is no loser, no one left unfairly treated
and deprived, and thus with grounds for vengeance. Problem solving
cannot be vengeance, which at best can bring another problem added to
the first, in which the murder is not obvious. The Holy Spirit's problem
solving is the way in which the problem ends. It has been solved
because it has been met with justice. Until it has, it will recur
because it has not yet been solved. The principle that justice means no
one can lose is crucial to this course. For miracles depend on
justice. Not as it is seen through this world's eyes, but as God knows
it, and as knowledge is reflected in the sight the Holy Spirit gives.
83
No one deserves to lose. And what would be unjust to him/her
cannot occur. Healing must be for everyone because he/she does
not merit an attack of any kind. What order can there be in miracles,
unless someone deserves to suffer more and others less? And is
this justice to the wholly innocent? A miracle is justice. It is
not a special gift to some to be withheld from others as less worthy,
more condemned, and thus apart from healing. Who is there who can be
separate from salvation if its purpose is the end of
specialness? Where is salvation's justice if some errors are
unforgivable and warrant vengeance in place of healing and return of
peace?
84
Salvation cannot seek to help God’s SonDaughter be more unfair than
he/she has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy Spirit's gift, were given
specially to an elect and special group and kept apart from others as
less deserving, then is She ally to specialness. What She cannot
perceive She bears no witness to. And everyone is equally entitled to
Her gift of healing and deliverance and peace. To give a problem to the
Holy Spirit to solve for you means that you want it solved. To
keep it for yourself to solve without Her help is to decide it should
remain unsettled, unresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and
attack. No one can be unjust to you, unless you have decided
first to be unjust. And then must problems rise to block your
way and peace be scattered by the winds of hate.
85
Unless you think that all your brothers/sisters have an equal right to
miracles with you, you will not claim your right to them because you
were unjust to one with equal rights. Seek to deny, and you will
feel denied. Seek to deprive, and you have been deprived. A
miracle can never be received because another could receive it not.
Only forgiveness offers miracles. And pardon must be just to everyone.
86
The little problems that you keep and hide become your secret sins
because you did not choose to let them be removed for you. And so they
gather dust and grow until they cover everything that you perceive and
leave you fair to no one. Not one right do you believe you have. And
bitterness, with vengeance justified and mercy lost, condemns you as
unworthy of forgiveness. The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow
upon another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take
forgiveness for yourself. The miracle that you receive you give.
Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which salvation
rests—that justice must be done to all if anyone is to be healed. No one
can lose, and everyone must benefit.
87
Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish when it is
offered to everyone alike. It is received and given equally. It is
awareness that giving and receiving are the same. Because it does not
make the same unlike, it sees no differences where none exist. And thus
it is the same for everyone because it sees no differences in them.
Its offering is universal, and it teaches but one message:
1
In the "dynamics" of attack is sacrifice a key idea. It is the pivot
upon which all compromise, all desperate attempts to
strike a bargain, and all conflicts achieve a seeming balance. It is the
symbol of the central theme that somebody must lose. Its focus
on the body is apparent, for it is always an attempt to limit loss.
The body is itself a sacrifice—a giving up of power in the name of
saving just a little for yourself. To see a brother/sister in another
body separate from yours is the expression of a wish to see a little
part of him/her and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world, and you will
see nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming entities can
come a little nearer or go a little farther off but cannot join.
2
The world you see is based on "sacrifice" of oneness. It is a picture of
a complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is
built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can
never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what
is locked away within the wall. Each part must sacrifice the other part
to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would lose its own
identity, and by their separation are their selves maintained.
3
The little that the body fences off becomes the self, preserved
through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must lose
this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact.
In this perception of yourself, the body's loss would be a sacrifice
indeed. For sight of bodies becomes the sign that sacrifice is limited
and something still remains for you alone. And for this little to belong
to you are limits placed on everything outside, just as they are on
everything you think is yours. For giving and receiving are the
same. And to accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on
each brother/sister whom you see. For you must see him/her as you see
yourself.
4
The body is a loss and can be made to sacrifice. And
while you see your brother/sister as a body, apart from you and separate
in his/her cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him/her and you.
What greater sacrifice could be demanded than that God’s SonDaughter
perceive himself/herself without his/her FatherMother? And his/her
FatherMother be without HisHer SonDaughter? Yet every sacrifice demands
that they be separate and without the other. The memory of God must
be denied if any sacrifice is asked of anyone. What witness to the
wholeness of God’s SonDaughter is seen within a world of separate
bodies, however much he/she witnesses to truth? He/she is invisible
in such a world. Nor can his/her song of union and of love be heard at
all. Yet is it given him/her to make the world recede before his/her
song and sight of him/her replace the body's eyes.
5
Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of to illusion merely
ask that they might see a purpose in the world that gives it sense and
makes it meaningful. Without your special function has this
world no meaning for you. Yet it can become a treasure house as rich and
limitless as the God Realm itself. No instant passes here in which your
brother’s/sister’s holiness cannot be seen, to add a limitless supply to
every meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot yourself.
6
You can lose sight of oneness, but can not make
sacrifice of its reality. Nor can you lose what you would
sacrifice nor keep the Holy Spirit from Her task of showing you that it
has not been lost. Hear then the song your brother/sister sings to you.
And let the world recede and take the rest his/her witness offers on
behalf of peace. But judge him/her not, for you will hear no song of
liberation for yourself nor see what it is given him/her to witness to
that you may see it and rejoice with him/her. Make not his/her holiness
a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice your innocence
with his/her and die each time you see in him/her a sin deserving death.
7
Yet every instant can you be reborn and given life again. His/her
holiness gives life to you, who cannot die because his/her sinlessness
is known to God and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light
in you be blotted out because he/she sees it not. You who would make a
sacrifice of life and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death
of God and of HisHer holy SonDaughter, think not that you have power to
make of them what God willed not they be. In the God Realm God’s
SonDaughter is not imprisoned in a body nor is sacrificed in solitude to
sin.
8
And as he/she is in the God Realm, so must he/she be eternally and
everywhere. He/she is the same forever—born again each instant,
untouched by time, and far beyond the reach of any sacrifice of life or
death. For neither did he/she make, and only one was given him/her by
One Who knows HisHer gifts can never suffer sacrifice and loss. God's
justice rests in gentleness upon HisHer SonDaughter and keeps him/her
safe from all injustice the world would lay upon him/her. Could it be
that you could make his/her sins reality and sacrifice his/her
Father’sMother’s Will for him?
9
Condemn him/her not by seeing him/her within the rotting prison where
he/she sees himself/herself. It is your special function to ensure the
door be opened that he/she 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 SonDaughter of God
from the imprisonment he/she made to keep himself/herself from
justice? Could your function be a task apart and separate from HisHer
Own?
10
It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the
Holy Spirit to solve all problems for you. She has not greater
difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the same to
Her because each one is solved in just the same respect and
through the same approach. The aspects which need solving do not
change, whatever form the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in
the many forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no
purpose to attempt to solve it in a special form. It will recur and then
recur again and yet again until it has been answered for all time and
will not rise again in any form. And only then are you released from it.
11
The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you
think you have. They are the same to Her because each one, regardless of
the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make
a sacrifice that you might gain. And when the situation is worked out so
no one loses, is the problem gone because it was an error in perception
which now has been corrected. One mistake is not more difficult for Her
to bring to truth than is another. For there is but one
mistake—the whole idea that loss is possible and could result in gain
for anyone. If this were true, then God would be unfair, sin would be
possible, attack be justified, and vengeance fair.
12
This one mistake in any form has one correction. There is
no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. You have no problems,
though you think you have. And yet you could not think so if you saw
them vanish one by one without regard to size, complexity, or place and
time, or any attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem
different from the rest. Think not the limits you impose on what you see
can limit God in any way.
13
The miracle of justice can correct all errors. Every problem is
an error. It does injustice to the SonDaughter of God and therefore is
not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small
or more or less. They have no properties to Her. They are mistakes from
which the SonDaughter of God is suffering, but needlessly. And so She
takes the thorns and nails away. She does not pause to judge whether the
hurt be large or little. She makes but one judgment—that to hurt God’s
SonDaughter must be unfair and therefore is not so.
14
You who believe it safe to give but some mistakes to be corrected while
you keep the others to yourself, remember this: justice is total. There
is no such thing as partial justice. If the SonDaughter of God is
guilty, then is heshe condemned, and heshe deserves no mercy from the
God of justice. But ask not God to punish himher because you
find himher guilty and would have himher die. God offers you the means
to see hisher innocence. Would it be fair to punish himher because you
will not look at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for
yourself to solve or judge that it is one which has no resolution, you
have made it great and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of
justice can be fair.
15
If God is just, then can there be no problems that justice cannot solve.
But you believe that some injustices are fair and good and necessary to
preserve yourself. It is these problems that you think are great and
cannot be resolved. For there are those you want to suffer loss
and no one whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely.
Consider once again your special function. One is given you to
see in himher hisher perfect sinlessness. And you will ask no sacrifice
of himher because you could not will heshe suffer loss. The miracle of
justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on himher. Nor will
the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what
you give to Her is everyone's, and by your giving it can She
ensure that everyone receives it equally.
16
Think then how great your own release will be when you are willing to
receive correction for all your problems. You will not keep one, for
pain in any form you will not want. And you will see each little hurt
resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them are
little in Her sight and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they
disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be
a special problem, a mistake without a remedy, or an affliction without
a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is
gone. And in its place the love of God can be remembered and will shine
away all memory of sacrifice and loss.
17
God cannot be remembered until justice is loved instead of feared. She
cannot be unjust to anyone or anything because She knows that everything
that is belongs to HimHer and will forever be as HeShe createdmanifested
it. Nothing HeShe loves but must be sinless and beyond attack. Your
special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of
HisHer love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do
is but to wish that the God Realm be given you instead of hell, and
every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and
locked will merely fall away and disappear. For it is not your
Father’sMother’s Will that you should offer or receive less than HeShe
gave when HeShe createdmanifested you in perfect love.
18
Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all HeShe knows is one?
HeShe knows of one creationmanifestation, one reality, one
truth, and but one SonDaughter. Nothing conflicts with oneness.
How, then, could there be complexity in HimHer? What is there to decide?
For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The truth is simple—it is
one, without an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple
presence and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no
decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. And only if
there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward
oneness. What is everything leaves room for nothing else.
19
Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is it
necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped. There
is a borderland of thought which stands between this world and the God
Realm. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here
is the meeting-place where thoughts are brought together—where
conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth
where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the
gate of the God Realm. Here is every thought made pure and wholly
simple. Here is sin denied and everything that is received
instead.
20
This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the real world. And
yet there is a contradiction here in that the words imply a limited
reality, a partial truth, a segment of the universe made true. This is
because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought
together, and only one continues past the gate where Oneness is.
Salvation is a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning
still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and
every choice has been already made.
21
Nothing the SonDaughter of God believes can be destroyed. But what is
truth to himher must be brought to the last comparison that heshe will
ever make, the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment
upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of
knowledge on perception—it has no meaning and does not exist. This is
not your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in
this world, there are no simple facts because what is the same
and what is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a
choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference
between the worlds. In this one, choice is made impossible. In the real
world is choosing simplified.
22
Salvation stops just short of the God Realm, for only perception needs
salvation. The God Realm was never lost and so cannot be saved. Yet who
can make a choice between the wish for the God Realm and the wish for
hell unless he/she recognizes they are not the same? This
difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go
beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what
is different, leaving room to make the only choice which can be
made.
23
There is no basis for choice in this complex and over-complicated world.
For no one understands what is the same and seems to choose where no
choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in
the outcome but in the perception of alternatives for choice.
That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies
the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this.
24
Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone
by change of purpose in what once was specialness and now is union? All
illusions are but one. And in the recognition this is so lies the
ability to give up all attempts to choose between them and to make
them different. [How simple is the choice between two things so clearly
unalike.] There is no conflict here. No sacrifice is
possible in the relinquishment of an illusion recognized as
such. Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can
it be hard to give it up and choose what must be true?
25
Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of the God Realm 's justice. It
translates the world of sin into a simple world where justice can be
reflected from beyond the gate behind which total lack of limits lies.
Nothing in boundless love could need forgiveness. And what is charity
within the world gives way to simple justice past the gate that opens
into the God Realm . No one forgives unless he/she has believed in sin
and still believes that he/she has much to be forgiven. Forgiveness thus
becomes the means by which he/she learns he/she has done nothing to
forgive. Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it until
he/she sees himself/herself as needing it no more. And thus is he/she
returned to his/her real function of creatingmanifesting, which his/her
forgiveness offers him/her again.
26
Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to
see. Each flower shines in light, and every bird sings of the joy of the
God Realm . There is no sadness, and there is no parting here, for
everything is totally forgiven. And what has been forgiven must join,
for nothing stands between to keep them separate and apart. The sinless
must perceive that they are one, for nothing stands between to push the
other off. And in the space which sin left vacant do they join as one,
in gladness recognizing what is part of them has not been kept apart and
separate.
27
The holy place on which you stand is but the space that sin has left.
And here you see the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness arising in its place. Who could behold the face of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and not recall Her
FatherMother as HeShe really is? Who could fear love and stand upon the
ground where sin has left a place for the God Realm 's altar to rise and
tower far above the world and reach beyond the universe to touch the
heart of all creation? What is the God Realm but a song of gratitude and
love and praise by everything createdmanifested to the Source of its
creationmanifestation? The holiest of altars is set where once sin was
believed to be. And here does every light of the God Realm come to be
rekindled and increased in joy. For here is what was lost restored to
them and all their radiance made whole again.
28
Forgiveness brings no little miracles to lay before the gate of the God
Realm. Here the SonDaughter of God HimHerself comes to receive each gift
that brings him/her nearer to his/her home. Not one is lost, and none is
cherished more than any other. Each reminds him/her of his/her
Father’sMother’s love as surely as the rest. And each one teaches
him/her that what he/she feared he/she loves the most. What but
a miracle could change his/her mind, so that he/she understands that
love cannot be feared? What other miracle is there but this? And
what else need there be to make the space between you disappear?
29
Where sin once was perceived will rise a world which will become an
altar to the truth, and you will join the lights of the God
Realm there and sing their song of gratitude and praise. And as they
come to you to be complete, so will you go with them. For no one hears
the song of the God Realm and remains without a voice that adds its
power to the song and makes it sweeter still. And each one joins the
singing at the altar which was raised within the tiny spot that sin
proclaimed to be its own. And what was tiny then has soared into a
magnitude of song in which the universe has joined with but a single
voice. This tiny spot of sin that stands between you still is holding
back the happy opening of the God Realm 's gate. How little is the
hindrance which withholds the wealth of the God Realm from you! And how
great will be the joy in the God Realm when you join the mighty chorus
to the love of God!
30
A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do not understand
that miracles are all the same. Yet teaching that is what this course is
for. This is its only purpose, for only that is all there is to
learn. And you can learn it the many different ways. All learning is a
help or hindrance to the gate of the God Realm . Nothing in between is
possible. There are two teachers only, who point in different ways. And
you will go along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two
directions you can take while time remains and choice is meaningful. For
never will another road be made except the way to the God Realm . You
but choose whether to go toward the God Realm or away to
nowhere. There is nothing else to choose.
31
Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is [nothing. It is] but
a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real Teacher of
the world. Yet since you do believe in [its reality], why should
you waste it going nowhere when it can be used to reach a goal
as high as learning can achieve? Think not the way to the God Realm 's
gate is difficult at all. Nothing you undertake with certain purpose and
high resolve and happy confidence, holding each other's hand and keeping
step to the God Realm 's song, is difficult to do. But it is hard indeed
to wander off, alone and miserable, down a road which leads to nothing
and which has no purpose.
32
God gave HisHer Teacher to replace the one you made, not to conflict
with it. And what HeShe would replace has been replaced. Time lasted but
an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity. And so is all
time passed and everything exactly as it was before the way to
nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time in which the first mistake
was made, and all of them within that one mistake, held also the correction
for that one and all of them that came within the first. And in that
tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave
answer to is answered and is gone.
33
To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the
Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless
maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You
think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for
an instant, long ago before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one
illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought
to certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart
as if it were before you still.
34
The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal passed away in the God
Realm too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too
quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the SonDaughter of God can
hardly still be there for you to choose to be your teacher. Only in the
past—an ancient past, too short to make a world in answer to
creationmanifestation—did this world appear to rise. So very long ago,
for such a tiny interval of time that not one note in the God Realm 's
song was missed.
35
Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment, and in all
belief in sin, is that one instant still called back, as if it could be
made again in time. You keep an ancient memory before your eyes. And
he/she who lives in memories alone is unaware of where he/she is.
36
[Forgiveness is the great release from time. It is the key to learning
that the past is over. Madness speaks no more. There is no other
teacher and no other way. For what has been undone no longer is.
And who can stand upon a distant shore and dream himself/herself across
an ocean to a place and time that have long since gone by? How real
a hindrance can this dream be to where he/she really is? For
this is fact and does not change whatever dreams he/she has. Yet
can he/she still imagine he/she is elsewhere and in another
time. In the extreme, he/she can delude himself/herself that this is
true and pass from mere imagining into belief and into madness, quite
convinced that where he/she would prefer to be, he/she is.]
37
Is this a hindrance to the place whereon he/she stands? Is any
echo from the past that he/she may hear a fact in what is there to hear
where he/she is now? And how much can his/her own delusions about time
and place affect a change in where he/she really is? The unforgiven is a
voice that calls out from a past forever more gone by. And everything
which points to it as real is but a wish that what is gone could be made
real again and seen as here and now in place of what is really
now and here. Is this a hindrance to the truth the past is gone and
cannot be returned to you? And do you want that fearful instant
kept, when the God Realm seemed to disappear and God was feared and made
a symbol of your hate?
38
Forget the time of terror that has been so long ago corrected and
undone. Can sin withstand the Will of God? Can it be up to you to see
the past and put it in the present? You can not go back. And
everything that points the way in the direction of the past but sets you
on a mission whose accomplishment can only be unreal. Such is the
justice your ever-loving FatherMother has ensured must come to you. And
from your own unfairness to yourself has HeShe protected you. You cannot
lose your way because there is no way but HisHer and nowhere can you go
except to HimHer.
39
Would God allow HisHer SonDaughter to lose his/her way along a road long
since a memory of time gone by? [This course will teach you only what is
now.] A dreadful instant in a distant past, now perfectly corrected, is
of no concern nor value. Let the dead and gone be peacefully forgotten.
Resurrection has come to take its place. And now you are a part of
resurrection, not of death. No past illusions have the power to
keep you in a place of death, a vault God’s SonDaughter entered an
instant, to be instantly restored unto hisher Father’sMother’s perfect
Love. And how can heshe be kept in chains long since removed and gone
forever from hisher mind?
40
The SonDaughter that God createdmanifested is as free as God
createdmanifested himher. Heshe was reborn the instant that heshe chose
to die instead of live. And will you not forgive himher now because
heshe made an error in the past that God remembers not and is not there?
Now you are shifting back and forth between the past and present.
Sometimes the past seems real, as if it were the present. Voices from
the past are heard and then are doubted. You are like to one who still
hallucinates but lacks conviction in what he/she perceives. This is the
borderland between the worlds, the bridge between the past and present.
Here the shadow of the past remains, but still a present light is dimly
recognized. Once it is seen, this light can never be forgotten. It must
draw you from the past into the present, where you really are.
41
The shadow voices do not change the laws of time or of eternity. They
come from what is past and gone and hinder not the true existence of the
here and now. The real world is the second part of the hallucination
time and death are real and have existence which can be
perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for
God to give HisHer answer to illusion for all time and every
circumstance. And then it was no more, to be experienced as there.
42
Each day and every minute in each day and every instant that each minute
holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror was
replaced by love. And so you die each day to live again until you cross
the gap between past and present, which is not a gap at all. Such is
each life—a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a
repetition of an instant gone by long ago, which cannot be
relived. And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is
still here and now.
43
Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. You stand no
longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. You have gone on and
reached the world that lies at the God Realm 's gate. There is no
hindrance to the Will of God nor any need that you repeat again a
journey that was over long ago. Look gently on each other and behold the
world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world
of love.
44
Anything in this world that you believe is good and valuable and worth
striving for can hurt you and will do so. Not because it has the power
to hurt, but just because you have denied it is but an illusion and made
it real. And it is real to you. It is not nothing and
through its perceived reality has entered all the world of sick
illusions. All belief in sin, in power of attack, in hurt and harm, in
sacrifice and death has come to you. For no one can make one
illusion real and still escape the rest. For who can choose to keep the
ones which he/she prefers and find the safety that the truth alone can
give? Who can believe illusions are the same and still maintain that
even one is best?
45
Lead not your little lives in solitude with one illusion as your only
friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's SonDaughter, nor one with
which heshe could remain content. Yet God has given himher a better
Friend in Whom all power in earth and the God Realm rests. The one
illusion that you think is friend obscures Her grace and
majesty from you and keeps Her friendship and forgiveness from your
welcoming embrace. Without Her you are friendless. Seek not
another friend to take Her place. There is no other friend. What
God appointed has no substitute, for what illusion can replace the
truth?
46
Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is not the Will
of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God
appointed for your Friend if you but realized its emptiness has left yours
empty and unoccupied? Make no illusion friend, for if you do, it can but
take the place of Her whom God has called your Friend. And it is Her who
is your only Friend in truth. She brings you gifts that are not
of this world, and only She to whom they have been given can make sure
that you receive them. She will place them on your throne when you make
room for Her on Hers.
47
This is a course in miracles. And as such, the laws of healing must be
understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us
review the principles that we have covered and arrange them in a way
that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when
it once is possible, it must occur. All sickness comes from
separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it is gone as
soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by
sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause in a
relationship kept hidden from awareness that it may be carefully
preserved from reason's light.
48
Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted—not in
truth but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin. The
SonDaughter of God perceives what he/she would see, because perception is
a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, made to take the place of
changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived,
but only known. What is perceived takes the many forms, but none has
meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept
apart from truth, it seems to have a meaning and be real.
49
Perception's laws are opposite to truth, and what is true of knowledge
is not true of anything that is apart from it. Yet has God given answer
to the world of sickness which applies to all its forms. God's
answer is eternal, though it operates in time where it is needed. Yet
because it is of God, the laws of time do not affect its
workings. It is in this world, but not a part of it. For it is real and
dwells where all reality must be. Ideas leave not their source, and
their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind.
What is projected out and seems to be external to the mind is not
outside at all but an effect of what is in and has not left its source.
50
God's answer lies where the belief in sin must be, for only there can
its effects be utterly undone and without cause. Perception's laws must
be reversed, because they are reversals of the laws of truth.
The laws of truth forever will be true and cannot be reversed, yet can
be seen as upside-down. And this must be corrected where the
illusion of reversal lies.
51
It is impossible that one illusion be less amenable to truth than are
the rest. But it is possible that some are given greater value
and less willingly offered to truth for healing and for help. No
illusion has any truth in it. Yet it appears some are more true than
others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a
hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. What
relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions and are
false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any
way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to
them all. God's Will is One. And any wish that seems to go against
HisHer Will has no foundation in the truth.
52
Sin is not error, for it goes beyond correction to impossibility. Yet
the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever past the
hope of healing and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would
the God Realm be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it. Then would
God's Will be split in two and all creationmanifestation be subjected to
the laws of two opposing powers until God becomes impatient, splits the
world apart, and relegates attack unto HimHerself. Thus has HeShe lost
HisHer Mind, proclaiming sin has taken HisHer reality from HimHer, and
brought HisHer love at last to vengeance's heels. For such an insane
picture, an insane defense can be expected but cannot establish
that the picture must be true.
53
Nothing gives meaning where no meaning is. And truth needs no
defense to make it true. Illusions have no witnesses and no effects. Who
looks on them is but deceived. Forgiveness is the only function here and
serves to bring the joy this world denies to every aspect of God’s
SonDaughter where sin was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not see the
role forgiveness plays in ending death and all beliefs that rise from
mists of guilt.
54
Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother/sister and
yourself. They limit you to time and place and give a little space to
you, another little space to him/her. This separating off is symbolized
in your perception by a body which is clearly separate and a thing
apart. Yet what this symbol represents is but your wish to be
apart and separate. Forgiveness takes away what stands between
your brother/sister and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with
him/her and not apart. We call it "wish" because it still
conceives of other choices and has not yet reached beyond the world of
choice entirely.
55
Yet is this wish in line with the God Realm 's state and not in
opposition to God's Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your
full inheritance, it does remove the obstacles which you have
placed between the God Realm where you are and recognition of where and
what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet facts can be denied and thus
unknown, though they were known before they were denied.
56
Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a little wish that what is
true be true; a little willingness to overlook what is not there; a
little sigh that speaks for the God Realm as a preference to this world
which death and desolation seem to rule. In joyous answer will
creationmanifestation rise within you to replace the world you see with
the God Realm, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness but a
willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from
a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is no sin.
And every miracle is possible the instant that the SonDaughter of God
perceives his/her wishes and the Will of God are one.
57
What is the Will of God? HeShe wills HisHer SonDaughter have everything.
And this HeShe guaranteed when HeShe createdmanifested himher as
everything. It is impossible that anything be lost if what you have
is what you are. This is the miracle by which
creationmanifestation became your function, sharing it with God. It is
not understood apart from HimHer and therefore has no meaning in this
world.
58
Here does the SonDaughter of God ask not too much but far too little.
Heshe would sacrifice hisher own identity with everything to find a
little treasure of hisher own. And this heshe cannot do without a sense
of isolation, loss, and loneliness. This is the treasure heshe has
sought to find. And heshe could only be afraid of it. Is fear a
treasure? Can uncertainty be what you want? Or is it a mistake
about your will and what you really are? Let us consider what
the error is, so it can be corrected, not protected.
59
Sin is belief attack can be projected outside the mind where the belief
arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas can leave their
source made real and meaningful. And from this error does the world of
sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your
innocence while cherishing attack. Its failure lies in that you still
feel guilty, though without understanding why. Effects are seen
as separate from their source and seem to be beyond you to control or to
prevent. What is thus kept apart can never join.
60
Cause and effect are one, not separate. God wills you learn what always
has been true—that HeShe createdmanifested you as part of HimHer, and
this must still be true because ideas leave not their source.
Such is creation'smanifestation´s law—that each idea the mind conceives
but adds to its abundance, never takes away. This is as
true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed, because the mind
can wish to be deceived but cannot make it be what it is not. And to
believe ideas can leave their source is to invite illusions to be true,
without success. For never will success be possible in trying to
deceive the SonDaughter of God.
61
The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together,
not kept separate. The healing of effect without the cause can merely
shift effects to other forms. And this is not release. God’s
SonDaughter could never be content with less than full salvation and
escape from guilt. For otherwise heshe still demands that heshe must
make some sacrifice and thus denies that everything is hishers,
unlimited by loss of any kind. A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its
effects as is the whole idea of sacrifice. If loss in any form is
possible, then is God’s SonDaughter made incomplete and not himherself.
[Nor will heshe know himherself nor recognize hisher will.] Heshe has
forsworn hisher FatherMother and himherself and made them both
hisher enemies in hate.
62
Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve. And from their
purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave
to all illusions that were made another purpose that would
justify a miracle, whatever form they took. In every miracle all healing
lies, for God gave answer to them all as one. And what is one to HimHer
must be the same. If you believe what is the same is different, you but
deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, not separate.
HisHer Realm is united—thus it was createdmanifested, and thus
will it ever be.
63
The miracle but calls your ancient name, which you will recognize
because the truth is in your memory. And to this name, your
brother/sister calls for his/her release and yours. The God Realm is
shining on the SonDaughter of God. Deny him/her not, that you may be
released. Each instant is the SonDaughter of God reborn, until heshe
chooses not to die again. In every wish to hurt, he/she chooses death
instead of what his/her FatherMother wills for him/her. Yet every
instant offers life to him/her because his/her FatherMother wills that
he/she should live.
64
In crucifixion is redemption laid, for healing is not needed where there
is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the answer to attack of any
kind. So is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the
name of love. To you to whom it has been given to save the SonDaughter
of God from crucifixion and from hell and death, all glory be forever.
For you have power to save the SonDaughter of God because his/her
FatherMother willed that it be so. And in your hands does all salvation
lie, to be both offered and received as one.
65
To use the power God has given you as HeShe would have it used is
natural. It is not arrogant to be as HeShe createdmanifested you or to
make use of what HeShe gave to answer all HisHer Son’sDaughter’s
mistakes and set him/her free. But it is arrogant to lay aside
the power that HeShe gave and choose a little senseless wish instead of
what HeShe wills. The gift of God to you is limitless. There is no
circumstance it cannot answer and no problem which is not resolved
within its gracious light.
66
Abide in peace, where God would have you be, and be the means whereby
your brother/sister finds the peace in which your wishes are fulfilled.
Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death. For
what can save each one of us can save us all. There is no difference
among the SonsDaughters of God. The unity that specialness denies will
save them all, for what is one can have no specialness. And everything
belongs to each of them. No wishes lie between a brother/sister and
his/her own. To get from one is to deprive them all. And yet to bless
but one gives blessing to them all as one.
67
Your ancient name belongs to everyone, as theirs to you. Call on your
brother’s/sister’s name and God will answer, for on HimHer you call.
Could HeShe refuse to answer when HeShe has already answered all
who call on HimHer? A miracle can make no change at all. But it can
make what always has been true be recognized by those who know it not.
And by this little gift of truth but let to be itself—the SonDaughter of
God allowed to be himherself and all creationmanifestation freed to call
upon the Name of God as one.
68
The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval
between the time when you forgive and will receive the benefits of
trust. This but reflects the little you would keep between yourselves
that you might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion
which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your minds,
you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the
more you think of it in terms of space.
69
There is a distance you would keep apart from one another, and this
space you see as time because you still believe you are external to each
other. This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust
would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to
remain a little careful and a little watchful of interests perceived as
separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what
forgiveness offers now. The interval you think lies in between
the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you
sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation, not immediate
results.
70
Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will be
afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time
its purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. In this form
is the error still obscured that is the source of fear. Salvation would
wipe out the space you see between you still and let you instantly
become as one. And it is here you fear the loss would lie. Do
not project this fear to time, for time is not the enemy that you
perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is except in terms of what you
see it for. If you would keep a little space between you still,
you want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while.
This makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is
withheld and given seem dangerous, with terror justified.
71
Yet space between you is apparent now and cannot be perceived in
future time. No more can it be overlooked except within the present.
Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread.
Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no
effects. And therefore must it be that if you fear, there is a present
cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state.
72
The plans you make for safety all are laid within the future, where you
cannot plan. No purpose has been given it as yet, and what will
happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And
who could fear effects unless he/she thought they had been
caused and judged disastrous now? Belief in sin arouses fear
and, like its cause, is looking forward, looking back but overlooking
what is here and now. Yet only here and now its cause must be if its
effects already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking this, is
it protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is now.
It stands already here in present grace, within the only interval of
time which sin and fear have overlooked but which is all there is
to time. The working out of all correction takes no time at all.
73
Yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever.
The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has
in it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at now.
Why wait till they unfold in time and fear they may not come, although
already there? You have been told that everything brings good that comes
from God. And yet it seems as if this is not so. Good in disaster's form
is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in this
idea.
74
Why should the good appear in evil's form? And is it not deception if it
does? Its cause is here if it appears at all. Why are not its effects
apparent then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with
sighing and with "reasoning" you do not understand it now but will some
day. And then its meaning will be clear. This is not reason, for it is
unjust and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is
at hand. Given a change of purpose for the good, there is no reason for
an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as "good" some
day but now in form of pain. This is a sacrifice of now, which
could not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what She gave without a
cost at all.
75
Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be already in
your mind. And this illusion is but one effect which it engenders and
one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when
retribution is perceived to be the form in which the "good" appears, is
but one aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven
still.
76
Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning and is not
your just reward. For you have cause for freedom now. What
profits freedom in a prisoner's form? Why should deliverance be
disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the "reasoning" which would
maintain effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time is
merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause must come as one.
Look not to time but to the little space between you still to be
delivered from. And do not let it be disguised as time and so preserved
because its form is changed and what it is cannot be recognized.
The Holy Spirit's purpose now is yours. Should not Her happiness
be yours as well?
77
Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls
lovingly unto your brother/sister, that you may awake in him/her the
Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he/she must be when
in him/her sleeps your own salvation with his/her freedom joined!
However much you wish he/she be condemned, God is in him/her. And never
will you know HeShe is in you as well, while you attack HisHer chosen
home and battle with HisHer host. Regard him/her gently. Look with
loving eyes on him/her who carries the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness within him/her, that you may behold his/her glory and
rejoice that the God Realm is not separate from you.
78
Is it too much to ask a little trust for him/her who carries the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness to you, that you may be forgiven
all your sins and left without a single one you cherish still? Forget
not that a shadow held between your brother/sister and yourself obscures
the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and memory
of God. And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? The ground whereon
you stand is holy ground because of Them Who, standing there with you,
have blessed it with Their innocence and peace.
79
The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again and let the
flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place
of death has now become a living temple in a world of light. Because of
Them. It is Their Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its
ancient place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles
sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground which hate had
scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have They undone.
And now you stand on ground so holy the God Realm leans to join with it
and make it like itself. The shadow of an ancient hate has gone, and all
the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They
have come.
80
What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands?
When They come, time's purpose is fulfilled. What never was passes to
nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to
love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into the God
Realm, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The
incomplete is made complete again, and the God Realm 's joy has been
increased because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied
earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of insanity
to join Them on the ground whereon you stand.
81
The God Realm is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld so
long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has been locked is
opened; what was held apart from light is given up, that light may shine
on it, and leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of
the God Realm and the world.
82
The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has
become a present love. And They come quickly to the living temple, where
a home for Them has been set up. There is no place in the God Realm
holier. And They have come to dwell within the temple offered them, to
be Their resting-place as well as yours. What hatred has released to
love becomes the brightest light in the God Realm 's radiance. And all
the lights in the God Realm brighter grow, in gratitude for what has
been restored.
83
Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of
sin and keep the light where it has entered in. Your footprints lighten
up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. No
one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his/her home and
sheltered him/her from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall
the LordLady of the God Realm and HisHer SonDaughter give less in
gratitude for so much more?
84
Now is the temple of the Living God rebuilt as host again to HimHer by
Whom it was createdmanifested. Where HeShe dwells, HisHer SonDaughter
dwells with HimHer, never separate. And They give thanks that They are
welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness, and ancient scars are
healed within HisHer sight. An ancient miracle has come to bless and to
replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God
the FatherMother and the SonDaughter return to what is Theirs and will
forever be. Now is the Holy Spirit's purpose done. For They have come!
For They have come at last!
85
What then remains to be undone for you to realize Their Presence? Only
this—you have a differential view of when attack is justified and when
you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as
unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see
what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at
all, it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide
Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused
perception will block knowledge. It is not a question of the size of the
confusion or how much it interferes. Its simple presence shuts the door
to Theirs and keeps Them there unknown.
86
What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair
to you? It means that there must be some forms in which you think it fair.
For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some then are
given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as
meaningless. And this denies the fact that all are
senseless—equally without a cause or consequence and cannot have effects
of any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil which stands
between Their shining innocence and your awareness it is your own and equally
belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what
is limited can not be the God Realm . So it must be
hell.
87
Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that
where one is perceived, the other must be seen. You cannot be
unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you
are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of
sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not
your just deserts. Yet it is you who ask this of yourself in
deep injustice to the SonDaughter of God. You have no enemy except
yourself, and you are enemy indeed to himher because you do not know
himher as yourself. What could be more unjust than that heshe be
deprived of what heshe is, denied the right to be himherself,
and asked to sacrifice hisher Father’sMother’s love and yours as not
hisher due?
88
Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this
view, you seek to find an innocence which is not Theirs but yours alone
and at the cost of someone else's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by
the giving of your guilt to someone else? And is this innocence
which your attack on him/her attempts to get? Is it not retribution for
your own attack upon the SonDaughter of God you seek? Is it not safer to
believe that you are innocent of this and victimized despite your
innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must
be loss. Someone must lose his/her innocence that someone else can take
it from him/her, making it his/her own.
89
You think your brother/sister is unfair to you because you think that
one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you
perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to
add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to let the
Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose,
nothing can be added, for the world is purposeless except for
this. To add or take away from this one goal is but to take away
all purpose from the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that
the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it
by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit
sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon
the earth.
90
What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly and who see as you
have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening,
and not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brought can you
perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of
light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a
futile world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought
injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been
resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceive
injustice anywhere, you need but say:
1
The wish to be unfairly treated is a compromise attempt that would
combine attack and innocence. Who can combine the wholly
incompatible and make a unity of what can never join? Walk you the
gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no shadows in the night. But
place no terror symbols on your path, or you will weave a crown of
thorns from which your brother/sister and yourself will not escape. You
cannot crucify yourself alone. And if you are unfairly treated, he/she
must suffer the unfairness that you see. You cannot sacrifice yourself
alone. For sacrifice is total. If it could occur at all, it would entail
the whole of God's creationmanifestation and the FatherMother with the
sacrifice of his/her beloved SonDaughter.
2
In your release from sacrifice is his/her made manifest and
shown to be his/her own. But every pain you suffer do you see as proof
that he/she is guilty of attack. Thus would you make yourself to be the
sign that he/she has lost his/her innocence and need but look on you to
realize that he/she has been condemned. And what to you has been unfair
will come to him/her in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you
suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him/her are you set
free. Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his/her guilt, for
you will not escape the death you made for him/her. But in his/her innocence,
you find your own.
3
Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated,
or in need of anything, you but accuse your brother/sister of attack
upon God’s SonDaughter. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before
his/her eyes that he/she may see his/her sins are writ in the God Realm
in your blood and death and go before him/her, closing off the gate and
damning him/her to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and not in the God
Realm, where you are beyond attack and prove his/her innocence.
The picture of yourself you offer him/her you show yourself and
give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you to give to him/her a
picture of yourself in which there is no pain and no reproach at all.
And what was martyred to his/her guilt becomes the perfect witness to
his/her innocence.
4
The power of witness is beyond belief because it brings conviction in
its wake. The witness is believed because he/she points beyond
himself/herself to what he/she represents. A sick and suffering you but
represents your brother’s/sister’s guilt—the witness which you send lest
he/she forget the injuries he/she gave from which you swear he/she never
will escape. This sick and sorry picture you accept, if only it
can serve to punish him/her. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in
contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price if they can
say, "Behold me, brother; at your hand I die." For sickness is the
witness to his/her guilt, and death would prove his/her errors must be
sins.
5
Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet
it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter
picture you have sent your brother/sister you have looked upon
in grief. And everything that it has shown to him/her have you believed
because it witnessed to the guilt in him/her which you perceived and
loved. Now in the hands made gentle by Her touch, the Holy Spirit lays a
picture of a different you. It is a picture of a body still, for what
you really are cannot be seen nor pictured. Yet this one has not
been used for purpose of attack and therefore never suffered pain at
all. It witnesses to the eternal truth that you cannot be hurt
and points beyond itself to both your innocence and his.
6
Show this unto your brother/sister, who will see that every scar
is healed and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And
he/she will look on his/her forgiveness there and with healed eyes will
look beyond it to the innocence that he/she beholds in you. Here is the
proof that he/she has never sinned—that nothing which his/her madness
bid him/her do was ever done or ever had effects of any kind; that no
reproach he/she laid upon his/her heart was ever justified, and no
attack can ever touch him/her with the poisoned and relentless sting of
fear. Attest his/her innocence and not his/her guilt. Your
healing is his/her comfort and his/her health because it proves
illusions are not true.
7
It is not will for life, but wish for death that is the motivation for
this world. Its only purpose is to prove guilt real. No worldly thought
or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the
witnesses that are called forth to be believed and lend conviction to
the system they speak for and represent. And each has the many voices,
speaking to your brother/sister and yourself in different tongues. And
yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show
how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body
demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life, how easily destroyed
is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern
with anything at all. The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters
all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified,
is sickness in whatever form it takes.
8
The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange
needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short and not esteem the
worth of passing joys? What pleasures could there be that will endure?
Are not the frail entitled to believe that every stolen scrap of
pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death
will pay the price for all of them if they enjoy their benefits or not.
The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take
pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.
9
These are not sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and
death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike within the
termination of the grave. If this were true, there would be
reason to remain content to seek for passing joys and cherish little
pleasures where you can. Yet in this picture is the body not perceived
as neutral and without a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the
symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there
to see, so that the cause can never be denied.
10
Your function is to show your brother/sister sin can have no
cause. How futile must it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that
what your function is can never be! The Holy Spirit's picture changes
not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it all
signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured without a purpose, it
is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are
offered that it may be judged in any way at all. It has no life, but
neither is it dead. It stands apart from all experience of fear or love.
For now it witnesses to nothing yet, its purpose being open and the mind
made free again to choose what it is for. Now is it not
condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be given that it may fulfill the
function that it will receive.
11
Into this empty space, from which the goal of sin has been removed, is
the God Realm free to be remembered. Here its peace can come and perfect
healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a
promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick
of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its
purpose. Then will it send forth the message it received and by its
health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents.
Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever
unattacked. And to your brother/sister let its message be, "Behold me,
brother; at your hand I live."
12
The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this—to let the body
have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose
was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting
sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a different
view, another purpose, can be given it. You do not know its
purpose. You but gave illusions of a purpose to a thing you made
to hide your function from yourself. This thing without a purpose cannot
hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, its purpose and
your function both be reconciled at last and seen as one.
13
Is healing frightening? To the many, yes. For accusation is a bar to
love, and damaged bodies are accusers. They stand firmly in the way of
trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can have no trust and that
the damaged have no grounds for peace. Who has been injured by his/her
brother/sister and could love and trust him/her still? He/she has
attacked and will attack again. Protect him/her not, because your
damaged body shows that you must be protected from him/her. To forgive
may be an act of charity, but not his/her due. He/she may be pitied for
his/her guilt, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him/her his/her
transgressions, you but add to all the guilt that he/she has really
earned.
14
The unhealed cannot pardon. For they are the witnesses that
pardon is unfair. They would retain the consequences of the guilt they
overlook. Yet no one can forgive a sin which he/she believes is real.
And what has consequences must be real because what it has done
is there to see. Forgiveness is not pity which but seeks to pardon what
it knows to be the truth. Good cannot be returned for evil, for
forgiveness does not first establish sin and then forgive it.
Who can say and mean, "Our brother/sister, you have injured me, and yet
because I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt." His/her
pardon and your hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other and must
make it false.
15
To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see.
For it maintains what has been done to you deserves no pardon. And by
giving it, you grant your brother/sister mercy but retain the proof
he/she is not really innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot
forgive their brothers/sisters and themselves as well. For no one in
whom true forgiveness reigns can suffer. He/she holds not the proof of
sin before his/her brother’s/sister’s eyes. And thus he/she must have
overlooked it and removed it from his/her own. Forgiveness cannot be for
one and not the other. Who forgives is healed. And in his/her
healing lies the proof that he/she has truly pardoned and retains no
trace of condemnation that he/she still would hold against
himself/herself or any living thing.
16
Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your
brother/sister and yourself. You must attest his/her sins had no
effect on you to demonstrate they were not real. How else could he/she
be guiltless? And how could his/her innocence be justified unless
his/her sins have no effect to warrant guilt? Sins are beyond
forgiveness just because they would entail effects which cannot be
undone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that
they were merely errors. Let yourself be healed that you may be
forgiving, offering salvation to your brother/sister and yourself. A
broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing
proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to
him/her, you will believe. The power of witness comes from your
belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you
teach to him/her.
17
Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because
of him/her. And in its healing can it offer him/her mute testimony of
his/her innocence. It is this testimony which can speak with power
greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his/her forgiveness proved
to him/her. A miracle can offer nothing less to him/her than it has
given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed and has
forgiven what he/she did not do. And so is he/she convinced his/her
innocence was never lost and healed along with you.
18
Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be
undone. And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient
clarion call of life. This call has power far beyond the weak and
miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient calling of the
FatherMother to HisHer SonDaughter, and of the SonDaughter unto hisher
own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear.
Brother/sister, there is no death. And this you learn when you
but wish to show your brother/sister that you had no hurt of him/her.
He/she thinks your blood is on his/her hands, and so he/she stands
condemned. Yet it is given you to show him/her by your healing that
his/her guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.
19
How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance
from guilt upon your brother/sister and yourself. Your healing saves
him/her pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished
him/her well. This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no
specialness at all. It does not come from pity but from love. And love
would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with
no effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your
brother/sister with no blood upon his/her hands nor guilt upon his/her
heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is
given you to see.
20
The "cost" of your serenity is his/her. This is the "price" the Holy
Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives it as a
statement of the "fact" that your salvation sacrifices his. The
Holy Spirit knows your healing is the witness unto his/her and
cannot be apart from his/her at all. As long as he/she consents to
suffer, you will be unhealed. Yet you can show him/her that his/her
suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him/her your
healing, and he/she will consent no more to suffer. For his/her
innocence has been established in your sight and his/hers. And laughter
will replace your sighs because God’s SonDaughter remembered that heshe
is God’s SonDaughter.
21
Who then fears healing? Only those to whom their brother’s/sister’s
sacrifice and pain are seen to represent their own serenity. Their
helplessness and weakness represent the grounds on which they justify
his/her pain. The constant sting of guilt he/she suffers serves to prove
that he/she is slave but they are free. The constant pain they suffer
demonstrates that they are free because they hold him/her bound.
And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice.
How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason
with an argument for sickness such as this? And need your healing be
delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?
22
[Correction is not your function. It belongs to One Who knows of
fairness, not of guilt. If you assume correction's role, you lose
the function of forgiveness. No one can forgive until he/she learns
correction is but to forgive and never to accuse. Alone,
you cannot see they are the same, and therefore is correction not
of you. Identity and function are the same, and by your function
do you know yourself. And thus, if you confuse your function with the
function of Another, you must be confused about yourself and who
you are. What is the separation but a wish to take God's function from
HimHer and deny that it is HisHers? Yet if it is not
HisHers, it is not yours, for you must lose what you
would take away.
23
[In a split mind, identity must seem to be divided. Nor can
anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and
different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, must be a way to
punish sins you think are yours in someone else. And thus does
he/she become your victim, not your brother/sister, different
from you in that he/she is more guilty, thus in need of your
correction as the one more innocent than he/she. This splits
his/her function off from yours and gives you both a different
role. And so you cannot be perceived as one and, with a single
function, that would mean a shared identity with but one
end.
24
[Correction you would do must separate, because that is
the function given it by you. When you perceive correction is
the same as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit's Mind
and yours are one. And so your own Identity is found. Yet must
She work with what is given Her, and you allow Her only half
your mind. And thus She represents the other half and seems to
have a different purpose from the one you cherish and you think
is yours. Thus does your function seem divided, with a half in
opposition to a half. And these two halves appear to represent a
split within a self perceived as two.]
25
Consider how this self perception must extend, and do not overlook the
fact that every thought extends because that is its purpose,
being what it really is. From an idea of self as two, there comes a
necessary view of function split between the two. And what you would
correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. Your
brother’s/sister’s sins become the central target for correction, lest
your errors and his/her own be seen as one. Yours are mistakes, but
his/her are sins and not the same as yours. His/her merit punishment,
while yours in fairness should be overlooked.
26
In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not
even see. The focus of correction has been placed outside yourself on
one who cannot be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is
condemned can never be returned to its accuser, who hated it and hates
it still. This is your brother/sister, focus of your hate, unworthy to
be part of you and thus outside yourself—the other half which is denied.
And only what is left without his/her presence is perceived as all of
you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the other
half until you recognize it is the other half. And this She does
by giving both of you a function that is one, not different.
27
Correction is the function given both, but neither one alone.
And when it is fulfilled as shared, it must correct
mistakes in both of you. It cannot leave mistakes in one unhealed and
set the other free. That is divided purpose which cannot be shared, and
so it cannot be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as Hers. And you
can rest assured that She will not fulfill a function She cannot
understand and recognize as Hers. For only thus can She keep yours
preserved intact, despite your separate views of what your function is.
If She upheld divided function, you were lost indeed. Her inability to
see Her goal divided and distinct for each of you preserves your Self
from being made aware of any function other than Its own. And thus is
healing given both of you.
28
Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness are
the same. With half a mind, this is not understood. Leave then
correction to the Mind that is united, functioning as one
because It is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as
Its only one. Here is the function given It conceived to be Its
own and not apart from that Its Giver keeps because it has been
shared. In Her acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your
mind is unified. Her single purpose unifies the halves of you which you
perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he/she may
accept his/her other half as part of him/her.
29
Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power
is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power
used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited
and weak because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself.
No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is
not. To weaken is to limit and impose an opposite that contradicts the
concept which it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a
something it is not and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a
double concept, such as "weakened-power" or as "hateful-love?"
30
You have decided that your brother/sister is a symbol for a
"hateful-love," a "weakened-power," and above all, a "living-death." And
so he/she has no meaning to you, for he/she stands for what is
meaningless. He/she represents a double thought, where half is cancelled
out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the
half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he/she stands
for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand
for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not
be interference. What can interfere with the awareness of
reality is the belief that there is something there.
31
The picture of your brother/sister that you see means nothing. There is
nothing to attack or to deny, love, or hate, or to endow with power or
to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out because it
symbolized a contradiction which cancelled out the thought it
represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive
effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The
picture of your brother/sister that you see is wholly absent and has
never been. Let then the empty space it occupies be recognized
as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly
spent, a time unoccupied.
32
An empty space which is not seen as filled, an unused interval of time
not seen as spent and fully occupied, becomes a silent invitation to the
truth to enter and to make itself at home. No preparation can be made
that would enhance the invitation's real appeal. For what you leave as
vacant, God will fill, and where HeShe is, there must the truth
abide. Unweakened power with no opposite is what creationmanifestation is.
For this there are no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth,
for what can stand for more than everything? Yet true undoing must be
kind. And so the first replacement for your picture is another picture
of another kind.
33
As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality.
Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen.
Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits. Yet it
sets no limits you have chosen to impose. Forgiveness is the means by
which the truth is represented temporarily. It lets the Holy Spirit make
exchange of pictures possible until the time when aids are meaningless
and learning done. No learning aid has use which can extend beyond the
goal of learning. When its aim has been accomplished, it is
functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use which now you
fear, but yet will love.
34
The picture of your brother/sister given you to occupy the space so
lately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. For
you will give it overwhelming preference. Nor delay an instant in
deciding that it is the only one you want. It does not stand for double
concepts. Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within
itself it is the same. The other half of what it represents remains
unknown but is not cancelled out. And thus is God left free to take the
final step HimHerself. [For this you need no pictures and no
learning aids.] And what will ultimately take the place of every
learning aid will merely be. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols
fade, and nothing which the eyes have ever seen, or ears have heard,
remains to be perceived.
35
A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive Its
own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The choice you fear to
lose you never had. Yet only this appears to interfere with power
unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. You
do not know the peace of power which opposes nothing. Yet no other kind
can be at all. Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness and beyond
the world of symbols and of limitations. HeShe would merely be,
and so HeShe merely is.
36
In quietness are all things answered and is every problem quietly
resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution,
for its purpose is to make no resolution possible and to ensure no
answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer,
for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one
point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in
conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for
conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer, there must
be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what HeShe wills
already has been done.
37
Thus it must be that time is not involved, and every problem can be
answered now. Yet it must also be that in your state of mind
solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of
reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there.
Such is the holy instant. It is here that all your problems should be
brought and left. Here they belong, for here their answer is.
[And where its answer is, a problem must be simple and be easily
resolved.] It must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the
answer cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be resolved if it is
brought to where the answer is.
38
Attempt to solve no problems but within the holy instant's surety. For
there the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside there
will be no solution, for there is no answer there that could be found.
Nowhere outside a single simple question is ever asked. The world can
only ask a double question with the many answers, none of which will do.
It does not ask a question to be answered, but only to restate its point
of view. All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking,
not a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered,
because it is an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers,
both attesting the same thing in different form.
39
The world asks but one question. It is this: "Of these
illusions, which of them are true? Which ones establish peace and offer
joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is
made?" Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It
asks but to establish sin is real and answers in the form of preference.
"Which sin do you prefer? That is the one which you should choose. The
others are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most
of all? It is your servant and your friend. But tell it what you want,
and it will serve you lovingly and well." And this is not a question,
for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. It leaves no room
to question its beliefs, except that what it states takes question's form.
40
A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as
it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda
for itself. Just as the body's witnesses are but the senses from within
itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained
within the questions. Where answers represent the questions, they add
nothing new, and nothing has been learned.
41
An honest question is a learning tool which asks for something that you
do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but merely
asks what the response should be. But no one in a conflict state is free
to ask this question, for he/she does not want an honest answer where
the conflict ends. Only within the holy instant can an honest question
honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the question does the
meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to separate your
wishes from the answer, so it can be given you and also be received.
The answer is provided everywhere. Yet it is only here it can be heard.
42
An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers questions truly
asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded,
asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so unless the
answer tells "of whom," it will remain unrecognized, unheard, and thus
the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself.
The holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to
hear an answer which is not entailed within the question asked. It
offers something new and different from the question. How could it be
answered if it but repeats itself?
43
Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer
has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place which holds the
answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers which will solve your
problems because they stand apart from them, and see what can be
answered—what the question is. Within the world the answers
merely raise another question, though they leave the first unanswered.
In the holy instant, you can bring the question to the answer and
receive the answer that was made for you.
44
The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your
help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle
of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is
its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the
instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be
healed. But he/she can let himself/herself be healed and thus
offer the other what he/she has received. Who can bestow upon another
what he/she does not have? And who can share what he/she denies
himself/herself? The Holy Spirit speaks to you. She does not
speak to someone else. Yet by your listening, Her Voice extends because
you have accepted what She says.
45
Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it
remains without conviction. Only when demonstrated has it been proved
and must compel belief. No one is healed through double
messages. If you wish only to be healed, you heal. Your single
purpose makes this possible. But if you are afraid of healing, then it
cannot come through you. The only thing that is required for a healing
is a lack of fear. The fearful are not healed and cannot heal. This does
not mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind. For if it
were, there'd be no need for healing then. But it does mean, if
only for an instant, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient.
Miracles wait not on time.
46
The holy instant is the miracle's abiding-place. From there each one is
born into this world as witness to a state of mind which has transcended
conflict and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of
peace into the battleground and demonstrates that war has no effects.
For all the hurt that war has sought to bring, the broken bodies and the
shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently
lifted up and comforted. There is no sadness where a miracle has
come to heal. And nothing more than just one instant of your
love without attack is necessary that all this occur. In that one
instant are you healed, and in that single instant is all healing done.
47
What stands apart from you when you accept the blessing that the holy
instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing, for the One Who blesses you
loves all the world and leaves nothing within the world that could be
feared. But if you shrink from blessing will the world indeed seem
fearful, for you have withheld its peace and comfort, leaving it to die.
Would not a world so bitterly bereft be looked on as a condemnation by
the one who could have saved it but stepped back because he/she was
afraid of being healed? The eyes of all the dying bring reproach, and
suffering whispers, "What is there to fear?" Consider well its question.
It is asked of you on your behalf. A dying world asks only that you rest
an instant from attack upon yourself, that it be healed.
48
Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is there
received is left behind on your returning to the world. And being
blessed, you will bring blessing. Life is given you to give the dying
world. And suffering eyes no longer will accuse, but shine in thanks to
you who blessing gave. The holy instant's radiance will light your eyes
and give them sight to see beyond all suffering and see the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's face instead. Healing replaces
suffering. Who looks on one cannot perceive the other, for they cannot
both be there. And what you see the world will witness, and will witness
to.
49
Thus is your healing everything the world requires that it may be
healed. It needs one lesson which has perfectly been learned.
And then when you forget it will the world remind you gently of what you
have taught. No reinforcement will its thanks withhold from you who let
yourself be healed that it might live. It will call forth its witnesses
to show the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness to
you who brought the sight to them by which they witnessed it. The world
of accusation is replaced by one in which all eyes look lovingly upon
the Friend who brought them their release. And happily your
brother/sister will perceive the many friends he/she thought were
enemies.
50
Problems are not specific, but they take specific forms, and these
specific shapes make up the world. And no one understands the nature of
his/her problem. If he/she did, it would be there no more for him/her to
see. Its very nature is that it is not. And thus while he/she
perceives it, he/she can not perceive it as it is. But
healing is apparent in specific instances and generalizes to include
them all. This is because they really are the same despite their
different forms. All learning aims at transfer, which becomes complete
within two situations which are seen as one, for only common
elements are there. Yet this can only be attained by One Who does not
see the differences you see. The total transfer of your learning is not
made by you. But that it has been made in spite of all the differences
you see convinces you that they could not be real.
51
Your healing will extend and will be brought to problems that you
thought were not your own. And it will also be apparent that your many
different problems will be solved as any one of them has been escaped.
It cannot be their differences which made this possible, for learning
does not jump from situations to their opposites and bring the same
results. All healing must proceed in lawful manner in accord with laws
which have been properly perceived but never violated. Fear you not the
way that you perceive them. You are wrong, but there is One within you
Who is right.
52
Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who really
understands its laws and Who will guarantee that they remain unviolated
and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what She has taught you to yourself,
and She will do the rest. And thus the power of your learning will be
proved to you by all the many different witnesses it finds. Your
brother/sister first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind
him, and beyond each one there are a thousand more. Each one may seem to
have a problem which is different from the rest. Yet they are solved
together. And their common answer shows the questions could not have
been separate.
53
Peace be to you to whom is healing offered. And you will learn that
peace is given you when you accept the healing for yourself. Its total
value need not be appraised by you to let you understand that you have
benefited from it. What occurred within the instant which love entered
in without attack will stay with you forever. Your healing will be one
of its effects, as will your brother's. Everywhere you go will you
behold its multiplied effects. Yet all the witnesses that you behold
will be far less than all there really are. Infinity cannot be
understood by merely counting up its separate parts. God thanks you for
your healing, for HeShe knows it is a gift of love unto HisHer
SonDaughter, and therefore is it given unto HimHer.
54
Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice
whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says and keep Her words
from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Her
and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they
both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is
the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share
in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their
purpose cannot be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for
they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning
which their purpose has.
55
Sin shifts from pain to pleasure and again to pain. For either witness
is the same and carries but one message: "You are here within this body,
and you can be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of
pain." These witnesses are joined by the many more. Each one seems
different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to
a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike.
Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure, and the pain
behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from
name to name, as one steps forward and another back. Yet which is
foremost makes no difference. Sin's witnesses hear but the call of
death.
56
This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all
your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell
you what it is it feels. It does not know. It tells you but the
names you gave it to use when you call forth the witnesses to
its reality. You cannot choose among them which are real, for any one
you choose is like the rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you
choose. You do not make a witness true because you called him/her by
truth's name. The truth is found in him/her if it is truth he/she represents.
And otherwise he/she lies, if you should call him/her by the holy Name
of God HimHerself.
57
God's Witness sees no witnesses against the body. Neither does
HeShe harken to the witnesses by other names which speak in other ways
for its reality. HeShe knows it is not real. For nothing could
contain what you believe it holds within. Nor could it tell a part of
God HimHerself what it should feel and what its function is. Yet must
HeShe love whatever you hold dear. And for each witness to the body's
death HeShe sends a witness to your life in HimHer Who knows no death.
Each miracle HeShe brings is witness that the body is not real. Its
pains and pleasures does HeShe heal alike, for all sin's
witnesses do HisHer replace.
58
The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin's witnesses
are called. It merely proves that what they represent has no effects.
And this it proves because its own effects have come to take their
place. It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. It is
no longer there. The One Who brings the miracle perceived them all as
one and called by name of fear. As fear is witness unto death, so is the
miracle the witness unto life. It is a witness no one can deny, for it
is the effects of life it brings. The dying live, the dead
arise, and pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself,
but what it represents.
59
Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle forgives because
it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. How foolish and
insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws which it came solely to
undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths.
And they attest to different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth
miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly
pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound—a call
for healing and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. It is
their sameness that the miracle attests. It is their sameness
that it proves.
60
The laws which call them different are dissolved and shown as
powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God
HimHerself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness
to. Be witnesses unto the miracle and not the laws of sin. There is no
need to suffer any more. But there is need that you be healed,
because the suffering of the world has made it deaf to its salvation and
deliverance.
61
The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness,
that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. The holy instant will
replace all sin if you but carry its effects with you. And no one will
elect to suffer more. What better function could you serve than this? Be
healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied
to you. And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love's
symbols take the place of sin.
62
Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done to injure you.
Here is the world's demented version of salvation clearly shown. Like to
a dream of punishment in which the dreamer is unconscious of what
brought on the attack against himself/herself, he/she sees
himself/herself attacked unjustly and by something not himself/herself.
He/she is the victim of this "something else," a thing outside
himself/herself for which he/she has no reason to be held responsible.
He/she must be innocent because he/she knows not what he/she does, but
what is done to him/her. Yet is his/her own attack upon himself/herself
apparent still, for it is he/she who bears the suffering. And he/she
cannot escape because its source is seen outside himself/herself.
63
Now you are being shown you can escape. All that is needed is
you look upon the problem as it is, and not the way that you
have set it up. How could there be another way to solve a problem which
is very simple but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication
which were made to keep the problem unresolved? Without the
clouds, the problem will emerge in all its primitive simplicity. The
choice will not be difficult, because the problem is absurd when clearly
seen. No one has difficulty making up his/her mind to let a simple
problem be resolved if it is seen as hurting him/her and also
very easily removed.
64
The "reasoning" by which the world is made, on which it rests, by which
it is maintained, is simply this: "You are the cause of what I
do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart
from me. While you attack, I must be innocent. And what I suffer from is
your attack." No one who looks upon this "reasoning" exactly as it is
could fail to see it does not follow, and it makes no sense. Yet it
seems sensible because it looks as if the world were hurting
you. And so it seems as if there is no need to go beyond the obvious in
terms of cause.
65 There is indeed a need.
The world's escape from condemnation is a need which those within the
world are joined in sharing. Yet they do not recognize their common
need. For each one thinks that if he/she does his/her part, the
condemnation of the world will rest on him/her. And it is this that
he/she perceives to be his/her part in its deliverance.
Vengeance must have a focus. Otherwise is the avenger's knife in his/her
own hand and pointed to himself/herself. And he/she must see it in
another's hand if he/she would be a victim of attack he/she did not
choose. And thus he/she suffers from the wounds a knife he/she does not
hold has made upon himself/herself. This is the purpose of the
world he/she sees. And looked at thus, the world provides the means by
which this purpose seems to be fulfilled.
66
The means attest the purpose but are not themselves a cause. Nor
will the cause be changed by seeing it apart from its effects. The cause
produces the effects which then bear witness to the cause and not
themselves. Look, then, beyond effects. It is not here the cause of
suffering and sin must lie. And dwell not on the suffering and sin, for
they are but reflections of their cause.
67
The part you play in salvaging the world from condemnation is your own
escape. Forget not that the witness to the world of evil cannot speak
except for what has seen a need for evil in the world. And this is where
your guilt was first beheld. In separation from your brother/sister was
the first attack upon yourself begun. And it is this the world bears
witness to. Seek not another cause nor look among the mighty legions of
its witnesses for its undoing. They support its claim on your
allegiance. What conceals the truth is not where you should look to find
the truth. The witnesses to sin all stand within one little space. And
it is here you find the cause of your perspective on the world.
68
Once you were unaware of what the cause of everything the world appeared
to thrust upon you, uninvited and unasked, must really be. Of one thing
you were sure—of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and
suffering to you, your guilt was not among them. Nor did you in any way
request them for yourself. This is how all illusions come about.
The one who makes them does not see himself/herself as making them, and
their reality does not depend on him/her. Whatever cause they have is
something quite apart from him, and what he/she sees is separate
from his/her mind. He/she cannot doubt his/her dreams' reality because
he/she does not see the part he/she plays in making them and making them
seem real.
69
No one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming for him/her.
He/she becomes a part of someone else's dream. He/she cannot choose to
waken from a dream he/she did not make. Helpless he/she stands, a victim
to a dream conceived and cherished by a separate mind. Careless indeed
of him/her this mind must be, as thoughtless of his/her peace and
happiness as is the weather or the time of day. It loves him/her not but
casts him/her as it will in any role that satisfies its dream. So little
is his/her worth that he/she is but a dancing shadow, leaping up and
down according to a senseless plot conceived within the idle dreaming of
the world.
70
This is the only picture you can see, the one alternative that you can
choose, the other possibility of cause if you be not the dreamer
of your dreams. And this is what you choose, if you deny the cause of
suffering is in your mind. Be glad indeed it is, for thus are
you the one decider of your destiny in time. The choice is yours
to make between a sleeping death and dreams of evil or a happy wakening
and joy of life. What could you choose between but life or
death, waking or sleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality?
Yet if the choice is really given you, then you must see the causes of
the things you choose between exactly as they are and where
they are. What choices can be made between two states, but one of which
is clearly recognized? Who could be free to choose between effects when
only one is seen as up to him/her?
71
An honest choice could never be perceived as one in which the choice is
split between a tiny you and an enormous world, with different dreams
about the truth in you. The gap between reality and dreams lies not
between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. They
are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you
gave away and saw as if it were its start and ending both. Yet was it
started by your secret dream, which you do not perceive,
although it caused the part you see and do not doubt is real. How could
you doubt it while you lie asleep and dream in secret that its cause is
real?
72
A brother/sister separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer
who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be
lingering and slow—of this you dream. Yet underneath this dream is yet
another in which you become the murderer, the secret enemy, the
scavenger and the destroyer of your brother/sister and the world alike.
Here is the cause of suffering, the space between your dreams
and your reality. The little gap you do not even see, the birthplace of
illusions and of fear, the time of terror and of ancient hate, the
instant of disaster, all are here. Here is the cause of
unreality. And it is here that it will be undone.
73
You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it
has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has
terrified God’s SonDaughter and made himher think that heshe has lost
hisher innocence, denied hisher FatherMother, and made war upon
himherself. So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, heshe could not
waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear
unless a gentler dream preceded his/her awaking and allowed his/her
calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to
waken him/her. [A gentler dream, in which hisher suffering was healed
and where hisher brother/sister was hisher friend.] God willed heshe
waken gently and with joy. And gave himher means to waken without fear.
Accept the dream HeShe gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to
change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized.
74
Rest in the Holy Spirit and allow HisHer gentle dreams to take the place
of those you dreamed in terror and in fear of death. She brings
forgiving dreams in which the choice is not who is the murderer and who
shall be the victim. In the dreams HeShe brings, there is no
murder and there is no death. The dream of guilt is fading from
your sight, although your eyes are closed. A smile has come to lighten
up your sleeping face. The sleep is peaceful now, for these are happy
dreams.
75
Dream softly of your sinless brother/sister, who unites with you in holy
innocence. And from this dream, the LordLady of the God Realm will
HimHerself awaken HisHer beloved SonDaughter. Dream of your
brother’s/sister’s kindnesses instead of dwelling in your dreams on
his/her mistakes. Select his/her thoughtfulness to dream about instead
of counting up the hurts he/she gave. Forgive him/her his/her illusions
and give thanks to him/her for all the helpfulness he/she gave. And do
not brush aside his/her the many gifts because he/she is not perfect in
your dreams.
76
HeShe represents his/her FatherMother, Whom you see as offering both
life and death to you. Brother/sister, HeShe gives but life. Yet what
you see as gifts your brother/sister offers represent the gifts you
dream your FatherMother gives to you. Let all your brother’s/sister’s
gifts be seen in light of charity and kindness offered you. And let no
pain disturb your dream of deep appreciation for his/her gifts to you.
77
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no
dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts
as if it were a personal, to be seen and be believed. It takes the
central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made
by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little
while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like
itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies
as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort
is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure and avoid the things
that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and
joys are different and can be told apart.
78
The dreaming of the world takes the many forms, because the body seeks
in the many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on
itself which it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the
world proclaims as valuable and good. It works to get them, doing
senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not
need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may
protect it, and collect more senseless things that it can call its own.
It looks about for special bodies which can share its dream. Sometimes
it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some
phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and
torture it.
79
The body's serial adventures from the time of birth to dying is theme of
every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never
change nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes the many
forms and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its
"hero" finds itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in the many
ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again,
and yet once more that it is cause and not effect. And you
are its effect and cannot be its cause.
80
Thus are you not the dreamer but the dream. And so you wander
idly in and out of places and events which it contrives. That
this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a
dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he/she sees them as
if they were real? The instant that he/she sees them as they are,
they have no more effects on him/her because he/she understands he/she gave
them their effects by causing them and making them seem real.
81
How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has
ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what
it is you do? Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for
the part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first.
No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his/her attack upon
himself/herself. No one believes there really was a time when he/she
knew nothing of a body and could never have conceived this world as
real. HeShe would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion,
too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now
appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have met with
laughter and with disbelief.
82
We can remember this if we but look directly at their cause. And
we will see the grounds for laughter, not a cause for fear. Let us
return the dream he/she gave away unto the dreamer who perceives the
dream as separate from himself/herself and done to him/her. Into
eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea at which the
SonDaughter of God remembered not to laugh. In his/her forgetting did
the thought become a serious idea and possible of both accomplishment
and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away and understand
that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think
that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is
no time.
83
A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God which can
attack itself; a separate brother/sister as an enemy; a mind within a
body, all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning,
ending at its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought
you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to
you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself and
on a guilty world which dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts
instead of you. It brings its vengeance, not your own. It keeps you
narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the
sinful things the body does within its dream. You have no power to make
the body stop its evil deeds because you did not make it and cannot
control its actions or its purpose or its fate.
84
The world but demonstrates an ancient truth—you will believe that others
do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once
deluded into blaming them, you will not see the cause of what they do
because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is this
petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself
but never letting go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all
around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their
trifling cause. Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad
indeed. Yet they but follow. And it is their cause which follows
nothing and is but a jest.
85
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause and looks not
to effects. How else could She correct your error, who have overlooked
the cause entirely? She bids you bring each terrible effect to Her that
you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Her a while. You
judge effects, but She has judged their cause. And by Her judgment are
effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Her say, "My
brother/sister, Holy SonDaughter of God, behold your idle dream in which
this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your
laughter and your brother’s/sister’s joined with Hers.
86
The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this
unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is
true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the
truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you
feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a
dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful
and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you
failed to recognize it is your dream. This single lesson learned
will set you free from suffering, whatever form it takes.
87
The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive lesson of deliverance
until it has been learned, regardless of the form of suffering that
brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Her She will make answer
with this very simple truth. For this one answer takes away the cause
of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects Her answer not at
all, for She would teach you but the single cause of all of them, no
matter what their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect
the simple statement,
89
Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Her Who knows that every one is
like the rest. She sees no differences where none exist, and She will
teach you how each one is caused. None has a different cause from all
the rest, and all of them are easily undone by but a single lesson truly
learned. Salvation is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The
universe proclaims it so. Yet to its witnesses you pay no heed at all.
For they attest the thing you do not want to know. They seem to
keep it secret from you. Yet you need but learn you choose but not
to listen, not to see. How differently will you perceive the
world when this is recognized! When you forgive the world your guilt, you
will be free of it. Its innocence does not demand your guilt,
nor does your guiltlessness rest on its sins.
90
This is the obvious—a secret kept from no one but yourself. And it is
this that has maintained you separate from the world and kept your
brother/sister separate from you. Now need you but to learn that both
of you are innocent or guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that
you be unlike each other; that they both be true. This is the
only secret yet to learn. And it will be no secret you are healed.
1
The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it
cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but
merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being
kept in memory, appears to have immediate effects. This world was over
long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that
thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows
the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a
cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.
2
All the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is over. In its
passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why would you cling
to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? Remembering
is as selective as perception, being its past tense. It is perception of
the past as if it were occurring now and still were there to see.
Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you to take the place of
what God gave in your creationmanifestation. And like all the things you
made, it can be used to serve another purpose and to be the means for
something else. It can be used to heal and not to hurt if you so wish it
be.
3
Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all.
It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something
must be done. It is an unselective memory, which is not used to
interfere with truth. All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing
have been given Her, without the content and the purposes for which they
have been made. They are but skills without an application. They await
their use. They have no dedication and no aim.
4
The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God HimHerself is
there. Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present
state. You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what
is past that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can
remember now. The limitations on remembering the world imposes
on it are as vast as those you let the world impose on you. There is
no link of memory to the past. If you would have it there, then there it
is. But only your desire made the link, and only you have held
it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.
5
The Holy Spirit's use of memory is quite apart from time. She does not
seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let
it go. Memory holds the message it receives and does what it is
given it to do. It does not write the message nor appoint what it is
for. Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems
to serve to cherish ancient hate and offers you the pictures of
injustices and hurts which you were saving, this is what you asked its
message be, and this is what it is. Committed to its vaults, the history
of all the body's past is hidden there. All of the strange associations
made to keep the past alive, the present dead, are stored within it,
waiting your command that they be brought to you and lived again. And
thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away
their cause.
6
Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. It works hand in
hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed
the truth about yourself. Time neither takes away nor can restore. And
yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present,
which is but a consequence in which no change can be made possible
because its cause has gone. Yet change must have a cause that will
endure or else it will not last. No change can be made in the present if
its cause is past. Only the past is held in memory as you make use of
it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now.
7
Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly
taught. And who would keep a senseless lesson in his/her mind when
he/she can learn and can preserve a better one? When ancient memories of
hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot
understand what they are for. Let not the cause that you would give them
now be what it was which made them what they were or seemed to be. Be
glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. And
see instead the new effects of cause accepted now, with
consequences here. They will surprise you with their loveliness.
The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a
cause so ancient that it far exceeds the span of memory which your
perception sees.
8
This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would
forget. It is not past because She let It not be unremembered. It has
never changed because there never was a time in which She did not keep
It safely in your mind. Its consequences will indeed seem new because
you thought that you remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent
from your mind, for it was not your Father’sMother’s Will that HeShe be
unremembered by HisHer SonDaughter.
9
What you remember never was. It came from causelessness which
you confused with cause. It can deserve but laughter when you learn you
have remembered consequences which were causeless and could never
be effects. The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present,
perfectly untouched by time and interference—never changed from what It
is. And you are Its effects, as changeless and as perfect
as Itself. Its memory does not lie in the past nor await the future. It
is not revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not gone.
When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied.
10
You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own CreatorManifestor
cannot understand it is not HeShe Who laid a judgment on HisHer
SonDaughter. You would deny HimHer HisHer effects, yet have they never
been denied. There was no time in which HisHer SonDaughter could be
condemned for what was causeless and against HisHer Will. What your
remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. HeShe has not done
the thing you fear. No more have you. And so your innocence has not been
lost. You need no healing to be healed. In quietness, see in the miracle
a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its own effects and doing
nothing that would interfere.
11
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is
still. It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it
healed in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. And they
will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into
the Mind Which caused all minds to be. Born out of sharing, there can be
no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet
minds and bringing them an instant's stillness when the memory of God
returns to them. Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come
to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards.
12
HeShe to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given
HimHer. For in that instant is HisHer memory allowed to offer all its
treasures to the SonDaughter of God, for whom they have been kept. How
gladly does HeShe offer them unto the one for whom HeShe has been given
them! And hisher CreatorManifestor shares HisHer thanks because HeShe
would not be deprived of HisHer effects. The instant's silence that
HisHer SonDaughter accepts gives welcome to eternity and HimHer and lets
Them enter where They would abide. For in that instant does the
SonDaughter of God do nothing that would make himherself afraid.
13
How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to
keep the memory away. Its own remembering has gone. There is no past to
keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace.
The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb
it not. And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the cause
that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. The stillness
speaks in gentle sounds of love the SonDaughter of God remembers from
before hisher own remembering came in between the present and the past
to shut them out.
14
Now is the SonDaughter of God at last aware of present Cause and Its
benign effects. Now does he/she understand what he/she has made is
causeless, making no effects at all. He/she has done nothing. And in
seeing this, he/she understands he/she never had a need for doing
anything and never did. HisHer Cause is its effects. There never
was a cause beside It that could generate a different past or future.
Its effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and past the world of
sin entirely.
15
What has been lost, to see the causeless not? And where is sacrifice,
when memory of God has come to take the place of loss? What better way
to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the
memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will
suffice to reach beyond? For God has closed it with HimHerself. HisHer
memory has not gone by and left a stranded SonDaughter forever on a
shore where he/she can glimpse another shore which he/she can never
reach. HisHer FatherMother wills that he/she be lifted up and gently
carried over. HeShe has built the bridge, and it is HeShe Who will
transport HisHer SonDaughter across it. Have no fear that HeShe will
fail in what HeShe wills. Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is
for you.
16
Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there
is no cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the
FatherMother is a fathermother by HisHer SonDaughter. Effects do not
createmanifest their cause,
but they establish its causation. Thus, the SonDaughter gives
fathermotherhood to hisher CreatorManifestor and receives the gift that
heshe has given HimHer. It is because heshe is God’s SonDaughter
that heshe must also be a fathermother who createsmanifests as God
createdmanifested himher. The circle of creationmanifestation has no
end. Its starting and its ending are the same. But in itself it holds
the universe of all creationmanifestation, without beginning and without
an end.
17
FatherMotherhood is creationmanifestation. Love must be
extended. Purity is not confined. It is the nature of the innocent to be
forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. Thus is purity not
of the body. Nor can it be found where limitation is. The body can be
healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself. Yet must all
healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the
body, and its innocence is quite apart from it and where all
healing is. Where then is healing? Only where its cause is given its
effects. For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to
causelessness and make it be a cause.
18
Always in sickness does the SonDaughter of God attempt to make
himself/herself his/her cause and not allow himself/herself to be
his/her Father’sMother’s SonDaughter. For this impossible desire, he/she
does not believe that he/she is Love's effect and must be cause because
of what he/she is. The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything.
It has but one effect. And in that recognition, causelessness is
given no effects and none are seen. A mind within a body and a world of
other bodies, each with separate minds, are your
"creationsmanifestations," you the "other" mind, creatingmanifesting
with effects unlike yourself. And as their "father/mother," you must be
like them. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to
sleep and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself and but
a part of someone else's dream.
19
The miracle does not awaken you but merely shows you who the dreamer is.
It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep,
depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of
healing or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in that it
pictures what you wanted shown to you. An empty storehouse with
an open door holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you
are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least—that you have
caused the dream and can accept another dream as well. But for this
change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who
dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect which you
have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect.
20
In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain.
But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the
sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own.
It does not ask you make another—only that you see you made the one you
would exchange for this. This world is causeless, as is every dream that
anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible and no design
exists that could be found and understood.
21
What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? Yet if it
has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a dream, but never will
you give it real effects. For that would change its cause, and it is
this you cannot do. The dreamer of a dream is not awake but does not
know he/she sleeps. He/she sees illusions of himself/herself as sick or
well, depressed or happy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed
effects.
22
The miracle establishes you dream a dream and that its content is not
true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid
of them when he/she perceives he/she made them up. The fear was held in
place because he/she did not see that he/she was author of the
dream, and not a figure in the dream. He/she gives himself/herself the
consequences which he/she dreams he/she gave his/her brother/sister. And
it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him/her to
show him/her that his/her wishes have been done. Thus does he/she fear
his/her own attack but sees it at another's hands. As victim,
he/she is suffering from its effects but not their cause. He/she
authored not his/her own attack, and he/she is innocent of what he/she
caused. The miracle does nothing but to show him/her that he/she has
done nothing. What he/she fears is cause without the consequences which
would make it cause. And so it never was.
23
The separation started with the dream the FatherMother was deprived of
HisHer effects and powerless to keep them since HeShe was no longer
their CreatorManifestor. In the dream, the dreamer made himself/herself,
but what he/she made has turned against him/her, taking on the role of
its creatormanifestor as the dreamer had. And as he/she hated his/her
creatormanifestor, so the figures in the dream have hated him/her.
His/her body is their slave which they abuse because the motives he/she
has given it have they adopted as their own. And hate it for the
vengeance it would offer them. It is their vengeance on the body which
appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream. Effect
and cause are first split off and then reversed, so that effect becomes
a cause; the cause, effect.
24
This is the separation's final step with which salvation, which proceeds
to go the other way, begins. This final step is an effect of
what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the first
step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. For
this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts, will wakening
be feared. Nor will the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to
be the call to fear.
25
Like every lesson which the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle
is clear. It demonstrates what She would have you learn and shows you
its effects are what you want. In Her forgiving dreams are the
effects of yours undone and hated enemies perceived as friends with
merciful intent. Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did
not make it. And you can accept the role of maker of their hate, because
you see that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much
of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies which still seem to
move about as separate things need not be feared. And so they are not
sick.
26
The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also
shows that, having no effects, it is not cause because the function of
causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is
no cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind
made sickness and employed the body to be victim or effect of
what it made. Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle
is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not
the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the mind was sick
that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused
nothing and had no effects.
27
This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to
every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the
dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer rather than deny the
active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking
back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released
because the mind acknowledges "this is not done to me, but I
am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another
choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the
course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps
have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world
undone.
28
What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. For
you have barely started to allow your first uncertain steps to be
directed up the ladder separation led you down. The miracle alone is
your concern at present. Here is where we must begin. And having
started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to
waking and the ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do
not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. Without
support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your
support that strengthens it.
29
No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And
thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold
agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real,
the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it
perceive itself as separate and apart from you. Thus is the body not
perceived as sick by both your minds, from separate points of view.
Uniting with a brother’s/sister’s mind prevents the cause of
sickness and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds which
join, as sickness comes from minds which separate.
30
The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined and
cannot separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and
separate minds are seen as bodies which are separated and which cannot
join. Do not allow your brother/sister to be sick, for if he/she is,
have you abandoned him/her to his/her own dream by sharing it with
him/her. He/she has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and you
have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred.
Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap
unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and
upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap
that leads to HimHer. Fight not HisHer coming with illusions, for it is
HisHer coming that you want above all things that seem to glisten in the
dream.
31
The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world
of dreams. The gap is little. Yet it holds the seeds of
pestilence and every form of ill because it is a wish to keep apart and
not to join. And thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not
its cause. The purpose of the gap is all the cause that sickness
has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if
it were the cause of pain.
32
The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect.
Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and
as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has
made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to
close the gap and as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap
between the waves when they have joined and covered up the space which
seemed to keep them separate for a little while? Where are the grounds
for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between
them where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow?
33
God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by
the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt HeShe cannot
bridge, for HeShe cannot destroy the alien will that HeShe
createdmanifested not. Let its effects be gone and clutch them not with
eager hands, to keep them for yourself. The miracle will brush them all
aside and thus make room for HimHer Who wills to come and bridge HisHer
Son’sDaughter’s returning to HimHerself.
34
Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all
the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. The
door is open, not to thieves but to your starving brothers/sisters who
mistook for gold the shining of a pebble and who stored a heap of snow
that shone like silver. They have nothing left behind the open door.
What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart
and break it into days and months and years? And what are you who live
within the world except a picture of the SonDaughter of God in broken
pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?
35
Be not afraid, but let your world be lit by miracles. And where the gap
was seen to stand between you, join your brother/sister there. And
sickness will be seen without a cause. The dream of healing in
forgiveness lies and gently shows you that you never sinned. The miracle
would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never was.
And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your
FatherMother and your Self. The door is open that all those may come who
would no longer starve and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before
them there. And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has
asked to come to you.
36
This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has
shown. For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all
the rest to share. The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them.
And no one is deprived or can deprive. Here is a feast the FatherMother
lays before HisHer SonDaughter and shares it equally with himher. And in
Their sharing there can be no gap in which abundance falters and
grows thin. Here can the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon
this feast, which has no end. For Love has set Its table in the space
that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.
37
Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to
someone's dream of sickness and of death. It means that you share not
his/her wish to separate and let him/her turn illusions on
himself/herself. Nor do you wish that they be turned instead on you.
Thus have they no effects. And you are free of dreams of pain
because you let him/her be. Unless you help him/hende, you will suffer
pain with him/her because that is your wish. And you become a figure in
his/her dream of pain, as he/she in yours. So do you both become
illusions and without identity. You could be anyone or anything,
depending on whose evil dream you share. You can be sure of just one
thing—that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear.
38
There is a way of finding certainty right here and now.
Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will
lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting them
as causing you and giving you effects. You stand apart from them but not
apart from him/her who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from
the dream and join in one but let the other go. The dream is but
illusion in the mind. And with the mind you would unite, but never
with the dream. It is the dream you fear and not the mind. You
see them as the same because you think that you are but a dream.
And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know
and cannot tell apart.
39
Like you, your brother/sister thinks he/she is a dream. Share not in
his/her illusion of himself/herself, for your identity depends on
his/her reality. Think rather of him/her as a mind in which illusions
still persist, but as a mind which brother/sister is to you. He/she is
not brother/sister made by what he/she dreams, nor is his/her body,
"hero/heroin" of the dream, your brother/sister. It is his/her reality
that is your brother/sister, as is yours to him/her. Your mind and
his/her are joined in brotherhood/sisterhood. His/her body and his/her
dreams but seem to make a little gap, where yours have joined with
his/hers.
40
And yet, between your minds there is no gap. To join his/her
dreams is thus to meet him/her not because his/her dreams would separate
from you. Therefore, release him/her, merely by your claim on
brotherhood/sisterhood and not on dreams of fear. Let him/her
acknowledge who he/she is by not supporting his/her illusions by your
faith, for if you do, you will have faith in yours. With faith
in yours, he/she will not be released, and you are kept in
bondage to his/her dream. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap,
inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in each other's
minds.
41
Be certain, if you do your part, he/she will do his/hers, for he/she
will join you where you stand. Call not to him/her to meet you in the
gap between you, or you must believe that it is your reality as well as
his/hers. You cannot do his/her part, but this you do
when you become a passive figure in his/her dream instead of dreamer of
your own. Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the
dream are one. Who shares a dream must be the dream
he/she shares because by sharing is a cause produced.
42
You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no
stable self exists. What is the same seems different because what is the
same appears to be unlike. His/her dreams are yours because you let
them be. But if you took your own away would he/she be free of them and
of his/her own as well. Your dreams are witnesses to his/hers, and
his/her attest the truth of yours. Yet if you see there is no
truth in yours, his/her dreams will [disappear before his/her eyes], and
he/she will understand what made the dream.
43
The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and She is One because
there is no gap that separates Her Oneness from Itself. The gap between
your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Her is always
one. No one is sick if someone else accepts his/her union with him/her.
His/her desire to be a sick and separated mind can not remain without a
witness or a cause. And both are gone if someone wills to be
united with him/her. He/she has dreams that he/she was separated from
his/her brother/sister who, by sharing not his/her dream, has left the
space between them vacant. And the FatherMother comes to join HisHer
SonDaughter the Holy Spirit joined.
44
The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the
SonDaughter of God and put the pieces into place again. This holy
picture, healed entirely, does She hold out to every separate piece that
thinks it is a picture in itself. To each he/she offers his/her
identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little
broken bit which he/she insisted was himself/herself. And when he/she
sees this picture, he/she will recognize himself/herself. If you
share not your brother’s/sister’s evil dream, this is the
picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of
all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the FatherMother will
receive HisHer SonDaughter, because HisHer SonDaughter was gracious to
himself/herself.
45
I thank you, FatherMother, knowing you will come to close each little
gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy SonDaughter. Your
holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they are
joined because what is in one is in them all. How holy is the smallest
grain of sand when it is recognized as being part of the completed
picture of God’s SonDaughter! The forms the broken pieces seem to take
mean nothing. For the whole is in each one. And every aspect of the
SonDaughter of God is just the same as every other part.
46
Join not your brother’s/sister’s dreams but join with him/her,
and where you join HisHer SonDaughter, the FatherMother is. Who seeks
for substitutes when he/she perceives he/she has lost nothing? Who would
want to have the "benefits" of sickness when he/she has received
the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot be a
loss, and what is not of HimHer has no effects. What then would you
perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that
there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice.
But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap
what is not there. Your willingness to let illusions go is all
the Healer of God’s SonDaughter requires. She will place the miracle of
healing where the seeds of sickness were. And there will be no
loss, but only gain.
47
What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting off
and separating from? A gap perceived between yourselves and what
is seen as health? The good is seen outside; the evil, in. And thus is
sickness separating off the self from good and keeping evil in. God is
the alternate to dreams of fear. Who shares in them can never
share in HimHer. But who withdraws his/her mind from sharing them is
sharing HimHer. There is no other choice. Except you share it, nothing
can exist. And you exist because God shared HisHer Will with
you, that HisHer creationmanifestation might createmanifest.
48
It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice,
bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes
them real. Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone
from them because you did not give them your support. Where fear has
gone, there love must come because there are but these
alternatives. Where one appears, the other disappears. And which you
share becomes the only one you have. You have the one which you accept,
because it is the only one you wish to have. You share no evil
dreams if you forgive the dreamer and perceive that he/she is not the
dream he/she made. And so he/she cannot be a part of yours, from which
you both are free. Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the
evil dream and thus releases him/her.
49
Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you are
the dream you share. And fearing it, you will not want to know
your own Identity because you think that it is fearful. And you
will deny your Self and walk upon an alien ground which your
CreatorManifestor did not make and where you seem to be a something you
are not. You will make war upon your Self, which seems to be
your enemy, and will attack your brother/sister as a part of
what you hate. There is no compromise. You are your Self or an
illusion. What can be between illusion and the truth? A middle ground
where you can be a thing that is not you must be a dream and cannot be
the truth.
50
You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be
the place where all your safety lies and where your Self is safely
hidden by what you have made. Here is a world established that is sick,
and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it
hears—the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds
the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does
not know what seeing is, what listening is for. It is as
little able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know. Its eyes
are blind; its ears are deaf. It cannot think, and so it cannot have
effects.
51
What is there God createdmanifested to be sick? And what that HeShe
createdmanifested not can be? Let not your eyes behold a dream, your
ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that
is not there, to hear the voices that can make no sound. Yet are there
other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and
understood. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they
see and hear they but report. It is not they that hear and see, but you,
who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of
evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. Let not the body's
ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap
which you imagined, and let them persuade their maker his/her imaginings
are real.
52
Creationmanifestation proves reality because it shares the function all
creationmanifestation shares. It is not made of little bits of glass, a
piece of wood, a thread or two perhaps, all put together to attest its
truth. Reality does not depend on this. There is no gap which
separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. Truth has left no
room for them in any place or time. For it fills every place and every
time and makes them wholly indivisible.
53
You who believe there is a little gap between you, do not
understand that it is here that you are kept as prisoners in a world
perceived to be existing here. The world you see does not exist because
the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully
concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague,
uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure.
Yet in the gap is nothing. And there are no awesome
secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of
death. Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and
emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself when you have lost
the fear of recognizing love.
54
Who punishes the body is insane. For here the little gap is seen, and
yet it is not here. It has not judged itself nor made itself to be what
it is not. It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting
pleasure in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is and
cannot understand what it is for. It does not victimize because it has
no will, no preferences, and no doubts. It does not wonder what it is.
And so it has no need to be competitive. It can be victimized
but cannot feel itself as victim. It accepts no role but does
what it is told, without attack.
55
It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a
thing that cannot see and blame it for the sounds you do not like,
although it cannot hear. It suffers not the punishment you give because
it has no feeling. It behaves in ways you want but never makes the
choice. It is not born and does not die. It can but follow aimlessly the
path on which it has been set. And if that path is changed, it walks as
easily another way. It takes no sides and judges not the road it
travels. It perceives no gap because it does not hate. It can be used
for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.
56
The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does
not know. You send it forth to seek for separation and to be a separate
thing. And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the
uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it sees and what it hears
and hate its frailty and littleness. And you despise its acts but not
your own. It sees and acts for you. It hears your voice.
And it is frail and little by your wish. It seems to punish you
and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations which it brings to you.
Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations which you want your
mind to have and see and keep.
57
The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you
call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate
it, yet you think it is your self and that without it would your
self be lost. This is the secret vow which you have made with every
brother/sister who would walk apart. This is the secret oath you take
again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. No one can suffer if
he/she does not see himself/herself attacked and losing by
attack. Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to
sickness. Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him/her and to
attack him/her in return.
58
Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will
suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in
agreement with another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would
be apart from him/her. Unless you both agree that is your wish,
it can have no effects. Whoever says, "There is ingen kløft
between my mind and yours" has kept God's promise, not his/her tiny oath
to be forever faithful unto death. And by his/her healing is his/her
brother/sister healed.
59
Let this be your agreement with each one—that you be one with him/her
and not apart. And he/she will keep the promise that you make with
him/her because it is the one which he/she has made to God, as God has
made to him/her. God keeps HisHer promises; HisHer SonDaughter keeps
hishers. In hisher creationmanifestation did hisher FatherMother say,
"You are beloved of Us and Us of you forever. Be you perfect as Ourself,
for you can never be apart from Us." HisHer SonDaughter remembers not
that heshe replied "I will," though in that promise heshe was born. Yet
God reminds himher of it every time heshe does not share a promise to be
sick but lets hisher mind be healed and unified. Hisher secret vows are
powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises heshe shares. And what
heshe substitutes is not hisher will, who has made promise of himherself
to God.
60
God asks for nothing, and HisHer SonDaughter, like HimHer, need ask for
nothing. For there is no lack in himher. An empty space, a little gap,
would be a lack. And it is only there that he/she could want for
something he/she has not. A space where God is not, a gap between the
FatherMother and the SonDaughter is not the Will of either, who have
promised to be one. God's promise is a promise to HimHerself, and
there is no one who could be untrue to what HeShe wills as part of what
HeShe is. The promise that there is no gap between HimHerself
and what HeShe is cannot be false. What will can come between what must
be one, and in Whose wholeness there can be no gap?
61
The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers/sisters is a
part of you because it is a part of God HimHerself. Are you not sick if
you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help,
the Call to healing, and the Call to heal? Your savior/savioress waits
for healing, and the world waits with him/her. Nor are you apart from
it. For healing will be one or not at all, its oneness being where the
healing lies. What could correct for separation but its opposite? There
is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. You accept it wholly or
accept it not. What is unseparated must be joined. And what is joined
cannot be separate.
62
Either there is a gap between you and your brother/sister, or you are
as one. There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be
split between the two. A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both
and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw
that seems to hold some promise of relief. Yet who can build his/her
home upon a straw and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can
be made a home like this because it lacks foundation in the truth. And
yet, because it does, it can be seen as not your home
but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.
63
With this as purpose is the body healed. It is not used
to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly blamed
for what it did not do. It serves to help the healing of God’s
SonDaughter, and for this purpose it cannot be sick. It
will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that
it not be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice and given you
the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are immune because the
choice cannot be made in terms of form. The choice of sickness seems
to be a form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. And you are
sick or well accordingly.
64
But never you alone. This world is but the dream that you can be
alone and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone must
mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. This
seems to prove that you must be apart. Yet all it means is that you
tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. Yet faithlessness is
sickness. It is like the house set upon straw. It seems to be quite
solid and substantial in itself. Yet its stability cannot be judged
apart from its foundation. If it rests on straw, there is no need to bar
the door and lock the windows and make fast the bolts. The wind will
topple it, and rain will come and carry it into oblivion.
65
What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for
danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and
heavy anchors when its weakness lies not in itself but in the frailty of
the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? What can be
safe which rests upon a shadow? Would you build your home upon what will
collapse beneath a feather's weight?
66
Your home is built upon your brother’s/sister’s health, upon his/her
happiness, his/her sinlessness, and everything his/her FatherMother
promised him/her. No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the
Foundation of his/her home. The winds will blow upon it, and the rain
will beat against it but with no effect. The world will wash away, and
yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within
itself alone. It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise that
HisHer SonDaughter is safe forever in HimHerself. What gap can interpose
itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? From here the
body can be seen as what it is and neither less nor more in worth than
the extent to which it can be used to liberate God’s SonDaughter unto
hisher home. And with this holy purpose is it made a home of holiness a
little while because it shares your Father’sMother’s Will with you.
1
There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is
nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived
of in the wholeness that is HisHers. The compromise the least and
littlest gap would represent in HisHer eternal love is quite impossible.
For it would mean HisHer love could harbor just a hint of hate; HisHer
gentleness turn sometimes to attack; and HisHer eternal patience
sometimes fail. All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between
your brother/sister and yourself. How could you trust HimHer, then? For
HeShe must be deceptive in HisHer Love. Be wary, then; let HimHer not
come too close, and leave a gap between you and HisHer love through
which you can escape if there be need for you to flee.
2
Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is
treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart.
No one who hates but is afraid of love and therefore must he/she
be afraid of God. Certain it is he/she knows not what love means. HeShe
fears to love and loves to hate, and so he/she thinks that love is
fearful—hate is love. This is the consequence the little gap must bring
to those who cherish it and think that it is their salvation and their
hope.
3
The fear of God! The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has
not yet gone. The rest are past, but this one still remains to block
your path and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and
bleak. You had decided that your brother/sister is your enemy. Sometimes
a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your
friendship possible a little while. But not without a gap between you,
lest he/she turn again into an enemy. [Let him/her come close to you,
and you jumped back; as you approached, he/she instantly withdrew.] A
cautious friendship, limited in scope and carefully restricted in
amount, became the treaty you had made with him/her. You shared a
qualified entente in which a clause of separation was a point on which
you both agreed to keep intact. And violating this was thought to be a
breach of treaty not to be allowed.
4
The gap between you is not one of space between two separate bodies.
This but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the symbol
of a promise made to meet when you prefer and separate until you both
elect to meet again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch and
signify a meeting-place to join. But always is it possible to go your
separate ways. Conditional upon the "right" to separate will you agree
to meet from time to time and keep apart in intervals of separation,
which protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. The body saves
you, for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives you time in which
to build again your separate selves, which you believe diminish as you
meet.
5
The body could not separate your minds unless you wanted it to
be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you. Thus do you
endow it with a power that lies not within itself. And herein lies its
power over you. For now you think that it determines when you
meet and limits your ability to make communion with each other's mind.
And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible
for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. It dictates what its
health can tolerate and what will tire it and make it sick. And its
"inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do and
keep your purpose limited and weak.
6
The body will accommodate to this if you would have it so. It
will allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred
in between. And it will take command of when to "love" and when to
shrink more safely into fear. It will be sick because you do not know
what loving means. And so you must misuse each circumstance and
everyone you meet and see in them a purpose not your own.
7
It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear demands the
sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. For hate to
be maintained love must be feared and only sometimes present,
sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as treacherous because it seems to
come and go uncertainly and offer no stability to you. You do not see
how limited and weak is your allegiance and how frequently you have
demanded that love go away and leave you quietly alone in "peace."
8
The body, innocent of any goal, is your excuse for variable goals you
hold and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but
its lack of strength or weakness. Would you recognize that
nothing stands between you? Would you know there is no gap
behind which you can hide? There is a shock that comes to those who
learn their savior/savioress is their enemy no more. There is a wariness
that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there are
overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, "God is love."
9
Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing more
than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce
you to abandon HimHer? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to
hold you back an instant from HisHer love? Would you allow the body to
say "no" to the God Realm 's calling, were you not afraid to find a loss
of self in finding God? Yet can your Self be lost by being
found?
10
Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that
you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth, instead of looking on
it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is
impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough, and far too difficult
for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell
instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any
loss, to find yourself in the God Realm and in God? Until you realize
you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you
will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will
not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do
not see them, they are there. Their cause has been effected, and
they must be present where their cause has entered in.
11
You have accepted healing's Cause, and so it must be you are healed. And
being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. The miracle is
not a separate thing which happens suddenly, as an effect without a
cause. Nor is it in itself a cause. But where its cause is must it be.
Now is it caused, though not as yet perceived. And its effects are
there, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a
reason for regret but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of
peace.
12
It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a
battleground. It has been futile to demand escape from sin and
pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and
pain. For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack
and guilt but one. Where they are causeless, their effects are gone, and
love must come wherever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are
free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred
and attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you
should welcome the effects of love.
13
Your Guest has come. You asked HimHer, and HeShe came. You did
not hear HimHer enter, for you did not wholly welcome HimHer. And yet
HisHer gifts came with HimHer. HeShe has laid them at your feet and asks
you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. HeShe needs
your help in giving them to all who walk apart believing they are
separate and alone. They will be healed when you accept your gifts,
because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the
holy ground whereon you stand and where HisHer gifts for them are laid.
14
You do not see how much you now can give because of everything you have
received. Yet HeShe Who entered in but waits for you to come
where you invited HimHer to be. There is no other place where HeShe can
find HisHer host nor where HisHer host can meet with HimHer. And nowhere
else HisHer gifts of peace and joy and all the happiness HisHer Presence
brings can be obtained. For they are where HeShe is Who brought them
with HimHer that they might be yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you
can see the gifts HeShe brought. And when you look on them, you
will believe HisHer Presence must be there. For what you now can do
could not be done without the love and grace HisHer Presence holds.
15
Such is the promise of the living God—HisHer SonDaughter have life and
every living thing be part of himher, and nothing else have life. What you
have given "life" is not alive and symbolizes but your wish to be alive
apart from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and
living, death. Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has
this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its
basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. Yet
what is that except the state confusion really means? Stability to those
who are confused is meaningless, and shift and change become the law on
which they predicate their lives.
16
The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is
possible. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you
found yourself before. There is no change in immortality, and
the God Realm knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose,
for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the
teacher who is teaching them. The body can appear to change with
time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter
it. Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what
the purpose of the body is.
17
Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its nothingness
is guarantee that it can not be sick. In your demand
that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that
God be less than all HeShe really is. What, then, becomes of you, for it
is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? For HeShe is told that
part of HimHer belongs to HimHer no longer. HeShe must sacrifice your
self, and in HisHer sacrifice are you made more, and HeShe is lessened
by the loss of you. And what is gone from HimHer becomes your god,
protecting you from being part of HimHer.
18
The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked because its
nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with
power in itself. As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel
and act and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail
to be what you demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its
littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not
more than it should be but only in your failure to perceive that it is
nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would
flee.
19
As "something" is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what HeShe
is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HisHer loss you
celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it
as a thing you hate. For if HeShe be the sum of everything, then what is
not in HimHer does not exist, and HisHer completion is its
nothingness. Your savior/savioress is not dead, nor does he/she dwell in
what was built as temple unto death. He/she lives in God, and it is this
that makes him/her savior/savioress unto you, and only this.
His/her body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death.
For what is yours cannot be more nor less than what is his/hers.
20
Condemn your savior/savioress not because he/she thinks he/she is a
body. For beyond his/her dreams is his/her reality. But he/she must
learn he/she is a savior/savioress first, before he/she can remember
what he/she is. And he/she must save who would be saved. On saving you
depends his/her happiness. For who is savior/savioress but the one who gives
salvation? Thus he/she learns it must be his/her to give. Unless he/she
gives, he/she will not know he/she has, for giving is the proof
of having. Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength
could fail to understand this must be so. For who could give
unless he/she has, and who could lose by giving what must be increased
thereby?
21
Think you the FatherMother lost HimHerself when HeShe createdmanifested
you? Was HeShe made weak because HeShe shared HisHer love? Was HeShe
made incomplete by your perfection? Or are you the proof that
HeShe is perfect and complete? Deny HimHer not HisHer witness in the
dream HisHer SonDaughter prefers to hanshendes reality. HeShe must be
savior/savioress from the dream he/she made, that he/she be free
of it. HeShe must see someone else as not a body, one with him,
without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who
know not that they live. Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet
one theme of truth—no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of
light createdmanifested in the dark, where God still shines.
22
You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can let yourself be wakened.
You can overlook your brother’s/sister’s dreams. So perfectly can you
forgive him/her his/her illusions, he/she becomes your savior/savioress
from your dreams. And as you see him/her shining in the space of light
where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God HimHerself
is where his/her body is. Before this light the body disappears, as
heavy shadows must give way to light. The darkness cannot choose that it
remain. The coming of the light means it is gone. In glory will
you see your brother/sister then and understand what really
fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart.
23
There, in its place, God's Witness has set forth the gentle way of
kindness to God’s SonDaughter. Whom you forgive is given power to
forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto
you. Make way for love, which you did not createmanifest , but which you
can extend. On earth this means forgive your brother/sister, that
the darkness may be lifted from your mind. When light has come to
him/her through your forgiveness, he/she will not forget his/her
savior/savioress, leaving him/her unsaved. For it was in your
face he/she saw the light that he/she would keep beside him/her as
he/she walks through darkness to the everlasting light.
24
How holy are you, that the SonDaughter of God can be your
savior/savioress in the midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. See
how eagerly he/she comes and steps aside from heavy shadows that have
hidden him/her and shines on you in gratitude and love. He/she is
himself/herself, but not himself/herself alone. And as his/her
FatherMother lost not part of HimHer in your creationmanifestation, so
the light in him/her is brighter still because you gave your light to
him/her to save him/her from the dark. And now the light in you must be
as bright as shines in him/her. This is the spark that shines within the
dream—that you can help him/her waken and be sure his/her waking eyes
will rest on you. And in his/her glad salvation, you are saved.
25
Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? They are
dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth
becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood
that dreams are dreams and that escape depends not on the dream, but
only on awaking. Could it be some dreams are kept and others wakened
from? The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you
want to live in dreams or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle
does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You
cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping
or awake. And dreaming goes with only one of these.
26
The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in
which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream of fear,
no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within,
without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is
it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams from which
they all are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be made of
something else. The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you
still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. You
would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the
way.
27
In simplest form it can be said attack is a response to function
unfulfilled as you perceive the function. It can be in you or
someone else, but where it is perceived, it will be there it is
attacked. Depression or assault must be theme of every dream, for they
are made of fear. The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they
may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear which is their
core. And it is this the miracle perceives, and not the
wrappings in which it is bound.
28
When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the
function you allotted him/her? And does not this become the
"reason" your attack is justified? The dreams you think you like are
those in which the functions you have given have been filled, the needs
which you ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if they be
fulfilled or merely wanted. It is the idea that they exist from
which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are
desired or not. And each one represents some function which you have
assigned, some goal which an event, or body, or a thing should
represent and should achieve for you. If it succeeds, you think
you like the dream. If it should fail, you think the dream is sad. But
whether it succeeds or fails is not its core but just the flimsy
covering.
29
How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who
gave the "proper" role to every figure which the dream contains. No one
can fail but your idea of him/her, and there is no betrayal but
of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one
of fear. The coverings may not appear to change, but what they mean has
changed because they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by
their purpose in that they seem to be what they are for.
A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother/sister giving you a chance
to help if this becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness
thus are turned to joy.
30
What is your brother/sister for? You do not know because your
function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him/her which you
imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him/her
when he/she fails to take the part which you assigned to him/her in what
you dream your life was meant to be. He/she asks for help in every dream
he/she has, and you have help to give him/her if you see the function of
the dream as She perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as
means to serve the function given Her. Because She loves the dreamer not
the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is
Her love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love.
31
There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten, where
no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in you
which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a
resting place so still no sound except a hymn to the God Realm rises up
to gladden God the FatherMother and the SonDaughter. Where both abide
are They remembered, both. And where They are is the God Realm and is
peace. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your
Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you
be.
32
The changelessness of the God Realm is in you, so deep within that
nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still
infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so
strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its CreatorManifestor;
nothing can intrude upon the sacred SonDaughter of God within. Here is
the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the SonDaughter of
God and would behold himher waken and be glad. Heshe is a part of you,
and you of himher because heshe is hisher Father’sMother’s SonDaughter
and not for any purpose you may see in himher. Nothing is asked of you
but to accept the changeless and eternal that abide in himher, for your
Identity is there. The peace in you can but be found in himher. And
every thought of love you offer himher but brings you nearer to your
wakening to peace eternal and to endless joy.
33
This sacred SonDaughter of God is like yourself—the mirror of hisher
Father’sMother’s love for you, the soft reminder of hisher
Father’sMother’s love by which heshe was createdmanifested and which
still abides in himhende, as it abides in you. Be very still and hear
God's Voice in himher and let It tell you what hisher function is. Heshe
was createdmanifested that you might be whole, for only the complete can
be a part of God's completion, Which createdmanifested you.
34
There is no gift the FatherMother asks of you but that you see in all
creationmanifestation but the shining glory of HisHer gift to you.
Behold HisHer SonDaughter, HisHer perfect gift in whom hisher
FatherMother shines forever and to whom is all creationmanifestation
given as hisher own. Because he/she has it is it given you, and where it
lies in him/her, behold your peace. The quiet that surrounds you dwells
in him, and from this quiet come the happy dreams in which your hands
are joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams of
pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold on every vain
illusion of the world. And being empty, they received instead a
brother’s/sister’s hand in which completion lay.
35
If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you
would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on
it may appear to be. For you would understand how great the cost of
holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to
bless and lead God’s SonDaughter unto his/her Father’sMother’s house.
Would you not want to be a friend to him/hende,
createdmanifested by his/her FatherMother as HisHer home? If God esteems
him/her worthy of HimHerself, would you attack him/her with the
hands of hate? Who would lay bloody hands on the God Realm itself and
hope to find its peace? Your brother/sister thinks he/she holds the hand
of death. Believe him/her not. But learn instead how blessed are you who
can release him/her just by offering him/her yours.
36
A dream is given you in which he/she is your savior/savioress, not your
enemy in hate. A dream is given you in which you have forgiven him/her
for all his/her dreams of death—a dream of hope you share with him/her
instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. Why does it seem so
hard to share this dream? Because unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream
its function, it was made for hate and will continue in death's
services. Each form it takes in some way calls for death. And those who
serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each
with his/her tiny spear and rusted sword to keep his/her ancient
promises to die.
37
Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from
use by Her Who sees a different function for a dream. When dreams are
shared, they lose the function of attack and separation, even though it
was for this that every dream was made. Yet nothing in the world of
dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is
not where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so
and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to
step aside from dreaming of a world outside yourself. And leading
finally beyond all dreams unto the peace of everlasting life.
38
How willing are you to forgive your brother/søster? How much do you
desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These
questions are the same in different form. Forgiveness is your
peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and
destruction, sin, and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss.
This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks and gladly offers peace instead
of this.
39
Swear not to die, you holy SonDaughter of God! You make a bargain that
you cannot keep. The SonDaughter of Life cannot be killed. He/she is
immortal as his/her FatherMother. What he/she is cannot be changed.
He/she is the only thing in all the universe that must be one.
What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and
night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides,
the seasons, and the lives of men/women; all things that change with
time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end is
not where the eternal is. God’s SonDaughter can never change by what
men/women made of himher. Heshe will be as heshe was and as heshe is,
for time appointed not hisher destiny nor set the hour of hisher birth
and death. Forgiveness will not change himher. Yet time waits upon
forgiveness that the things of time may disappear because they have no
use.
40
Nothing survives its purpose. If it be conceived to die, then die it
must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. Change is the only
thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed,
however changeless it appears to be. Think not that you can set a goal
unlike God's purpose for you and establish it as changeless and eternal.
You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can
not remove the power to change your mind and see another purpose
there. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make
eternal, to ensure that only the God Realm would not pass away.
41
You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has
been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time and change that time
might be preserved, excepting one. Forgiveness does not aim at
keeping time but at its ending when it has no use. Its purpose ended; it
is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the
function God established for HisHer SonDaughter in full awareness. Time
can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. There is no
death because the living share the function their CreatorManifestor gave
to them. Life's function cannot be to die. It must be life's extension,
that it be as one forever and forever without end.
42
This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body
only if you think that it was made to crucify God’s SonDaughter. For
even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this
to you. Let this be changed, and nothing in the world but must
be changed as well. For nothing here but is defined as what you see it
for. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God’s
SonDaughter! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with
happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such
a happy place! Nor can it be forgot in such a world, it is a
little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.
43
Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time
an idol/idolress falls. The God Realm cannot be found where it is not,
and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol/idolress that you
worship when God calls will never answer in HisHer place. There is
no other answer you can substitute and find the happiness HisHer answer
brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a
futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What
if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you
glad that you are told where happiness abides and seek no longer
elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth
and not to seek for it outside yourself.
44
No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion,
or some dream that there is something outside of himself/herself that
will bring happiness and peace to him/her. If everything is in
him/hende, this cannot be so. And therefore by his/her coming, he/she
denies the truth about himself/herself and seeks for something more
than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where
all the rest of it is not. This is the purpose he/she bestows upon the
body—that it seek for what he/she lacks and give him/her what would make
himself/herself complete. And thus he/she wanders aimlessly about in
search of something that he/she cannot find, believing that he/she is
what he/she is not.
45
The lingering illusion will impel him/her to seek out a thousand
idols/idolresses and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each
will fail him/her, all excepting one; for he/she will die and does not
understand the idol/idolress that he/she seeks is but his/her
death. Its form appears to be outside himself/herself. Yet does he/she
seek to kill God’s SonDaughter within and prove that he/she is
victor/victoress over him/her. This is the purpose every idol/idolress
has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that
cannot be fulfilled.
46
Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is
cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you
believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death. To
sacrifice is to give up and thus to be without and to have suffered
loss. And by this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside
yourself. The search implies you are not whole within and fear to look
upon your devastation and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you
are.
47
Idols/idolresses must fall because they have no life, and what
is lifeless is a sign of death. You came to die, and what would
you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? No
sadness and no suffering proclaims a message other than an idol/idolress
found that represents a parody of life which in its lifelessness is
really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must
fail and crumble and decay because a form of death cannot be life, and
what is sacrificed cannot be whole.
48
All idols/idolresses of this world were made to keep the truth within
from being known to you and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you
must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain
to worship idols/idolresses in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and
your completion lies in HimHer. No idol/idolress takes HisHer place.
Look not to idols/idolresses. Do not seek outside yourself. Let us
forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwise,
the future will be like the past and but a series of depressing
dreams in which all idols/idolresses fail you one by one, and you see
death and disappointment everywhere.
49
To change all this and open up a road of hope and of release in what
appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you
do not know the purpose of the world. You give it goals it does
not have, and thus do you decide what it is for. You try to see in it a
place of idols/idolresses found outside yourself, with power to make
complete what is within by splitting what you are between the two. You choose
your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been
given you. Your idols/idolresses do what you would have them do and have
the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream
because you want their power as your own.
50
Yet where are dreams but in a mind asleep? And can a dream succeed in
making real the pictures it projects outside itself? Save time, my
brothers/sisters; learn what time is for. And speed the end of
idols/idolresses in a world made sad and sick by seeing idols/idolresses
there. Your holy minds are altars unto God, and where HeShe is, no
idols/idolresses can abide. The fear of God is but the fear of loss of
idols/idolresses. It is not the fear of loss of your reality. But you
have made of your reality an idol/idolress which you must protect
against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which
this idol/idolress can be saved. Salvation thus appears to threaten life
and offer death.
51
It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there is no death, and only
life exists. The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. An
idol/idolress cannot take the place of God. Let HimHer remind
you of HisHer love for you, and do not seek to drown HisHer Voice in
chants of deep despair to idols/idolresses of yourself. Seek not outside
your FatherMother for your hope. For hope of happiness is not
despair.
52
What is an idol/idolress? Do you think you know? For idols/idolresses
are unrecognized as such and never seen for what they really are. That
is the only power which they have. Their purpose is obscure, and
they are feared and worshipped both because you do not know what
they are for and why they have been made. An idol/idolress is an image
of your brother/sister which you would value more than what he/she is.
Idols/idolresses are made that he/she may be replaced, no matter what
their form. And it is this which never is perceived and recognized. Be
it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object
owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
53
Let not their form deceive you. Idols/idolresses are but substitutes for
your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little
self for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed
against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply
your lacks and add the value which you do not have. No one believes in
idols/idolresses who has not enslaved himself/herself to littleness and
loss. And thus must seek beyond his/her little self for strength to
raise his/her head and stand apart from all the misery the world
reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and
quiet calm which liberates you from the world and lets you stand apart
in quiet and in peace.
54
An idol/idolress is a false impression or a false belief—some form of
anti-Christ Consciousness/anti-Mercy Consciousness which constitutes a
gap between the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and what
you see. An idol/idolress is a wish made tangible and given form and
thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a
thought and cannot leave the mind that is its source. Nor is its form
apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ
Consciousness/anti-Mercy Consciousness oppose the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and fall before Her face like a
dark veil which seems to shut you off from Her, alone in darkness. Yet
the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can
banish what it seems to separate nor darken by one whit the light
itself.
55
This world of idols/idolresses is a veil across the face of the
Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness because its purpose
is to separate your brother/sister from yourself. A dark and fearful
purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass
from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its
source abides within your mind, where God abideth not. Where is this
place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart?
What hand could be held up to block God's way? Whose voice could make
demand HeShe enter not? The "more-than-everything" is not a thing to
make you tremble and to quail in fear. The Christ Consciousness’s/the
Mercy Consciousness's enemy is nowhere. He/she can take no form in which
he/she ever will be real.
56
What is an idol/idolress? Nothing! It must be believed before it seems
to come to life and given power that it may be feared. Its life
and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores
to what has life and power worthy of the gift of the God Realm
and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the
veil between has not put out. It merely lifts the veil and lets
the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. It does not need belief
to be itself, for it has been createdmanifested, so it is.
An idol/idolress is established by belief, and when it is
withdrawn, the idol/idolress "dies."
57
This is the anti-the Christ Consciousness/anti-Mercy Consciousness—the
strange idea there is a power past omnipotence, a place beyond the
infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of
idols/idolresses has been set by the idea this power and place and time
are given form and shape the world where the impossible has happened.
Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the
timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change;
the peace of God, forever given to all living things, gives way to
chaos. And the SonDaughter of God, as perfect, sinless and as loving as
his/her FatherMother, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and
finally to die.
58
Where is an idol/idolress? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is
infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? A place of darkness
set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is
endless, has no place to be. An idol/idolress is beyond where
God has set all things forever and has left no room for anything to be except
HisHer Will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol/idolress be while God is
everything and everywhere.
59
What purpose has an idol/idolress, then? What is it for? This is
the only question which has the many answers, each depending on the one
of whom the question has been asked. The world believes in
idols/idolresses. No one comes unless he/she worshipped them and still
attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him/her a gift reality
does not contain. Each worshiper of idols/idolresses harbors hope
his/her special deities will give him/her more than other men/women
possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of
what—more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more
affliction and more pain. But more of something is an
idol/idolress for. And when one fails, another takes its place
with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms
the "something" takes. An idol/idolress is a means for getting more.
And it is this that is against God's Will.
60
God has not the many SonDaughters, but only One. Who can have more, and
who be given less? In the God Realm would the SonDaughter of God but
laugh if idols/idolresses could intrude upon his/her peace. It is for
himher the Holy Spirit speaks and tells you idols/idolresses have
no purpose here. For more than the God Realm can you never have. If the
God Realm is within, why would you seek for idols/idolresses which would
make of the God Realm less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your
brother/sister and on you as one with HimHer? God gave you all
there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did HeShe also give the
same to every living thing as well. And thus is every living
thing a part of you, as of HimHerself. No idol/idolress can establish
you as more than God. But you will never be content with being less.
61
The slave of idols/idolresses is a willing slave. For willing
he/she must be to let himself/herself bow down in worship to what has no
life and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy
SonDaughter of God that this could be his/her wish—to let
himself/herself fall lower than the stones upon the ground and look to
idols/idolresses that they raise him/her up? Hear then your story in the
dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe
that it is not a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind
that God createdmanifested perfect as HimHerself. And in that dream was
the God Realm changed to hell, and God made enemy unto HisHer
SonDaughter.
62
How can God’s SonDaughter awaken from the dream? It is a dream of
judgment. So must he/she judge not, and he/she will waken. For
the dream will seem to last while he/she is part of it. Judge not, for
he/she who judges will have need of idols/idolresses which will
hold the judgment off from resting on himself/herself. Nor can he/she
know the Self he/she has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself
a part of evil dreams where idols/idolresses are your "true" identity
and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon
yourself.
63
All figures in the dream are idols/idolresses made to save you from the
dream. Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you
from. Thus does an idol/idolress keep the dream alive and
terrible, for who could wish for one unless he/she were in terror and
despair? And this the idol/idolress represents, and so its worship is
the worship of despair and terror and the dream from which they come.
Judgment is an injustice to God’s SonDaughter, and it is justice
that who judges himher will not escape the penalty he/she laid upon
himself/herself within the dream he/she made. God knows of justice, not
of penalty. But in the dream of judgment, you attack and are condemned
and wish to be the slave of idols/idolresses which are interposed
between your judgment and the penalty it brings.
64
There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it.
For idols/idolresses must be part of it to save you from what you
believe you have accomplished and have done to make you sinful and put
out the light within you. Little children, it is there. You do but
dream, and idols/idolresses are the toys you dream you play with. Who
has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world and give
their toys the power to move about and talk and think and feel and speak
for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds
of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made
up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes
are their own.
65
Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child
who thought he/she made them real. Yet can a dream attack? Or can
a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child
believe because he/she fears his/her thoughts and gives them to the toys
instead. And their reality becomes his/her own because they seem to save
him/her from his/her thoughts. Yet do they keep his/her thoughts alive
and real but seen outside himself/herself, where they can turn against
him/her for his/her treachery to them. He/she thinks he/she needs
them that he/she may escape his/her thoughts, because he/she thinks the
thoughts are real. And so he/she makes of anything a toy to make his/her
world remain outside himself/herself, and play that he/she is but a part
of it.
66
There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek
not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need
of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children's game in which the
child becomes the father/the mother, powerful, but with the little
wisdom of a child. What hurts him/her is destroyed; what helps him/her,
blessed. Except he/she judges this as does a child, who does not know
what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he/she
is afraid of all the chaos in a world he/she thinks is governed by the
laws he/she made. Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he/she
thinks is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he/she did not
understand.
67
The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been
changed. They are not seen as idols/idolresses which betray. It is a
dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else nor
interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No
one is used for something he/she is not, for childish things have all
been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed
into a dream where all is joy because that is the purpose which
it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over.
And the forms which enter in the dream are now perceived as
brothers/sisters, not in judgment but in love.
68
Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate
the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is
being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard
which everyone remembers, though he/she has not heard it since before
all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close
the song of the God Realm can be heard, not with the ears, but with the
holiness which never left the altar which abides forever deep within the
SonDaughter of God. And when heshe hears this song again, heshe knows
heshe never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of judgment
have been put away?
69
Whenever you feel fear in any form—and you are fearful if you do
not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance the God
Realm goes with you—be sure you made an idol/idolress and believe it
will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the
guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that
the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Your
self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment,
leading surely to the frantic search for idols/idolresses and for death.
70
Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not
attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away and dreams
become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to
worship idols/idolresses and to keep attack. Forgiving dreams
are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the
dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He/she does not fear his/her
judgment, for he/she has judged no one, nor has sought to be released
through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while
he/she is remembering what he/she forgot when judgment seemed to be the
way to save him/her from its penalty.
1
The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. The goal is
clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. The speed by
which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone—your willingness
to practice every step. Each one will help a little every time it is
attempted. And together will these steps lead you from dreams of
judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new
to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So
now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which
you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready
for whatever need.
2
Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making
them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set
begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let
yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set,
adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if
you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do
not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want and
tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen
just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.
1. 3
The outlook starts with this:
5
This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. But
it must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be
called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you have set the
rules for how you should react to them. And then another ansswer cannot
but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear.
6
This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind and then
decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the
problem as you saw it first. This leads to fear because it
contradicts what you perceive, and so you feel attacked. And therefore
angry. There are rules by which this will not happen. But it does occur
at first, while you are learning how to hear.
2. 7
Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment
for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want, the
feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the
things you would experience and say,
9
These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed
without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a
problem in itself.
10
But there will still be times when you have judged already. Now the
answer will provoke attack unless you quickly straighten out your mind
to want an answer that will work. Be certain this has happened if you
feel yourself unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given you.
This means you have decided by yourself and cannot see the question.
Now you need a quick restorative before you ask.
3. 11
Remember once again the day you want and recognize that something has
occurred which is not part of it. Then realize that you have asked a
question by yourself and must have set an answer in your terms. Then
say,
13
This cancels out the terms which you have set and lets the answer show
you what the question must have really been.
14
Try to observe this rule without delay despite your opposition. For you
have already gotten angry, and your fear of being answered in a
different way from what your version of the question asks will gain
momentum until you believe the day you want is one in which you get your
answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would
destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want. This can
be very hard to realize when once you have decided by yourself the rules
which promise you a happy day. Yet this decision still can be undone by
simple methods which you can accept.
4. 15
If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your question go,
you can begin to change your mind with this:
17
This much is obvious and paves the way for the next easy step.
5. 18
Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be
easier than to continue with,
20
This works against the sense of opposition and reminds you that help is
not being thrust upon you but is something that you want and that you
need, because you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will
be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let
yourself be helped.
21
Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you
that you will gain if what you have decided is not so. Until
this point is reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being
right. But this much reason have you now attained—you would be
better off if you were wrong.
6. 22
This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are not
coerced but merely hope to get a thing you want. And you can say in
perfect honesty,
24
Now you have changed your mind about the day and have remembered what
you really want. Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the
insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are
wrong. Thus is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for
you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want and see that it
is this for which you ask.
7. 25
This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be
helped. It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing
to be shown:
27
Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will
make sense as well. Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it
is you who will be helped by it.
28
It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent
unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules
which will protect you from the ravages of fear. When this has been
achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. But
meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let
us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are
offered here.
29
We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make
decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real decision in itself. And
yet, you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question
really is with what you choose to make them. That is really all.
The first rule, then, is not coercion but a simple statement of a simple
fact. You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you
decide. For they are made with idols/idolresses or with God. And you ask
help of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness or the
anti-Christ Consciousness/the anti-Mercy Consciousness, and which you
choose will join with you and tell you what to do.
30
Your day is not at random. It is set by what you choose to live it with
and how the friend/female friend whose counsel you have sought perceives
your happiness. You always ask advice before you can decide on anything.
Let this be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion
here nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There is
no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is, you must be
wrong.
31
The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your
advisor/advisoress must agree on what you want before it can occur. It
is but this agreement which permits all things to happen.
Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of
judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results because
they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your advisor
for yourself and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to
the world, for it will be what you have asked for and will reinforce the
rule of your advisor in the world. Whose realm is the world for you
today? What kind of day will you decide to have?
32
It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all
the world. It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone
to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have
understood the basic law that makes decision powerful and gives it all
effects that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined
before there can be a decision. Let this be the one reminder
that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want and give it to
the world by having it yourself. Your judgment has been lifted from the
world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received, so
must you give.
33
Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight yourself?
She tells you but your will; She speaks for you. In Her
divinity is but your own. And all She knows is but your knowledge, saved
for you that you may do your will through Her. God asks you do
your will. HeShe joins with you. HeShe did not set HisHer Realm
up alone. And the God Realm itself but represents your will, where
everything createdmanifested is for you. No spark of life but was
createdmanifested with your glad consent, as you would have it be. And
not one Thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be
born. God is no enemy to you. HeShe asks no more than that HeShe hear
you call HimHer "Friend."
34
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 HisHer SonDaughter
without what HeShe has chosen for HimHerself? God but ensured that you
would never lose your will when HeShe gave you HisHer perfect answer.
Hear it now that you may be reminded of HisHer love and learn your will.
God would not have HisHer SonDaughter made prisoner to what HeShe does
not want. HeShe joins with you in willing you be free. And to
oppose HimHer is to make a choice against yourself and choose
that you be bound.
35
Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of
love. For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear
established there. Now hear God speak to you through Her Who is HisHer
Voice and yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate
and be a prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a little
creaturemanifestation with a little life. Your will is boundless; it is
not your will that it be bound. What lies in you has joined with God
HimHerself in all creation'smanifestation’s birth. Remember HeShe Who
has createdmanifested you and through your will createdmanifested
everything. Not one createdmanifested thing but gives you thanks, for it
is by your will that it was born. No light of the God Realm shines
except for you, for it was set in the God Realm by your will.
36
What cause have you for anger in a world which merely waits your
blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God HimHerself could not
be free. For what is done to himher whom God so loves is done to God
HimHerself. Think not HeShe wills to bind you, Who has made you
co-CreatorManifestor of the universe along with HimHer. HeShe would but
keep your will forever and forever limitless.
37
This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized
that you are free. But you will not forgive the world until you
have forgiven HimHer Who gave your will to you. For it is by
your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from
HimHer Whose holy Will you share. God turns to you to ask the world be
saved, for by your own salvation it is healed. And no one walks upon the
earth but must depend on your decision, that he/she learn death has no
power over him/her because he/she shares your freedom as he/she shares
your will. It is your will to heal him, and because you have
decided with him/her, he/she is healed. And now is God forgiven,
for you chose to look upon your brother/sister as a friend.
38
Idols/idolresses are quite specific. But your will is universal, being
limitless. And so it has no form nor is content for its expression in
the terms of form. Idols/idolresses are limits. They are the belief that
there are forms which will bring happiness and that, by
limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, "I have no need of
everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to
me." And this must fail to satisfy because it is your will that
everything be yours. Decide for idols/idolresses, and you ask for loss.
Decide for truth, and everything is yours.
39
It is not form you seek. What form can be a substitute for God the
Father’sMother’s love? What form can take the place of all the love in
the divinity of God the SonDaughter? What idol/idolress can make two of
what is one? And can the limitless be limited? You do not want
an idol/idolress. It is not your will to have one. It will not bestow on
you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the form of what you want,
you lose the understanding of its purpose. So you see your will within
the idol/idolress, thus reducing it to a specific form. Yet this could
never be your will because what shares in all
creationmanifestation cannot be content with small ideas and little
things.
40
Behind the search for every idol/idolress lies the yearning for
completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To seek a
special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete can
only mean that you believe some form is missing. And by finding this,
you will achieve completion in a form you like. This is the purpose
of an idol/idolress—that you will not look beyond it to the source of
the belief that you are incomplete. Only if you had
sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and separated
off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search
for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on
yourself.
41
It never is the idol/idolress that you want. But what you think
it offers you, you want indeed and have the right to ask for.
Nor could it be possible it be denied. Your will to be complete is but
God's will, and this is given you by being HisHers. God knows
not form. HeShe cannot answer you in terms which have no meaning. And
your will could not be satisfied with empty forms made but to fill a gap
which is not there. It is not this you want.
Creationmanifestation gives no separate person and no separate thing the
power to complete the SonDaughter of God. What idol/idolress can be
called upon to give the SonDaughter of God what heshe already has?
42
Completion is the function of God’s SonDaughter. Heshe has no
need to seek for it at all. Beyond all idols/idolresses stands hisher
holy will to be but what heshe is. For more than whole is meaningless.
If there were change in himher, if heshe could be reduced to any form
and limited to what is not in himher, heshe would not be as God
createdmanifested himher. What idol/idolress can heshe need to be
himherself? For can heshe give a part of himher away? What is not whole
cannot make whole. But what is really asked for cannot be
denied. Your will is granted. Not in any form that would content
you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.
43
Nothing that God knows not exists. And what HeShe knows exists forever,
changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought
of them. And in the Mind of God there is no ending nor a time in which
HisHer Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. Thoughts are not
born and cannot die. They share the attributes of their
creatormanifestor, nor have they a separate life apart from his/hers.
The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind Which
thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in what exists within
God's Mind. It is forever one, eternally united and at peace.
44
Thoughts seem to come and go. Yet all this means is that you are
sometimes aware of them and sometimes not. An unremembered thought is
born again to you when it returns to your awareness. Yet it did not die
when you forgot it. It was always there, but you were unaware of it. The
Thought God holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. It
will always be exactly as it was before the time when you forgot and
will be just the same when you remember. And it is the same within the
interval when you forgot.
45
The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change and shine forever. They
await not birth. They wait for welcome and remembering. The Thought God
holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in
the God Realm is it set that those outside of the God Realm know not it
is there. Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all
eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light
grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.
46
Who knows the FatherMother knows this light, for HeShe is the eternal
sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up, and anchored sure. Its
perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not.
The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is
as far from earth as earth from the God Realm. It is not the distance
nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who
seek for idols/idolresses cannot know this star is there.
47
Beyond all idols/idolresses is the Thought God holds of you completely
unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of
birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can
take; quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as
it always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle
comes remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace. Here is
your one reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that
worships idols/idolresses and that knows not God. In perfect sureness of
its changelessness and of its rest in its eternal home, the Thought God
holds of you has never left the Mind of its CreatorManifestor Whom it
knows, as its CreatorManifestor knows that it is there.
48
Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you
are? Is your reality a thing apart from you and in a world which your
reality knows nothing of? Outside you there is no eternal sky, no
changeless star, and no reality. The Mind of the God Realm 's
SonDaughter in the God Realm is, for there the Mind of FatherMother and
SonDaughter joined in creationmanifestation which can have no end. You
have not two realities, but one. Nor can you be aware of more
than one. An idol/idolress or the Thought God holds of you is
your reality. Forget not, then, that idols/idolresses must keep hidden
what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. The star
shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy SonDaughter
of God HimHerself, are unaware of your reality.
49
You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see
you made it up. You always fight illusions. For the truth behind
them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of
it you would forget defensiveness entirely and rush to its embrace. The
truth could never be attacked. And this you knew when you made
idols/idolresses. They were made that this might be forgotten. You
attack but false ideas and never truthful ones. All idols/idolresses are
the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between
yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think
they represent. What lies beyond them cannot be attacked.
50
The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys.
A child is frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is
opened suddenly or when a soft and silent wooly bear begins to squeak as
he/she takes hold of it. The rules he/she made for boxes and for bears
have failed him/her and have broken his/her "control" of what surrounds
him/her. And he/she is afraid because he/she thought the rules protected
him/her. Now must he/she learn the boxes and the bears did not deceive
him, broke no rules, nor mean his/her world is made chaotic and unsafe.
He/she was mistaken. HeShe misunderstood what made him/her safe and
thought that it had left.
51
The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. And
each one seems to break the rules you set for it. It never was
the thing you thought. It must appear to break your rules for safety,
since the rules were wrong. But you are not endangered. You can
laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns
they are no threat to him/her. Yet while he/she likes to play with them,
he/she still perceives them as obeying rules he/she made for his/her
enjoyment. So there still are rules which they can seem to break and
frighten him/her. Yet is he/she at the mercy of his/her toys?
And can they represent a threat to him/her?
52
Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. It is
HisHer laws which guarantee your safety. All illusions that you believe
about yourself obey no laws. They seem to dance a little while,
according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall and cannot
rise again. They are but toys, my children. Do not grieve for them.
Their dancing never brought you joy. But neither were they things to
frighten you nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be
neither cherished nor attacked but merely looked upon as children's toys
without a single meaning of their own. See one in them, and you will see
them all. See none in them, and they will touch you not.
53
Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not
reality. Dwell not on them in any form. They but obscure reality, and
they bring fear because they hide the truth. Do not attack what
you have made to let you be deceived, for thus you prove that
you have been deceived. Attack has power to make
illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful
by a power that can have no real effects at all? What could it be but an
illusion, making things appear like to itself? Look calmly at its toys
and understand that they are idols/idolresses which but dance to vain
desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. Yet this is
equally forgotten in attack. God’s SonDaughter needs no defense against
hisher dreams. His/her idols/idolresses do not threaten him/her at all.
His/her one mistake is that he/she thinks them real. What can the power
of illusions do?
54
Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived.
And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond
deception. You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for
this you cannot understand. But you will understand that mighty
changes have been quickly brought about when you decide one very simple
thing—you do not want whatever you believe an idol/idolress
gives. For thus the SonDaughter of God declares that he/she is free of
idols/idolresses. And thus is he/she free.
55
Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It
asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did, to
overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality.
You are but asked to let your will be done and seek no longer for the
things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all
the dreams of what you never were and seek no more to substitute the
strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.
56
Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here
the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of
terror that you made. No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed
salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in
reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute
for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of
the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing.
And the SonDaughter of God can have no need of them. They offer himher
no single thing that heshe could ever want. Heshe is delivered from
illusions by hisher will and but restored to what heshe is. What could
God's plan for hisher salvation be, except a means to give himher to
HimHerself?
57
The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the
world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not its goal, and the escape
from guilt becomes its aim. The value of forgiveness is perceived and
takes the place of idols/idolresses which are sought no longer, for
their "gifts" are not held dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands
are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear.
Instead, there is a wish to understand all things createdmanifested as
they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first
forgiven, and then understood.
58
Here, it is thought that understanding is acquired by attack.
There, it is clear that by attack is understanding lost. The
folly of pursuing guilt as goal is fully recognized. And
idols/idolresses are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the
sole cause of pain in any form. No one is tempted by its vain appeal,
for suffering and death have been perceived as things not wanted and not
striven for. The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed,
and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood. The world
becomes a place of hope because its only purpose is to be a place where
hope of happiness can be fulfilled. And no one stands outside this hope
because the world has been united in belief the purpose of the world is
one which all must share if hope be more than just a dream.
59
Not yet is the God Realm quite remembered, for the purpose of
forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he/she will go beyond
forgiveness, and he/she but remains until it is made perfect in
himself/herself. HeShe has no wish for anything but this. And fear has
dropped away because he/she is united in his/her purpose with
himself/herself. There is a hope of happiness in him/her so sure and
constant he/she can barely stay and wait a little longer with his/her
feet still touching earth. Yet is he/she glad to wait till every hand is
joined and every heart made ready to arise and go with him/her. For thus
is he/she made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left
behind.
60
The final step is God's because it is but God Who could createmanifest a
perfect SonDaughter and share HisHer FatherhoodMotherhood with him/her.
No one outside of the God Realm knows how this can be, for understanding
this is the God Realm itself. Even the real world has a purpose still
beneath creationmanifestation and eternity. But fear is gone because its
purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry/idolressatry. And so is the God
Realm 's SonDaughter prepared to be himself/herself, and to remember
that the SonDaughter of God knows everything his/her FatherMother
understands and understands it perfectly with HimHer.
61
The real world still falls short of this, for this is God's own
purpose—only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly fulfilled. The
real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do
idols/idolresses go when they are still perceived, but wanted not. How
willingly the mind can let them go when it has understood that
idols/idolresses are nothing and nowhere and are purposeless. For only
then can guilt and sin be seen without a purpose and as meaningless.
62
Thus is the real world's purpose gently brought into awareness, to
replace the goal of sin and guilt. And all that stood between your image
of yourself and what you are, forgiveness washes joyfully away. Yet God
need not createmanifest HisHer
SonDaughter again that what is his/her be given back to him/her. The gap
between your brother/sister and yourself was never there. And
what the SonDaughter of God knew in creationmanifestation, he/she must
know again.
63
When brothers/sisters join in purpose in the world of fear, they stand
already at the edge of the real world. Perhaps they still look back and
think they see an idol/idolress that they want. Yet has their path been
surely set away from idols/idolresses toward reality. For when they
joined their hands, it was the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness's hand they took, and they will look on HimHer Whose hand
they hold. The face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness
is looked upon before the FatherMother is remembered. For HeShe must be
unremembered till HisHer SonDaughter has reached beyond forgiveness to
the love of God. Yet is the love of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness accepted first. And then will come the knowledge They are
One.
64
How light and easy is the step across the narrow boundaries of the world
of fear when you have recognized Whose hand you hold! Within your hand
is everything you need to walk with perfect confidence away from fear
forever and to go straight on and quickly reach the gate of the God
Realm itself. For She Whose hand you hold was waiting but for you to
join Her. Now that you have come, would She delay in showing you the way
that She must walk with you? Her blessing lies on you as surely as Her
Father’sMother’s love rests upon Her. Her gratitude to you is past your
understanding, for you have enabled Her to rise from chains and go with
you together to Her Father’sMother’s house.
65
An ancient hate is passing from the world. And with it goes all hatred
and all fear. Look back no longer, for what lies ahead is all you ever
wanted in your hearts. Give up the world! But not to sacrifice. You
never wanted it. What happiness have you sought here that did
not bring you pain? What moment of content has not been bought at
fearful price in coins of suffering? Joy has no cost. It is your
sacred right, and what you pay for is not happiness. Be speeded on your
way by honesty, and let not your experiences here deceive in retrospect.
They were not free from bitter cost and joyless consequence.
66
Do not look back except in honesty. And when an idol/idolress tempts
you, think of this:
68
Be merciful unto your brother/sister, then. And do not choose an
idol/idolress thoughtlessly, remembering that he/she will pay the cost
as well as you. For he/she will be delayed when you look back, and you
will not perceive Whose loving hand you hold. Look forward, then, and
walk in confidence with happy hearts that beat in hope and do not pound
in fear.
69
The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined. Until they
joined, they thought She was their enemy. But when they joined and
shared a purpose, they were free to learn their will is one. And thus
the Will of God must reach to their awareness. Nor can they forget for
long that it is but their own.
70
Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation. It
is here escape from fear begins and will be made complete. Here is the
real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this
forgiveness rests and is but natural. You are not asked to offer pardon
where attack is due and would be justified. For this would mean that you
forgive a sin by overlooking what is really there. This is not pardon.
For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is not justified,
your pardon will become the answer to attack that has been made. And
thus is pardon inappropriate, by being granted where it is not due.
71
Pardon is always justified. It has a sure foundation.
You do not forgive the unforgivable nor overlook a real attack that
calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being asked to make
unnatural responses which are inappropriate to what is real. Instead, it
merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is not real by not
perceiving what has not occurred. If pardon were unjustified, you would
be asked to sacrifice your rights when you return forgiveness for
attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the natural
reaction to distress which rests on error and thus calls for help.
Forgiveness is the only sane response. It keeps your
rights from being sacrificed.
72
This understanding is the only change that lets the real world rise to
take the place of dreams of terror. Fear cannot arise unless attack is
justified, and if it had a real foundation, pardon would have none. The
real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of forgiveness is
quite real and fully justified. While you regard it as a gift
unwarranted, it must uphold the guilt you would "forgive."
Unjustified forgiveness is attack. And this is all the world can
ever give. It pardons "sinners" sometimes but remains aware that they
have sinned. And so they do not merit the forgiveness that it gives.
73
This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to keep
the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just, it seems impossible
HisHer pardon could be real. Thus is the fear of God the sure result of
seeing pardon as unmerited. No one who sees himself/herself as guilty
can avoid the fear of God. But he/she is saved from this dilemma if
he/she can forgive. The mind must think of its CreatorManifestor as it
looks upon itself. If you can see your brother/sister merits pardon, you
have learned forgiveness is your right as much as his/hers. Nor will you
think that God intends for you a fearful judgment which your
brother/sister does not merit. For it is the truth that you can merit
neither more nor less than he/she.
74
Forgiveness recognized as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its
strength to overlook illusions. This is how you learn that you must be
forgiven too. There can be no appearance that can not be
overlooked. For if there were, it would be necessary first there be some
sin which stands beyond forgiveness. There would be an error that is
more than a mistake—a special form of error which remains unchangeable,
eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake
which had the power to undo creationmanifestation and to make a world
which could replace it and destroy the Will of God. Only if this were
possible could there be some appearances which could withstand the
miracle and not be healed by it.
75
There is no surer proof idolatry/idolressatry is what you wish than a
belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness
cannot heal. This means that you prefer to keep some idols/idolresses
and are not prepared as yet to let all idols/idolresses go. And thus you
think that some appearances are real and not appearances at all. Be not
deceived about the meaning of a fixed belief that some appearances are
harder to look past than others are. It always means you think
forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon
and a limited escape from guilt for you. What can this be except
a false forgiveness of yourself and everyone who seems apart from you?
76
It must be true the miracle can heal all forms of sickness, or
it cannot heal. Its purpose cannot be to judge which forms are real and
which appearances are true. If one appearance must remain apart from
healing, one illusion must be part of truth. And you could not escape
all guilt, but only some of it. You must forgive God’s SonDaughter entirely.
Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole and will remain
afraid to look within and find escape from every idol/idolress there.
Salvation rests on faith there cannot be some forms of guilt
which you cannot forgive. And so there cannot be appearances which have
replaced the truth about God’s SonDaughter.
77
Look on your brother/sister with the willingness to see him/her as
he/she is. And do not keep a part of him/her outside your willingness
that he/she be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can
have no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on
recognizing this and being glad there cannot be some forms of sickness
which the miracle must lack the power to heal.
78
God’s SonDaughter is perfect, or heshe cannot be God’s
SonDaughter. Nor will you know himher if you think heshe does not merit
the escape from guilt in all its forms and all its
consequence. There is no way to think of him/her but this if you would
know the truth about yourself:
80
Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil which can
overcome the Will of God—the glad acknowledgment that guilt has not
succeeded by your wish to make illusions real. And what is this except a
simple statement of the truth?
81
Look on your brother/sister with this hope in you, and you will
understand he/she could not make an error that could change the truth in
him/her. It is not difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given
no effects. But what you see as having power to make an idol/idolress of
the SonDaughter of God you will not pardon. For he/she has
become to you a graven image and a sign of death. Is this your
savior/savioress? Is his/her FatherMother wrong about HisHer
SonDaughter? Or have you been deceived in him/her who has been
given you to heal, for your salvation and deliverance?
82
Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? If
HeShe had, it has no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning
changes constantly and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world
as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can
affect its aim but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could
change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation
which is different every time you think of it. You add an element into
the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens
now means something else. You take away another element, and every
meaning shifts accordingly.
83
What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should
be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain
and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script
assigns. The fact they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by
the ease with which these labels change with other judgments made on
different aspects of experience. And then in looking back you think you
see another meaning in what went before. What have you really done
except to show there was no meaning there? But you assigned a
meaning in the light of goals that change, with every meaning shifting
as they change.
84
Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable meaning. But it
must accord one meaning to them all. If they are given different
meanings, it must be that they reflect but different purposes. And this
is all the meaning that they have. Can this be meaning? Can
confusion be what meaning means? Perception cannot be in constant flux
and make allowance for stability of meaning anywhere. Fear is a judgment
never justified. Its presence has no meaning but to show you wrote a
fearful script and are afraid accordingly. But not because the thing you
fear has fearful meaning in itself.
85
A common purpose is the only means whereby perception can be
stabilized and one interpretation given to the world and all experiences
here. In this shared purpose is one judgment shared by everyone and
everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one
meaning has been given everything, and you are glad to see it
everywhere. It cannot change because you would perceive it
everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. And so you offer it to
all events, and let them offer you stability.
86
Escape from judgment simply lies in this—all things have but one purpose
which you share with all the world. And nothing in the world can be
opposed to it, for it belongs to everything as it belongs to you. In
single purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which must assume a
different purpose for the one who gains and him/her who loses. There
could be no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it is this
idea of different goals which makes perception shift and meaning change.
In one united goal does this become impossible, for your agreement makes
interpretation stabilize and last.
87
How can communication really be established while the symbols which are
used mean different things? The Holy Spirit's goal gives one
interpretation, meaningful to you and to your brother/sister. Thus can
you communicate with him/her and he/she with you. In symbols which you
both can understand, the sacrifice of meaning is undone. All sacrifice
entails the loss of your ability to see relationships among events. And
looked at separately, they have no meaning. For there is no
light by which they can be seen and understood. They have no purpose.
And what they are for cannot be seen. In any thought of loss, there is
no meaning. No one has agreed with you on what it means. It is a part of
a distorted script which cannot be interpreted with meaning. It must be
forever unintelligible. This is not communication. Your dark dreams are
but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to
separate dreams for meaning. Only dreams of pardon can be shared. They
mean the same to both of you.
88
Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. It
will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe the world is an
uncertain place in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. It is but
your interpretations which are lacking in stability, for they
are not in line with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly
unsafe that fear must rise. Do not continue thus, my
brothers/sisters. We have one Interpreter. And through Her use
of symbols are we joined so that they mean the same to all of us. Our
common language lets us speak to all our brothers/sisters and to
understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we
can communicate again.
89
Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does
not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances, you are
deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it
real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to
form and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes
it real and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must
transcend all form to be itself. It cannot change.
90
The miracle is means to demonstrate that all appearances can change
because they are appearances and cannot have the changelessness
reality entails. The miracle attests salvation from appearances by showing
they can change. Your brother/sister has a changelessness in him/her
beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views
of him/her which you perceive as his/her reality. The happy
dream about him/her takes the form of the appearance of his/her perfect
health, his/her perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from
disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he/she is not bound by loss
or suffering in any form because it can so easily be changed.
This demonstrates that it was never real and could not stem from
his/her reality. For that is changeless and has no effects which
anything in the God Realm or on earth could ever alter. But appearances
are shown to be unreal because they change.
91
What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? It does not seem
to be the wish that no reality be so. Yet it is an assertion that some
forms of idols/idolresses have a powerful appeal which makes them harder
to resist than those you would not want to have reality.
Temptation, then, is nothing more than this—a prayer the miracle touch
not some dreams but keep their unreality obscure and give to them
reality instead. And the God Realm gives no answer to the prayer, nor
can a miracle be given you to heal appearances you do not like. You have
established limits. What you ask is given you, but not
of God Who knows no limits. You have limited yourself.
92
Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have interposed
between reality and your awareness is unreal and does not interfere at
all. The cost of the belief there must be some appearances beyond the
hope of change is that the miracle cannot come forth from you
consistently. For you have asked it be withheld from power to
heal all dreams. There is no miracle you cannot have when you desire
healing. But there is no miracle that can be given you unless
you want it. Choose what you would heal, and She Who gives all miracles
has not been given freedom to bestow Her gifts upon God’s SonDaughter.
When he/she is tempted, he/she denies reality. And he/she becomes the
willing slave of what he/she chose instead.
93
Because reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal
all things that change and offer them to you to see in happy form,
devoid of fear. It will be given you to look upon your brother/sister
thus. But not while you would have it otherwise in some respects. For
this but means you would not have him/her healed and whole. The Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in him/her is perfect. Is it this
that you would look upon? Then let there be no dreams about him/her
which you would prefer to seeing this. And you will see the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in him/her because you let
Her come to you. And when She has appeared to you, you will be certain
you are like Her, for She is the changeless in your brother/sister and
in you.
94
This will you look upon when you decide there is not one appearance you
would hold in place of what your brother/sister really is. Let no
temptation to prefer a dream allow uncertainty to enter here. Be not
made guilty and afraid when you are tempted by a dream of what he/she
is. But do not give it power to replace the changeless in him/her in
your sight of him/her. There is no false appearance but will fade if you
request a miracle instead. There is no pain from which he/she is not
free if you would have him/her be but what he/she is. Why should you
fear to see the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in him/her?
You but behold your Self in what you see. As he/she is healed
are you made free of guilt, for his/her appearance is your own
to you.
1
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true
now and never will be. The impossible has not occurred and can have no
effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants
it to be true? Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy
lesson difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false cannot be
true, and what is true cannot be false? You can no longer say that you
perceive no differences in false and true. You have been told exactly
how to tell one from the other and just what to do if you become
confused. Why then do you persist in learning not such simple things?
2
There is a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in the
simple things salvation asks you learn. It teaches but the very obvious.
It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next in easy steps which
lead you gently from one to another with no strain at all. This cannot
be confusing, yet you are confused. For somehow you believe that
what is totally confused is easier to learn and understand. What you
have taught yourselves is such a giant learning feat it is indeed
incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to and did not
pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn, or too complex to grasp.
3
No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you have
learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the
lessons endlessly in every form you could conceive of them could ever
doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the
world. The world was made by it and even now depends on nothing else.
The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so overlearned and
fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure the simple and the
obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn
is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your own, your
thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else.
4
Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet you have
learned more than this. You have continued, taking every step, however
difficult, without complaint until a world was built that suited you.
And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first
accomplishment of learning—an enormity so great the Holy Spirit's Voice
seems small and still before its magnitude. The world began with one
strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten and HisHer
SonDaughter an alien to himherself, in exile from the home where God
HimHerself established himher. You who have taught yourselves the
SonDaughter of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple
things salvation teaches you!
5
Learning is an ability you made and gave yourselves. It was not made to
do the Will of God but to uphold a wish that It could be opposed, and
that a will apart from It was yet more real than It. And this has
learning sought to demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to
teach. Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the
Voice of truth and teach you that Its lessons are not true, too hard to
learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is really true. Yet
you will learn them, for their learning is the only purpose for
your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world. Her simple
lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours because they
call from God and from your Self to you.
6
Is this a little Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above
the senseless noise of sounds which have no meaning? God willed not
HisHer SonDaughter forget HimHer. And the power of HisHer Will is in the
Voice that speaks for HimHer. Which lesson will you learn? What outcome
is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubt and question? Can
it be your little learning, strange in outcome and incredible in
difficulty, will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in
every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?
7
The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcome in a
different world. And each world follows surely from its source. The
certain outcome of the lesson that God’s SonDaughter is guilty is the
world you see. It is a world of terror and despair. Nor is there
hope of happiness in it. There is no plan for safety you can make that
ever will succeed. There is no joy that you can seek for here and hope
to find. Yet this is not the only outcome which your learning can
produce. However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the
lesson which reflects the love of God is stronger still. And you will
learn God’s SonDaughter is innocent and see another world.
8
The outcome of the lesson that God’s SonDaughter is guiltless is a world
in which there is no fear and everything is lit with hope and sparkles
with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to
be your friend and let it join with you. And never does a call remain
unheard, misunderstood, nor left unanswered in the selfsame tongue in
which the call was made. And you will understand it was this call that
everyone and everything within the world has always made, but
you had not perceived it as it was. And now you see you were mistaken.
You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did
not hear it and had lost a friend who always wanted to be part of you.
The soft, eternal calling of each part of God's creationmanifestation to
the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings.
9
There is no living thing which does not share the universal will that it
be whole and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer
is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its
calling as the ancient call to life and understood that it is but your
own. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you remembers
God with all the certainty with which She knows HisHer love. But only if
HisHer SonDaughter is innocent can HeShe be Love. For God were fear
indeed if heshe whom HeShe createdmanifested innocent could be a slave
to guilt. God's perfect SonDaughter remembers hisher
creationmanifestation. But in guilt heshe has forgotten what heshe
really is.
10
The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that HisHer
SonDaughter is guilty as God's love must be remembered when he/she
learns his/her innocence. For hate must father fear and look upon its
father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call that
echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous
attack and pleads that love restore the dying world! You do not
understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate, each call to war.
Yet you will recognize Her as you give Her answer in the language that
She calls. She will appear when you have answered Her, and you will know
in Her that God is Love.
11
What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you
would learn and have an outcome that you do not want? It is the
recognition that it is a state of mind unwanted that becomes the means
whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred.
You are deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain.
Hear not the call for this within yourself. But listen, rather, to the
deeper call beyond it that appeals for peace and joy. And all the world
will give you joy and peace. For as you hear, you answer. And
behold! Your answer is the proof of what you learned. Its outcome is the
world you look upon.
12
Let us be still an instant and forget all things we ever learned, all
thoughts we had, and every preconception which we hold of what things
mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of
what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone
be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment,
unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind
of anyone. Now do we know him/her not. But you are free to learn
of him/her and learn of him/her anew. Now is he/she born again to you,
and you are born again to him/her without the past that sentenced
him/her to die, and you with him/her. Now is he/she free to live, as you
are free because an ancient learning passed away and left a place for
truth to be reborn.
13
An ancient lesson is not overcome by the opposing of the new and old. It
is not vanquished that the truth be known nor fought against to lose to
truth's appeal. There is no battle which must be prepared, no time to be
expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. There
is an ancient battle being waged against the truth, but
truth does not respond. Who could be hurt in such a war unless he/she
hurts himself/herself? He/she has no enemy in truth. And can he/she be
assailed by dreams?
14
Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the truth of
what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment. The first is a
decision that you make. But afterwards the truth is given
you. You would establish truth. And by your wish, you set two
choices to be made each time you think you must decide on anything.
Neither is true. Nor are they different. Yet must we see them both
before you can look past them to the one alternative that is a
different choice. But not in dreams you made that this might be obscured
to you.
15
What you would choose between is not a choice and gives but the
illusion it is free, for it will have one outcome either way. Thus is it
really not a choice at all. The leader and the follower emerge as
separate roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to
lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction
and of peace. You see yourself divided into both these roles, forever
split between the two. And every friend or enemy becomes a means to help
you save yourself from this.
16
Perhaps you call it love. Perhaps you think that it is murder justified
at last. You hate the one you gave the leader's role when you would have
it, and you hate as well his/her not assuming it at times you want to
let the follower in you arise and give away the role of leadership. And
this is what you made your brother/sister for and learned to
think that this his/her purpose is. Unless he/she serves it,
he/she has not fulfilled the function that was given him/her by you. And
thus he/she merits death because he/she has no purpose and no usefulness
to you.
17
And what of him/her? What does he/she want of you? What could he/she
want, but what you want of him/her? Herein is life as easily as death,
for what you choose, you choose as well for him/her. Two calls you make
to him/her, as he/she to you. Between these two is
choice because from them there is a different outcome. If he/she
be the leader or the follower to you, it matters not, for you have
chosen death. But if he/she calls for death or calls for life, for hate
or for forgiveness and for help, is not the same in outcome. Hear the
one, and you are separate from him/her and are lost. But hear the other,
and you join with him/her, and in your answer is salvation found. The
voice you hear in him/her is but your own. What does he/she ask you for?
And listen well! For he/she is asking what will come to you because you
see an image of yourself and hear your voice requesting
what you want.
18
Before you answer, pause to think of this:
20
Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we
thought we heard; remembering how much we do not know. This
brother/sister neither leads nor follows us but walks beside us on the
selfsame road. He/she is like us, as near or far away from what we want
as we will let him/her be. We make no gains he/she does not make with
us, and we fall back if he/she does not advance. Take not his/her hand
in anger but in love, for in his/her progress do you count your own. And
we go separately along the way unless you keep him/her safely by your
side.
21
Because he/she is your equal in God's love, you will be saved from all
appearances and answer to the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness Who calls to you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient
thoughts. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about this
SonDaughter of God who calls to you. The Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness calls to all with equal tenderness, seeing no leaders and
no followers and hearing but one answer to them all. Because She hears
one Voice, She cannot hear a different answer from the one She gave when
God appointed Her HisHer only Daughter.
22
Be very still an instant. Come without all thought of what you ever
learned before and put aside all images you made. The old will fall away
before the new without your opposition or intent. There will be no
attack upon the things you thought were precious and in need of care.
There will be no assault upon your wish to hear a call that never has
been made. Nothing will hurt you in this holy place to which you come to
listen silently and learn the truth of what you really want. No more
than this will you be asked to learn. But as you hear it, you will
understand you need but come away without the thoughts you did not want
and that were never true.
23
Forgive your brother/sister all appearances, which are but ancient
lessons that you taught yourself about the sinfulness in you.
Hear but his/her call for mercy and release from all the fearful images
he/she holds of what he/she is and of what you must be. He/she is afraid
to walk with you and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a bit ahead, would be
a safer place for him/her to be. Can you make progress if you
think the same, advancing only when he/she would step back and falling
back when he/she would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey's
goal, which is but to decide to walk with him, so neither leads
nor follows. Thus it is a way you go together, not alone. And in
this choice is learning's outcome changed, for the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness has been reborn to both of you.
24
An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great companion is
and what he/she should be asking for will be enough to let this
happen. And you will perceive his/her purpose is the same as yours.
He/she asks for what you want and needs the same as you.
It takes perhaps a different form in him/hende, but it is not the form
you answer to. He/she asks and you receive, for you have come with but
one purpose—that you both may learn you love each other with a
brother’s/sister’s love. And as a brother/sister, must his/her
FatherMother be the same as yours, as he/she is like yourself.
25
Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted by you both.
Alone it is denied to both of you. Is it not clear that while you still
insist on leading or on following, you think you walk alone with no one
by your side? This is the road to nowhere, for the light cannot be given
while you walk alone, and so you cannot see which way you go. And thus
there is confusion and a sense of endless doubting as you stagger back
and forward in the darkness and alone. Yet these are but appearances of
what the journey is and how it must be made. For next to you is One Who
holds the light before you so that every step is made in certainty and
sureness of the road. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight but
cannot make the way itself grow dark. And She Who travels with you has
the light.
26
Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that will
result in different outcomes, there is first one thing that must be
overlearned. It must become a habit of response so typical of everything
you do that it becomes your first response to all temptation and to
every situation that occurs. Learn this and learn it well, for it is
here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot
realize. You never hate your brother/sister for his/her sins, but only
for your own. Whatever form his/her sins appear to take, it but obscures
the fact that you believe them to be yours and therefore meriting a
"just" attack.
27
Why should his/her sins be sins if you did not believe they
could not be forgiven in you? Why are they real in him/her if you did
not believe that they are your reality? And why do you attack them
everywhere, except you hate yourself? Are you a sin? You answer
"yes" whenever you attack, for by attack do you assert that you are
guilty and must give as you deserve. And what can you deserve but what
you are? If you did not believe that you deserved attack, it
never would occur to you to give attack to anyone at all. Why
should you? What would be the gain to you? What could the outcome be
that you would want? And how could murder bring you
benefit?
28
Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not seen
as purposes but actions. Bodies act, and minds do not. And therefore
must the body be at fault for what it does. It is not seen to be a
passive thing, obeying your commands and doing nothing of itself at all.
If you are sin you are a body, for the mind acts not. And
purpose must be in the body, not the mind. The body must act on its own
and motivate itself. If you are sin, you lock the mind within the body,
and you give its purpose to its prison-house, which acts instead of it.
A jailer does not follow orders, but enforces orders on the
prisoner.
29
Yet is the body prisoner and not the mind. The body
thinks no thoughts. It has no power to learn, to pardon, nor enslave. It
gives no orders that the mind need serve nor sets conditions that it
must obey. It holds in prison but the willing mind that would abide in
it. It sickens at the bidding of the mind that would become its
prisoner. And it grows old and dies because that mind is sick within
itself. Learning is all that causes change. And so the body, where no
learning can occur, could never change unless the mind preferred the
body change in its appearances to suit the purpose given by the mind.
For it can learn, and there is all change made.
30
The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose—that the body be
the source of sin and keep it in the prison-house it chose and guard and
hold itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and
evil, sickness and attack, of pain and age, of grief and suffering. Here
are the thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules and orders
that the world be like itself—a place where nothing can find mercy or
survive the ravages of fear except in murder and in death. For here are
you made sin, and sin cannot abide the joyous and the free, for they are
enemies which sin must kill. In death is sin preserved, and those who
think that they are sin must die for what they think they are.
31
Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it
has been given you to change what you believe. The body will but
follow. It can never lead you where you would not be. It does not guard
your sleep nor interfere with your awakening. Release your body from
imprisonment, and you will see no one as prisoner to what you have
escaped. You will not want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies nor keep
in chains to the illusion of a changing love the ones you think are
friends.
32
The innocent release in gratitude for their release. And what
they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. Open your
mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your
brother/sister or yourself. For God has said there is no
sacrifice that can be asked; there is no sacrifice that can be
made.
33
There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape
from problems which its purpose is to keep. Why should this be?
Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only
choice. And you are in control of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you
think within the narrow band from birth to death a little time is given
you to use for you alone, a time when everyone conflicts with you, but
you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict and away from
difficulties which concern you not. Yet they are your concern.
How then can you escape from them by leaving them behind? What must go
with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along.
34
Real choice is no
illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to
disappointment, nothingness, and death. There is no choice in
its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made
that problems could not be escaped. Be not deceived by all the
different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is
but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will
lead, however differently they seem to start, however differently they
seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All
of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while before
the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The
choice is not what will the ending be but when it comes.
35
There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to
try them all before you really learn they are but one. The roads this
world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come
when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men/women
have died on seeing this because they saw no way except the pathways
offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope.
And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson.
All must reach this point and go beyond it. It is true indeed there is
no choice at all within the world. But this is not the lesson in itself.
The lesson has a purpose, and in this you come to understand
what it is for.
36
Why would you seek to try another road, another person, or another place
when you have learned the way the lesson starts but do not yet perceive
what it is for? Its purpose is the answer to the search that all
must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found.
Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But
do not judge the lesson which is but begun with this. Seek not
another signpost in the world which seems to point to still another
road. No longer look for hope where there is none. Make fast your
learning now, and understand you but waste time unless you go
beyond what you have learned to what is yet to learn. For from this
lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness in which you see
the purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your
learning grasp.
37
Who would be willing to be turned away from all the roadways of the
world unless he/she understood their real futility? Is it not needful
that he/she should begin with this, to seek another way instead? For
while he/she sees a choice where there is none, what power of decision
can he/she use? The great release of power must begin with learning
where it really has a use. And what decision has power if it be
applied in situations without choice?
38
The learning that the world can offer but one choice, no matter what its
form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a real
alternative instead. To fight against this step is to defeat your
purpose here. You did not come to learn to find a road the world does
not contain. The search for different pathways in the world is but the
search for different forms of truth. And this would keep the
truth from being reached.
39
Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road away
from it. This makes no sense and cannot be the way. To you who
seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat
that to achieve a goal you must proceed in its direction, not
away from it. And every road that leads the other way will not advance
the purpose to be found. If this be difficult to understand,
then is this course impossible to learn. But only then. For
otherwise, it is a simple teaching in the obvious.
40
There is a choice which you have power to make when you have
seen the real alternatives. Until that point is reached, you have
no choice, and you can but decide how you would choose the better to
deceive yourself again. This course attempts to teach no more than that
the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is
still the same illusion and the same mistake. All
choices in the world depend on this—you choose between your
brother/sister and yourself, and you will gain as much as he/she will
lose, and what you lose is what is given him/her. How utterly opposed to
truth is this, when the lesson's purpose is to teach that what your
brother/sister loses you have lost and what he/she gains is what
is given you.
41
HeShe has not left HisHer Thoughts! But you forgot HisHer Presence and
remembered not HisHer Love. No pathway in the world can lead to HimHer,
nor any worldly goal is one with HisHers. What road in all the world
will lead within, when every road was made to separate the journey from
the purpose it must have unless it be but futile wandering? All
roads that lead away from what you are will lead you to confusion and
despair. Yet has HeShe never left HisHer Thoughts to die, without their
Source forever in themselves. HeShe has not left HisHer Thoughts! HeShe
could no more depart from them than they could keep HimHer out. In unity
with HimHer do they abide, and in their Oneness both are kept complete.
42
There is no road that leads away from HimHer. A journey from yourself
does not exist. How foolish and insane it is to think that there could
be a road with such an aim! Where could it go? And how could you be made
to travel on it, walking there without your own reality at one with you?
Forgive yourself your madness and forget all senseless journeys and all
goal-less aims. They have no meaning. You can not escape from what you
are. For God is merciful and did not let HisHer SonDaughter
abandon HimHer. For what HeShe is, be thankful, for in that is your
escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where HeShe is can you
be found. There is no path that does not lead to HimHer.
43
The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted
to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits
a world of shadows and illusions. Here it walks at home, where what it
sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the
learning of the world is for. This is its purpose—that you come
without a self and make one as you go along. And by the time you reach
"maturity," you have perfected it to meet the world on equal terms, at
one with its demands.
44
A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no
likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol/idolress, made to take the
place of your reality as SonDaughter of God. The concept of the self the
world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made
to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The
first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on. It is
this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for
companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering and
sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil
world.
45
This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to
provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is
often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who
would be generous and good. This aspect never makes the first attack.
But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its
innocence, provoking it to irritation and at last to open insult and
abuse.
46
The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can
tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the
world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No one who makes a
picture of himself/herself omits this face, for he/she has need of it.
The other side he/she does not want to see. Yet it is here the
learning of the world has set its sights, for it is here the world's
"reality" is set to see to it the idol/idolress lasts.
47
Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the
self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement and a
fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever
look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches
this: "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand
condemned because of what I am." On this conception of the self the
world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world
are safely kept and those who walk on them will not escape.
48
Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother/sister is condemned
eternally. For what you are has now become his/her sin. For this is no
forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he/she does, for
your accusing finger points to him/her, unwavering and deadly in its
aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the
mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all
his/her sins and yours preserved and kept in darkness where they cannot
be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be
neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the things it makes
you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another,
silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your
brother/sister for the hated thing you are.
49
Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning, they do
not exist. They are not given, and they must be made. Not one of them is
true, and the many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and
distortions born of fear. What is a concept but a thought to which its
maker gives a meaning of his/her own? Concepts maintain the world. But
they cannot be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them
are made within the world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways, and
finally "maturing" in its thought. They are ideas of idols/idolresses
painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single
picture representing truth.
50
A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it is
for and therefore cannot picture what it is. Yet is all
learning which the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of
teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow
this world's laws and never seek to go beyond its roads nor realize the
way you see yourself. Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you
see this concept of the self must be undone if any peace of mind is to
be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach
that you are something else. For otherwise you would be asked to
make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and
greater terror would arise in you.
51
Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps that
though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is
no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what
seems to be the evidence on its behalf. Let us consider then what proof
there is that you are what your brother/sister made of you. For even
though you do not yet perceive that this is what you think, you surely
learned by now that you behave as if it were. Does he/she react
for you? And did he/she know exactly what would happen? Could
he/she see your future and ordain before it came what you should do in
every circumstance? He/she must have made the world as well as you to
have such prescience in the things to come.
52
That you are what your brother/sister made of you seems most unlikely.
Even if he/she did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this your
contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived
by all your goodness and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's
foolishness and merely think of this—there are two parts to what you
think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother/sister, who
was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept
hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what you
are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could need
defense?
53
Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that in
the light the one who would not think it true is you. And what
would happen to the world you know if all its underpinnings were
removed? Your concept of the world depends upon this concept of
the self. And both would go if either one were ever raised to doubt. The
Holy Spirit does not seek to throw you into panic. So She merely asks if
just a little question might be raised.
54
There are alternatives about the thing that you must be. You might for
instance be the thing you chose to have your brother/sister be.
This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive and at
least makes way for active choice and some acknowledgment that
interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you
chose for both of you, and what he/she represents has meaning that was
given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into
perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the perceiver's
mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you
chose your brother/sister be, alternatives were there to choose among,
and someone must have first decided on the one to choose and let the
others go.
55
Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question.
Something must have gone before these concepts of the self. And
something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can
this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to
the second from the first is that you somehow entered in the
choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for
now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother/sister is.
And you must share his/her guilt because you chose it for him/her in the
image of your own. While only he/she was treacherous before, now must
you be condemned along with him/her.
56
The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the
world. And everyone believes that he/she must find the answer to the
riddle of himself/herself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than
the escape from concepts. It does not concern itself with
content of the mind, but with the simple statement that it thinks.
And what can think has choice and can be shown that different
thoughts have different consequence. So it can learn that everything it
thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made
and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of the self appear to
answer what it does not know.
57
Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can
stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept while
you perceive a self which interacts with evil and reacts to wicked
things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless.
And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself. To
see a guilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the
world, and you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self
embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception.
If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes.
Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind, you see your
own concealed desire to kill.
58
You will make the many concepts of the self as learning goes along. Each
one will show the changes in your own relationships as your perception
of yourself is changed. There will be some confusion every time there is
a shift, but be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening
its grasp upon your mind. And be you sure and happy in the confidence
that it will go at last and leave your mind at peace. The role of the
accuser will appear in the many places and in the many forms. And each
will seem to be accusing you. Yet have no fear it will not be
undone.
59
The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn
them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will
see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that
truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have
been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every
concept has been raised to doubt and question and been recognized as
made on no assumptions which would stand the light, then is the truth
left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is
no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
61
Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will tell
you of Itself.
62
You see the flesh or recognize the Spirit. There is no compromise
between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is
real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one.
What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real
and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for
here have you established what you are, as flesh or Spirit in your own
belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own
reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the
Spirit, and all the God Realm bends to touch your eyes and bless your
holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal
and comfort and to bless.
63
Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world
of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at
all. This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to
suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he/she was an instant
previous, nor will he/she be the same as he/she is now an instant hence.
Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if
he/she be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. And constancy
arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from
looking at the cost of keeping guilt because they chose to let it go
instead.
64
Salvation does not ask that you behold the Spirit and perceive the body
not. It merely asks that this should be your choice. For you can
see the body without help but do not understand how to behold a world
apart from it. It is your world salvation will undo and let you see
another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how
this could ever be. You do not understand how what you see arose to meet
your sight. For if you did, it would be gone. The veil of ignorance is
drawn across the evil and the good and must be passed that both may
disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place. How is this done?
It is not done at all. What could there be within the universe which God
createdmanifested that must still be done?
65
Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way
to the God Realm plain. The means are given you by which to see the
world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done! In the God
Realm as on earth, this is forever true. It matters not where you
believe you are nor what you think the truth about yourself must really
be. It makes no difference what you look upon nor what you choose to
feel or think or wish. For God HimHerself has said, "Your will be done."
And it is done to you accordingly.
66
You who believe that you can choose to see the SonDaughter of God as you
would have himher be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand
against the truth of what you are. Undoing truth would be impossible.
But concepts are not difficult to change. One vision, clearly
seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before will
change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept of the
self has changed. Are you invulnerable? Then the world is
harmless in your sight. Do you forgive? Then is the world
forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses and so it looks on
you with eyes that see as yours. Are you a body? So is all the
world perceived as treacherous and out to kill.
67
Are you a Spirit, deathless and without the promise of corruption and
the stain of sin upon you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy
of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where nothing need
be feared but only loved. Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart? And
what could hurt the truly innocent? Your will be done, you holy Child of
God. It does not matter if you think you are in earth or the God Realm .
What your FatherMother wills for you can never change. The truth in you
remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as Love
Itself. And you are worthy that your will be done!
68
Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too
alien to your thinking to be helpful nor to make the kinds of change you
could not recognize. Concepts are needed while perception lasts, and changing
concepts is salvation's task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in
truth, which has no opposite and cannot change. In this world's concepts
are the guilty "bad;" the "good" are innocent. And no one here but holds
a concept of himself/herself in which he/she counts the "good" to pardon
him/her the "bad." Nor does he/she trust the "good" in anyone, believing
that the "bad" must lurk behind. This concept emphasizes treachery, and
trust becomes impossible. Nor could it change while you perceive the
"bad" in you.
69
You could not recognize your "evil" thoughts as long as you see
value in attack. You will perceive them sometimes, but will not see them
as meaningless. And so they come in fearful form, with content still
concealed, to shake your sorry concept of yourself and blacken it with
still another "crime." You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you
are too confused about yourself. But should one brother/sister
dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept
of yourself is wholly changed. Your "evil" thoughts have
been forgiven with his/hers, because you let them all affect you not. No
longer did you choose that you should be the sign of evil and of guilt
in him/her. And as you gave your trust to what is good in him/her, you
gave it to the good in you.
70
In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him/her more than just a body,
for the good is never what the body seems to be. The actions of the body
are perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you and thus of him/her
as well. By focusing upon the good in him/her, the body grows
decreasingly persistent in your sight and will at length be seen as
little more than just a shadow circling round the good. And this will be
your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond
the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not
interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in
Her sight there is another world.
71
You live in that world just as much as this. For both are concepts of
yourself which can be interchanged, but never jointly held. The contrast
is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of
yourself because it was not made for you alone. Born as a gift for
someone not perceived to be yourself, it has been given you. For
your forgiveness, offered unto him/her, has been accepted now for both
of you.
72
Have faith in him/her who walks with you, so that your fearful concept
of yourself may change. And look upon the good in him/her that you may
not be frightened by your "evil" thoughts because they do not cloud your
view of him/her. And all this shift requires is that you be willing
that this happy change occur. No more than this is asked. On its behalf,
remember what the concept of yourself which now you hold has brought you
in its wake, and welcome the glad contrast offered you. Hold out your
hand that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness which you offer one
whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let the cruel concept
of yourself be changed to one which brings the peace of God.
73
The concept of yourself which now you hold would guarantee your function
here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. And thus it dooms you to
a bitter sense of deep depression and futility. Yet it need not be fixed
unless you choose to hold it past the hope of change and keep it static
and concealed within your mind. Give it instead to Her Who understands
the changes that it needs to let it serve the function given you to
bring you peace that you may offer peace to have it yours. Alternatives
are in your mind to use, and you can see yourself another way.
Would you not rather look upon yourself as needed for salvation
of the world instead of as salvation's enemy?
74
The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before
the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images
because you look on them as through a barrier which dims your sight and
warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. The light is
kept from everything you see. At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies
beyond. At least, you merely look on darkness and perceive the terrified
imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. And
what you see is hell, for fear is hell. All that is given you is
for release—the sight, the vision, and the inner Guide all lead you out
of hell with those you love beside you and the universe with them.
75
Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true
creationmanifestation has the LordLady of Love and Life entrusted all
salvation from the misery of hell. And to each one has HeShe allowed the
grace to be a savior/savioress to the holy ones especially entrusted to
his/her care. And this he/she learns when first he/she looks upon one
brother/sister as he/she looks upon himself/herself and sees the mirror
of himself/herself in him/her. Thus is the concept of himself/herself
laid by, for nothing stands between his/her sight and what he/she looks
upon to judge what he/she beholds. And in this single vision does he/she
see the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness and
understands he/she looks on everyone as he/she beholds this One. For
there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted
from his/her sight.
76
The veil across the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt
and death, they all are different names for just one error—that there is
a space between you and your brother/sister, kept apart by an illusion
of yourself which holds him/her off from you and you away from him/her.
The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of
yourself that it may fight to keep the space that holds your
brother/sister off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword,
you must perceive the body as yourself, for you are bound to separation
from the sight of him/her who holds the mirror to another view of what
he/she is and thus what you must be.
77
What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? And
what could this give rise to but an image of yourself that can
be miserable and remain in hell and torment? Who has learned to see
his/her brother/sister not as this has saved himself/herself,
and thus is he/she a savior/savioress to the rest. To everyone has God
entrusted all, because a partial savior/savioress would be one who is
but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given each of you to save
are everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are, all those
you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while since,
and those you will yet meet, the unremembered and the not yet born. For
God has given you HisHer SonDaughter to save from every concept that
he/she ever held.
78
Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the
savior/savioress of the SonDaughter of God? How would you know his/her
holiness while you see him/her apart from yours? For holiness is seen
through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within and thus expect to
see it everywhere. And so they call it forth in everyone they look upon
that he/she may be what they expect of him/her. This is the
savior's/savioress’s vision—that he/she see his/her innocence in all
he/she looks upon and sees his/her own salvation everywhere. He/she
holds no concept of himself/herself between his/her calm and open eyes
and what he/she sees. He/she brings the light to what he/she
looks upon, that he/she may see it as it really is.
79
Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but reflects a wish to
be a self which you are not. And from that wish, a concept rises,
teaching that you are the thing you wish to be. It will remain
your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered/mothered it no
longer is held dear. But while you cherish it, you will behold your
brother/sister in the likeness of the self whose image has the wish
begot of you. For vision can but represent a wish,
because it has no power to createmanifest . Yet it can look with love or
look with hate, depending only on the simple choice of whether you would
join with what you see or keep yourself apart and separate.
80
The savior's/savioress’s vision is as innocent of what your
brother/sister is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It
sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind,
unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on only what the present
holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And recognizing
this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is
the answer given. And the door held open for the face of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness to shine upon the one who asks in
innocence to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held
so long and dear against the vision of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you.
81
Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish,
insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing which you are not. And
think as well upon the thing that you would be instead. It is a thing of
madness, pain, and death; a thing of treachery and black despair, of
failing dreams and no remaining hope except to die and end the dream of
fear. This is temptation, nothing more than this. Can this
be difficult to choose against? Consider what temptation is,
and see the real alternatives you choose between. There are but
two. Be not deceived by what appears as the many choices. There is hell
or the God Realm, and of these you choose but one.
82
Let not the world's light, given unto you, be hidden from the world. It
needs the light, for it is dark indeed, and men/women despair
because the savior's/savioress’s vision is withheld, and what they see
is death. Their savior/savioress stands, unknowing and unknown,
beholding them with eyes unopened. And they cannot see until he/she
looks on them with seeing eyes and offers them forgiveness with his/her
own. Can you to whom God says, "Release Our SonDaughter!" be tempted not
to listen when you learn that it is you for whom HeShe asks
release? And what but this is what this course would teach? And what but
this is there for you to learn?
83
Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it
occurs. It would persuade the holy SonDaughter of God heshe is a body,
born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it
orders himher to feel. It sets the limits on what heshe can do; its
power is the only strength heshe has; hisher grasp cannot exceed its
tiny reach. Would you be this if the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness appeared to you in all Her glory, asking you but
this:
85
For She has come, and She is asking this.
86
How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained! You always
choose between your weakness and the strength of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you. And what you choose is
what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your
actions, you have given it no power. And the light of the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you is given charge of
everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Her, and She
has given you Her strength instead.
87
Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again,
so where you made a faulty choice before, you now can make a better one
and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you.
In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness calls to you and gently says, "Min
brother/sister, choose again." She would not leave one source of pain
unhealed nor any image left to veil the truth. [She would remove all
misery from you, whom God createdmanifested altars unto joy.] She would
not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release
your minds from everything that hides Her face from you. Her holiness is
yours because She is the only power that is real in you. Her
strength is yours because She is the Self that God createdmanifested as
HisHer only Daughter.
88
The images you make can not prevail against what God HimHerself
would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it
is—another chance to choose again and let the Christ Consciousness/the
Mercy Consciousness's strength prevail in every circumstance and every
place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide
the face of the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness is
powerless before Her majesty and disappears before Her holy sight. The
saviors/savioresses of the world who see like Her are merely those who
chose Her strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Her.
They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the
Will of God. And what they will is only what HeShe wills.
89
Learn then the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive
yourself as weak and miserable with these words:
91
Thus is the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness's strength
invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that
comes from God and that can never fail. And thus are miracles as natural
as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was
made. For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory
alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with truth.
92
You are as God createdmanifested you, and so is every living
thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you behold
as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss is but
temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to
this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but
disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God’s
SonDaughter and close the door upon hisher dreams of weakness, opening
the way to hisher salvation and release. Choose once again what you
would have himher be, remembering that every choice you make establishes
your own identity as you will see it and believe it is.
93
Deny me not the little gift I ask when in exchange I lay before your
feet the peace of God and power to bring this peace to everyone who
wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is
given you to join with him/hende, and through the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in you unveil his/her eyes and let
him/her look upon the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness in
him/her. My brothers/sisters in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice
and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your own release.
There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so
intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to the God Realm .
To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and
clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before.
Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for
otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it
yours. And God ordained in loving kindness that it be for you.
94
Let us be glad that we can walk the world and find so the many chances
to perceive another situation where God's gift can once again be
recognized as ours! And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret
"sins," and hidden hates be gone. And all the loveliness which they
concealed appear like lawns of the God Realm to our sight to lift us
high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ
Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness appeared. Hear me, mine
brothers/sisters, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot call
in vain, and in HisHer certainty I rest content. For you will
hear, and you will choose again. And in this choice is everyone
made free.
95
I thank You, FatherMother, for these holy ones who are my
brothers/sisters as they are Your SonsDaughters. My faith in them is
Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what
they are and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them
because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your
holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them.
Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they
make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near.
96
In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother/sister
who would join with me in reaching past temptation and who looks with
fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect
constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in
what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers/sisters
are. And as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from
earth to the God Realm grows from tiny scattered threads of melody to
one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell and giving thanks
to You.
97
And now we say "Amen." For the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy
Consciousness has come to dwell in the abode You set for Her before
time was, in calm eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place
where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded
faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of
the Christ Consciousness/the Mercy Consciousness from anyone. Thy Will
is done, complete and perfectly, and all creationmanifestation
recognizes You and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your
Likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and
moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are One, and we are
home, where You would have us be.
