Section 2 - The Limits of Psychotherapy

Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. But psychotherapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who believe this. It may be they will not get much further, for no-one learns beyond his own readiness. Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. Be assured of this; each will progress. Retrogression is temporary. The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.

Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. When we speak of "the saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense. "Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of "progress" and "growth." These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.

Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. And this will one day come to pass for every "patient" on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized Teacher of God. He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. They cannot take more than he can give for now. Yet they both will find sanity at last.

Chapter 2 - The Purpose of Psychotherapy

Section 1 - Introduction

Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth. Its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests. No-one in this world escapes fear, but everyone can reconsider its causes and learn to evaluate them correctly. God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide. Yet there are times and situations in which the patient-therapist relationship becomes the means through which He offers His greater gifts to both.

What better purpose could any relationship have than to invite the Holy Spirit to enter into it and give it His Own great gift of rejoicing? What higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God? To help in this is the proper purpose of psychotherapy. Could anything be holier? For psychotherapy, correctly understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him.

Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress, is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence. These tendencies are often described as "self-destructive," and the patient often regards them in that way himself. What he does not realize and needs to learn is that this "self," which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made up. Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even willing to "sacrifice" his "life" on its behalf. For he regards it as himself. This self he sees as being acted on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless in the power of the world.

The patient need not think of truth as God in order to make progress in salvation. But he must begin to separate truth from illusion, recognizing that they are not the same, and becoming increasingly willing to see illusions as illusions and to accept the truth as true. His Teacher will take him on from there, as far as he is ready to go. Psychotherapy can only save him time. The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong. Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses to save time, and to prepare additional teachers for His work. There is no end to the help that He begins and He directs. By whatever routes He chooses, all psychotherapy leads to God in the end. But that is up to Him. We are all His psychotherapists, for He would have us all be healed in Him.

Section 2 - The Irreconcilable Beliefs

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. But just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it MUST overcome, and WILL SUCCEED.

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.

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.

Brothers, 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 Himself, to Whom all conflict, triumph, and attack of ANY kind are all unknown. He loves you perfectly, completely, and eternally. The Son of God at war with his Creator is a condition as ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in anger, and proclaiming that it is part of itself no longer.

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 Son of God that he is NOT himself, and NOT his Father's Son. For this, the memory of his Father 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. But 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.

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.

Conflict must be between two FORCES. It can NOT 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 created 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.

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, the VANQUISHER of the illusion that was less real, MADE an illusion by defeat. For conflict is the choice BETWEEN illusions, one to be crowned as real, the other vanquished and despised. Here will the Father NEVER be remembered. Yet NO illusion can invade His home, and drive Him out of what He loves forever. And what He loves MUST be forever quiet and at peace, BECAUSE it is His home. And you who are beloved of Him are no illusions, being as true and holy as Himself.

The stillness of your certainty of Him and of yourself is home to both of you, who dwell as one, and NOT apart. Open the doors of His most holy home, and let forgiveness sweep away all trace of the belief in sin that keeps God homeless, and His Son with Him. You are not strangers in the house of God. Welcome your brother to the home where God has set him in serenity and peace, and dwells with him. Illusions have no place where Love abides, protecting you from EVERYTHING that is not true. You dwell in peace as limitless as its Creator. And EVERYTHING is given those who would remember Him.

Over His home the Holy Spirit watches, sure that its peace can never BE disturbed. 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.

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.

Chapter 23 - The War Against Yourself

Section 1 - Introduction

Do you not see the OPPOSITE of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? INNOCENCE IS STRENGTH, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear. And fear 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 thinks he 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.

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?

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 Heaven aside? Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean peace where littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance with littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin.

Let us not let littleness lead God's Son into temptation. His glory is BEYOND it, measureless and timeless is as Eternity. Do not let time intrude upon your sight of him. Leave him not frightened and alone in his temptation. But help him rise above it, and perceive the light of which he is a part. YOUR innocence will light the way to his, and so is YOURS protected, and KEPT in your awareness. For who can know his glory, and perceive the little and the weak about him? Who can walk trembling in a fearful world, and realize that Heaven's glory shines in him?

Nothing around you but is PART of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven 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 re-interpreted as part of Heaven. 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.

Section 9 - True Rehabilitation

Properly speaking, every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation emphasizes the body, and the vocational orientation stresses the ego. The team approach generally leads more to confusion than anything else, because it is too often misused as an expedient for sharing the ego's dominion with other ego's rather than as a real experiment in cooperation of minds.

The reason why Bill needs this experience is because he needs rehabilitating himself. How often have I answered "help him" when you asked me to help you? He, too, has asked for help, and he has been helped whenever he was truly helpful to you. He has also gained to whatever extent he could give. He will help YOU more truly by going, if he can remember all the time he is there that his ONLY reason for being there is to REPRESENT ME.

Rehabilitation, as a movement, has been an improvement over overt neglect, but it is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of the halt to lead the blind. Bill, you will see this at every meeting. But this is not why you were chosen to go. You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them. Your ego cannot tolerate ego-weakness, either, without ambivalence, because it is afraid of its own weakness and the weakness of its chosen home.

That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will. You withdraw to allow your ego to recover, and to regain enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough NOT to threaten your ego, but also 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. A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. A damaged brain is also hardly a danger. 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 He Himself knows praise. He offers praise to you, and you must offer it to others. The real limitations on clinical psychology, as it is evaluated by its followers at present, are not reflected by the attitudes of psychiatrists, or medical boards, or hospital administrators, even though most of them are sadly in need of rehabilitation themselves.

Bill, you can do much on behalf of your own rehabilitation AND Helen's, and much more universally as well, if you think of the Princeton meetings in this way:

I am here ONLY to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Christ, who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,

because the one who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing he goes

there with me.

I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal.

Section 3 - Freedom of Will

How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name. UNLESS you do your will, you are NOT free. And would God leave His Son WITHOUT what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never LOSE your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn YOUR will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to OPPOSE Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound.

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 here. Now hear God speak to you through Him Who is His 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 creature 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 Himself in all creation's birth. Remember Him Who has created you, and through YOUR will created everything.

Not one created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will. What cause have you for anger in a world which merely waits YOUR blessing to be free? If YOU be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless.

The 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 Him Who GAVE your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can YOU be free APART from Him Whose holy Will you share. God turns to YOU to ask the world be saved, for by your OWN salvation is it healed. And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will. It IS your will to heal him, and because you have decided WITH him, he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.

Section 2 - Rules for Decision

1. The outlook starts with this:

"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."

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 answer cannot BUT produce confusion and uncertainty AND FEAR. This is your major problem now. You still make up your minds, 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, to everyone who listens well.

2. 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, and the things you WOULD experience. And say,

"If I make no decisions by myself,

This is the day that will be GIVEN me."

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. 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 to be 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. 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,

"I HAVE no question. I forgot what to decide."

This cancels out the terms which you have set, and lets the ANSWER show you what the question MUST have really been. 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. But these decisions still can be undone, by simple methods which you CAN accept.

4. If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your QUESTION go, you can begin to change your mind with this:

"At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel now."

This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step, which follows this.

5. Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with -

"And so I HOPE I have been wrong."

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.

6. 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. This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are NOT coerced, but merely hope to have a thing you WANT. And you can say in perfect honesty,

"I WANT another way to look at this."

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. This 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.

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. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination NOT to make decisions by yourself. This SEEMS to be a free 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 or with God. And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do. Your day is NOT at random. It is set by what you choose to live it WITH, and HOW the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You ALWAYS ask advice before you can decide 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.

The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your adviser 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 adviser, 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 adviser through the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have?

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 can not decide alone, to GUARANTEE the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law which 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 yourselves. Your judgment has been LIFTED from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received so MUST you give.

Section 8 - "I Need Do Nothing"

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 who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction.

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, but 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.

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 from the past, or in the future.

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.

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 remember YOU NEED DO NOTHING. It would be FAR more profitable now merely to concentrate on this, than to consider what you SHOULD do.

You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means that have served others well, neglecting what was made for YOU. Save time for me 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.

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.

He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the 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.

Section 3 - The Question of Payment

No-one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing. It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan. Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is here. Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help him better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. But no-one here can live with no illusions, for he must yet strive to have the last illusion be accepted by everyone everywhere. He has a mighty part in this one purpose, for which he came. He stays here but for this. And while he stays he will be given what he needs to stay.

Only an unhealed healer could try to heal for money, and he will not succeed to the extent to which he values it. Nor will he find his healing in the process. There will be those of whom the Holy Spirit asks some payment for His purpose. There will be those from whom He does not ask. It should not be the therapist who makes these decisions. There is a difference between payment and cost. To give money where God's plan allots it has no cost. To withhold it from where it rightfully belongs has enormous cost. The therapist who would do this loses the name of healer, for he could never understand what healing is. He cannot give it, and so he does not have it.

The therapists of this world are indeed useless to the world's salvation. They make demands, and so they cannot give. Patients can pay only for the exchange of illusions. This, indeed, must demand payment, and the cost is great. A "bought" relationship cannot offer the only gift whereby all healing is accomplished. Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit's only dream, must have no cost. For if it does, it merely crucifies God's Son again. Can this be how he is forgiven? Can this be how the dream of sin will end?

It has well been said that to him who hath shall be given. Because he has, he can give. And because he gives, he shall be given. This is the law of God, and not of the world. So it is with God's healers. They give because they have heard His Word and understood it. All that they need will thus be given them. But they will lose this understanding unless they remember that all they have comes only from God. If they believe they need anything from a brother, they will recognize him as a brother no longer. And if they do this, a light goes out even in Heaven. Where God's Son turns against himself, he can look only upon darkness. He has himself denied the light, and cannot see.

One rule should always be observed: No-one should be turned away because he cannot pay. No-one is sent by accident to anyone. Relationships are always purposeful. Whatever their purpose may have been before the Holy Spirit entered them, they are always His potential temple; the resting place of Christ and home of God Himself. Whoever comes has been sent. Perhaps he was sent to give his brother the money he needed. Both will be blessed thereby. Perhaps he was sent to teach the therapist how much he needs forgiveness, and how valueless is money in comparison. Again will both be blessed. Only in terms of cost could one have more. In sharing, everyone must gain a blessing without cost.

This view of payment may well seem impractical, and in the eyes of the world it would be so. Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. How much is gained by striving for illusions? How much is lost by throwing God away? And is it possible to do so? Surely it is impractical to strive for nothing, and to attempt to do what is impossible. Then stop a while, long enough to think of this: You have perhaps been seeking for salvation without recognizing where to look. Whoever asks your help can show you where. What greater gift than this could you be given? What greater gift is there that you would give?

Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend. Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well. Deny him entrance, and you have denied the Christ in you. Remember the sorrowful story of the world, and the glad tidings of salvation. Remember the plan of God for the restoration of joy and peace. And do not forget how very simple are the ways of God:

You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light. And then God sent His Son to give it to you.

Section 4 - The Agreement to Join

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. 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 mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. 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.

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. 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 vacant 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 is the grounds for sickness, when the minds have joined to close the gap BETWEEN them, where the weeds of sickness seemed to grow? God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of sin He CANNOT bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will that He created 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 Him Who wills to come, and bridge His Son's returning to Himself.

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, who mistook for gold a shining pebble, and who stored away 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 Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?

Be not afraid, but let your world be lit with miracles. And where the gap was seen to stand BETWEEN you, join your brother there. And sickness will be seen WITHOUT a cause. The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you YOU have 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 Father 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.

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 Father lays before His Son, AND shares it equally with him. 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.

Section 5 - The Fear of Life

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. 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 Son a body. For it is NOT the body that is like the Son's Creator. And what is lifeless cannot BE the Son of Life.

How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can IT create, and BE what it creates? And can it offer its creation ALL that it is, and NEVER suffer loss? God does not share His function with a body. He GAVE the function to create unto His Son, BECAUSE it is His Own. It is NOT sinful to believe the function of the Son is murder. But it IS insanity. What is the same can HAVE no different function. Creation is the means for God's extension. And what is His MUST be His Son's as well. Either the Father AND the Son are murderers, or neither is. Life makes not death, creating like itself.

The lovely light of your relationship IS like the love of God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son, for your forgiveness of one another is not complete as yet. And so it cannot be extended to ALL creation. 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 He 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. 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? 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 Himself and all the lights of Heaven, will gently lean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where He would have you. And NO illusion can attack the peace of God TOGETHER with His Son.

See no-one from the battleground, for there you look on him 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 of itself, 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 Father and the Heaven He created for His Son. BECAUSE it has no purpose.

Think what is given those who share their Father'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?

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 has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he 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, could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?

Section 3 - The Laws of Mind

To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by SHARING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITH HIM. This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds. This PARALLELS creation because it UNIFIES BY INCREASING, and INTEGRATES BY EXTENDING.

WHAT YOU PROJECT YOU BELIEVE. This is an immutable law of mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, its CONTENT is somewhat different in this world from what it REALLY is, because the thoughts it governs are VERY different from the thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances, if they are to maintain order.

But 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. 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 they 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 WILL make the right decision. This is because he HAS the answer. Conflict can indeed be projected, but it MUST be intrapersonal first.

The term "intraPERSONAL" is an ego term, because "personal" implies of ONE person, and NOT of others. "Interpersonal" has a similar error, because it implies something that exists between DIFFERENT individuals. 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 as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body. ONLY if he perceives as a MIND can he overcome this. THEN he is free to use terms like "intraMENTAL" and "interMENTAL" WITHOUT seeing them as different and conflicting, because minds CAN be in perfect accord.

OUTSIDE the Kingdom, the law which prevails INSIDE it is ADAPTED to "what you project you believe." This is its TEACHING form, because outside the Kingdom 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 Kingdom, there is no teaching OR learning, because there is no BELIEF. There is only CERTAINTY. God and His Sons, 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 Creation. God Himself created the law by creating BY it. And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did. Laws must be communicated, if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be TRANSLATED for those who speak a different language. But a good translator, though he MUST alter the FORM of what he translates, NEVER changes the meaning. In fact, his 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. The Holy Spirit's purpose in translating is naturally EXACTLY the opposite. He translates ONLY to preserve the original meaning in ALL respects and in ALL languages. Therefore, He OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER. The meaning of His 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 His sons OF truth. The EXTENSION of truth, which IS the Law of the Kingdom, 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. No-one questions the intimate connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible WITHOUT memory, because it CANNOT be consistent UNLESS it is remembered.

That is why the Holy Spirit IS a lesson in remembering. We said before that He teaches remembering and FORGETTING, but the forgetting aspect is only TO MAKE THE REMEMBERING CONSISTENT. You forget to REMEMBER BETTER. You will NOT understand His 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. What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom MEAN to the confused? It MUST be apparent that confusion INTERFERES with meaning, and therefore PREVENTS THE LEARNER FROM APPRECIATING IT.

There is NO confusion in the Kingdom, 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 CREATOR DID. This needs no translation, because it is perfectly understood, but it DOES need extension because it MEANS extension. Communication here is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain, because nothing discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore LIKE Him. That IS its reality, and nothing CAN assail it.

Section 2 - Specialness as a Substitute for Love

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. 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 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 decisions 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.

All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is FAITH IN SPECIALNESS. This takes many forms, but ALWAYS clashes with the reality of God's creation, and with the grandeur which He gave His Son. What else COULD justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his, and which He 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. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself.

Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you are and what your brother 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 MUST become, to KEEP your specialness, IS an illusion. He who is "worse" than you MUST be attacked, so that your specialness can live on his defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory IS his defeat and shame. How can he live, with all your sins upon him? And who MUST be his conqueror but you?

Would it be POSSIBLE for you to hate your brother if you were like him? COULD you attack him if you realized you journey WITH him, to a goal that is the SAME? Would you not help him reach it, in every way you could, if his attainment of it were yours? You ARE his enemy in specialness; his Friend in a SHARED purpose. Specialness can NEVER share, for it depends on goals that you ALONE can reach. And he 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 is your Friend BECAUSE his Father created him 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 Himself. And to remember this is now the ONLY purpose that you share. And so it is the only one you HAVE. 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 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?

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 WILL. And God Himself must honor it, or suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice, or stab of hate, or wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose that you share becomes obscured from BOTH of you. You would oppose this course because it teaches you, YOU ARE ALIKE. You have NO purpose that is not the same. And none your Father 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 Heaven gave it?

What perspective can the special have that does NOT change with every seeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on itself? 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 not while it is this you would defend AGAINST him. This is what HE attacks and YOU protect. Here is the ground of battle which you wage against him. Here MUST he be your enemy, and NOT your Friend. Never can there be peace among the different. He is your friend BECAUSE you are the same.

Section 6 - The Sane Curriculum

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 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.

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, it cannot PROTECT you. But the recognition of your invulnerability has more than merely negative value.

If your attacks on yourself FAILED to weaken you, YOU ARE STILL STRONG. You therefore HAVE no need to "equalize" the situation to ESTABLISH your strength. But 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.

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 creation, WITH YOUR OWN CONTENT.

Creation is NOT of you, and poor learners need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired, that you can progress only under constant clear-cut direction, provided by a teacher who can TRANSCEND your limited resources. He BECOMES your resource, because OF YOURSELF, you CANNOT learn. The learning situation in which you place 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, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to THEM to establish the curriculum by which they can ESCAPE their limitations. If they understood what is BEYOND them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this 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. For 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. 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 using the AIM of teaching TO DEFEAT ITSELF, what can you expect BUT confusion? The CURRICULUM does not make any sense.

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 in 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.

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.

Your learning POTENTIAL, properly understood, is limitless, BECAUSE IT WILL LEAD YOU TO GOD. You can TEACH the way to Him AND learn it, if you will follow the Teacher Who knows it, and the 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 Son. His learning is as unlimited as HE is.

Section 5 - The Truth Behind Illusions

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 takes hold of it. The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his control of what surrounds him. And he is afraid because he thought the rules PROTECTED him. Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did NOT deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. HE WAS MISTAKEN. He misunderstood what MADE him safe, and thought that it had left.

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 are 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. But while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are rules which they can seem to break, and frighten him. Yet IS he at the mercy of his toys? And CAN they represent a threat to him?

Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His 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.

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 which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. But this is EQUALLY forgotten in attack.

God's Son needs NO defense against his dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His ONE mistake is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions DO? 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 gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus IS he free.

Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to 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. 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 Son of God CAN have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is DELIVERED from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he IS. What could God's plan for his salvation BE, except a means to give him to Himself?

Lesson 170 "There is no cruelty in God and none in me."

No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.

How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:

You make what you defend against, and by

your own defense against it is it real

and inescapable. Lay down your arms,

and only then do you perceive it false.

It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an "enemy," an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.

If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source. For it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.

Next are the attributes of love bestowed upon its "enemy." For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish. And your arms indeed would crumble into dust. For such they are.

With love as enemy must cruelty become a god, and gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.

This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it, and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.

Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the course has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.

Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear's "enemy"; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself? The blood appears to be upon His lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.

The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form, and so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it here. And you return to a new world unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.

Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God, and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call of God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.

"Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen."

Lesson 186 "Salvation of the world depends on me."

Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind. Here is the thought of true humility which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you. It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role. It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace.

Today's idea may seem quite sobering until you see its meaning. All it says is that your Father still remembers you, and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son. It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are. What could humility request but this? And what could arrogance deny but this? Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged. It is pride that would deny the Call of God Himself.

All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God's Voice reveal to us what He would have us do. We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us. We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom and our holiness. And if He deems us worthy, so we are. It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.

There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you. Accept the plan you did not make instead. Judge not your value to it. If God's Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so. The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice Which tells them what they are and what to do.

Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real. It is this image which quails and retreats in terror as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom and the holiness to go beyond all images. You are not weak, as is the image of yourself. You are not ignorant and helpless. Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.

All this the Voice for God relates to you. And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust. What can it tell the holy Son of God? Why need he be concerned with it at all?

And so we find our peace. We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves. Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.

Is this the Son of God? Could He create such instability and call it Son? He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation. All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.

These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene when you accept the function given you. The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous. Who could be constant in his efforts, or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these? The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure. What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?

In lovely contrast, certain as the sun's return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous. There is no doubt of its validity. It comes from One Who knows no error. And His Voice is certain of Its messages. They will not change nor be in conflict. All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain. Your plan may be impossible, but God's can never fail because He is its Source.

Do as His Voice directs. And if It asks a thing of you that seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks and who would make denial. Then consider this; which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything? Let not its voice direct you. Hear instead a certain Voice Which tells you of a function given you by your Creator, Who remembers you and urges that you now remember Him.

His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing. He would comfort you although He knows no sorrow. He would make a restitution though He is complete; a gift to you although He knows that you have everything already. He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not. For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.

These are the forms which never can deceive, although they come from Formlessness Itself. Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here.

Section 10 - The Justice of Heaven

What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors CANNOT be undone by Heaven'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," this means you will forego ALL values of this world, in favor of the peace of Heaven. 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.

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 He 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 Him, 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 Son of God. When ANYONE is seen as losing, HE HAS BEEN CONDEMNED. And punishment becomes his due, INSTEAD of justice.

The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure. The Holy Spirit's perception leaves no GROUNDS for an attack. Only a LOSS could justify attack, and loss of ANY kind He 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. 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 can NOT 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. And 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 sight the Holy Spirit gives. NO-ONE deserves to lose. And what would be UNJUST to him can NOT occur. Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he 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? Salvation cannot SEEK to help God's Son be MORE unfair than HE 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 He ALLY to specialness. What He cannot perceive He bears no witness to. And everyone is EQUALLY entitled to His 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 His 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. Unless you think that ALL your brothers 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. 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. 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. What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due.

Section 4 - The Real Alternative

There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that 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. But 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.

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.

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 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.

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 answers 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.

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. 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 goes 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.

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 and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him. How utterly OPPOSED to truth is this, when what the lesson's purpose is to teach that what your brother loses YOU have lost, and what he gains is what is given YOU.

He has not left His Thoughts! But you forgot His Presence, and remember not His Love. No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal is one with His. What road in all the world will lead within, when EVERY road was made to separate the journey and 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 He never left His Thoughts to die, without their Source forever in themselves. He has not left His Thoughts. He could no more depart from them than they could keep Him out. In unity with Him do they abide, and in their Oneness BOTH are kept complete.

There IS no road that leads away from Him. 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 HIS Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is YOUR escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can YOU be found. There IS no path that does not lead to Him.

Lesson 134 "Let me perceive forgiveness as it is."

Let us review the meaning of "forgive," for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appears to rest salvation on a whim.

This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God's creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.

Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt can not be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

It is sin's unreality which makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, "Should I accuse myself of doing this?"

Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth, between the world you see and that which lies beyond, between the hell of guilt and Heaven's gate.

Across this bridge, as powerful as Love Which laid Its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

Forgiveness must be practiced for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

Today we practice true forgiveness that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lightening up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the Reality we share with them.

That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is."

Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his "sins" as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his "offenses" but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself "Would I condemn myself for doing this?"

Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, which were laid upon yourself.

Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning, and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Would I accuse myself of doing this?

I will not lay this chain upon myself."

In everything you do remember this:

No one is crucified alone, and yet,

No one can enter Heaven by himself.

Section 9 - The Purpose of the Body

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 by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you.

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 is 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.

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.

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 created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for SOME things, but by no means TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator 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.

Yet, like 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 kingdom, 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 Creator. 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 in the Oneness in which its being was created.

Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as your Self. 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 kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing, but who would still die to DEFEND it? This little self is NOT your kingdom. 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 that you think you set apart is no exception. Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created 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 kingdom 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, that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy that love would bring to it, from where IT comes, and where it would return WITH you.

The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built, to come in 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 every one you welcome will bring love with him, from Heaven 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. 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 kingdoms locked away from love, and leaving YOU outside. And you will RECOGNIZE yourself, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the love of its Creator shining upon it.

The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. 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 that you tried to hide from Heaven, straight into Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No son of God remains OUTSIDE His Fatherhood.

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 He knows YOU without your brother. But, TOGETHER, you could no more be UNAWARE of love, than love could know you not, or fail to recognize ITSELF in you.

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 He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome YOU. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you KNOW Him. 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.

Lesson 153 "In my defenselessness my safety lies."

You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.

The world gives rise but to defensiveness. For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. Yet is defensiveness a double threat. For it attests to weakness, and sets up a system of defense which cannot work. Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery without and still a greater treachery within. The mind is now confused, and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.

It is as if a circle held it fast, wherein another circle bound it, and another in that one, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor obtained. Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days which bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of imprisonment upon the mind.

Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought. You are it's slave. You know not what you do in fear of it. You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice who feel its iron grip upon your heart.

You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies and dreams, by which illusions of his safety comfort him.

Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. Perhaps you will recall the course maintains that choice is always made between His strength and your own weakness seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants.

We will not play such childish games today, for our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us. We would not let our happiness slip by because a senseless fragment of a dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God; its tiny instant for eternity.

We look past dreams today, and recognize that we need no defense because we are created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation; sure we will fulfill our chosen purpose as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.

Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light. God's ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. Who is holier than they? Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? And who could be more mightily protected? What defense could possibly be needed by the ones who are among the chosen ones of God by His election and their own as well?

It is the function of God's ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done. God has elected all, but few have come to realize His Will is but their own. And while you fail to teach what you have learned salvation waits, and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished. For you will not see the light until you offer it to all your brothers. As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.

Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach them that the game of fear is gone. His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured. The game of fear is gladly laid aside when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.

You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over. Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God.

We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless. So is the story ended. Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world, that everyone may learn the tale he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he can not escape, was but his own deluded fantasy. God's ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. God's Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.

Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. Ten would be better; fifteen better still. And as distraction ceases to arise to turn us from our purpose, we will find that half an hour is too short a time to spend with God. Nor will we willingly give less at night in gratitude and joy.

Each hour adds to our increasing peace, as we remember to be faithful to the Will we share with God. At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes. Sometimes we will forget. At other times the business of the world will close on us, and we will be unable to withdraw a little while and turn our thoughts to God.

Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God in hourly remembrance of our mission and His Love. And we will quietly sit by and wait on Him and listen to His Voice, and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come; while thanking Him for the gifts He gave us in the one gone by.

In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet ways, where you will walk in true defenselessness, for you will know that Heaven goes with you. Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world. Think you He will not make this possible for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?

Today our theme is our defenselessness. We clothe ourselves in it as we prepare to meet the day. We rise up strong in Christ, and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength. We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose. We will pause a moment, as He tells us "I am here."

Our practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent. Be not afraid nor timid. There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal. The ministers of God can never fail, because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him. These are His gifts to you. Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.

Section 7 - The Savior's Vision

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 in which he counts the "good" to pardon him the "bad." Nor does he 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. 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 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, because you let them all effect YOU not. No longer did you choose that you should be the sign of "evil" and of guilt in him. And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him 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 as well. By focusing upon the "good" in him, 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 His sight there IS another world. 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, has been accepted now for BOTH of you.

Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept of yourself may change. And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him. 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 your cruel concept of yourself be changed to one which brings the peace of God.

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 Him 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?

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.

Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true creation has the Lord of Love and Life entrusted ALL salvation from the misery of hell. And to each one has He allowed the grace to be a Savior to the holy ones especially entrusted to his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon ONE brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him. Thus is the CONCEPT of himself laid by, for nothing stands BETWEEN his sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the Face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone, as he beholds this One. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight.

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 brother NOT as this HAS saved himself, and thus IS he a savior to the rest. To everyone has God entrusted all, because a PARTIAL savior 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 His Son to save from every concept that he ever held.

Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how COULD you be the savior of the Son of God? How would you know his holiness, while you see him 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 may be what they expect of him. This is the Savior's vision; that he see HIS innocence in all he looks upon, and sees his own salvation everywhere. He holds NO concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He BRINGS the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is.

Whatever form temptation seems to take, it ALWAYS but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not. And FROM that wish a concept rises, teaching you you ARE the thing you wish to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. And while you cherish it, you will behold your brother 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 create. 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.

The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother 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 Christ 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 in you.

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 many choices. There is hell or Heaven. And of these you choose but ONE.

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 despair because the Savior's vision is withheld, and what they see is death. Their Savior stands, unknowing and unknown, beholding them with eyes unopened. And THEY cannot see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, and offers them forgiveness with his own. Can you to whom God says, "Release My Son" be tempted NOT to listen, when you learn that it is YOU for whom He asks release? And what BUT this is what this course would teach? And what BUT this is there for you to learn?