Lesson 82 We will review these ideas today: (63-64)

63) "The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness."

My forgiveness is the means by which the light of the world finds expression through me. My forgiveness is the means by which I become aware of the light of the world in me. My forgiveness is the means by which the world is healed, together with myself. Let me, then, forgive the world that it may be healed along with me.

Suggestions for specific forms for applying this idea are:

"Let peace extend from my mind to yours, (name)"

"I share the light of the world with you, (name)"

"Through my forgiveness I can see this as it is."

64) "Let me not forget my function."

Suitable specific forms of this idea include:

"Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

"I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function."

"This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way."

Lesson 346 "Today the peace of God envelops me, and I forget all things except His Love."

And when the evening comes today, we will remember nothing but the peace of God. For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love.

Section 5 - The Recognition of Truth

God's MEANING waits in the Kingdom because that is where He placed it. It does NOT wait in time. It merely RESTS there (in the Kingdom) because it BELONGS there, as YOU do. How can you, who ARE God's meaning, perceive yourselves as absent FROM it? You can see yourselves as separated FROM your meaning only by EXPERIENCING YOURSELF AS UNREAL. This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson which you CANNOT REALLY LEARN, and therefore CANNOT REALLY TEACH. But you ARE always teaching. You MUST, then, be teaching SOMETHING ELSE AS WELL, even though the ego DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.

The ego, then, IS always being undone, and DOES suspect your motives. Your mind CANNOT be unified in allegiance to the ego, because the mind does NOT BELONG to it. But what is "treacherous" to the ego IS faithful to peace. The ego's "enemy" is therefore YOUR friend. We said before that the ego's friend is not part of you but that is because the ego perceives itself as at war and therefore in need of allies. YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE.

Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete. But if they perceive ANY of their brothers as anything OTHER than their perfect equals, the IDEA of competition HAS entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant AGAINST this idea, because ALL your conflicts come FROM it. It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving YOURSELF as unreal?

To be IN the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention ON it. As long as you believe that you can ATTEND to what is NOT true, you are accepting conflict as your CHOICE. IS IT REALLY A CHOICE? It SEEMS to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the same. You who ARE the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you ARE reality. This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, NOT in the Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY reality. It is PERFECTLY clear in its thought, because it is a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It SEES only brothers because it sees ONLY in its own Light.

God has lit your minds Himself, and keeps your mind lit BY His light because His light is WHAT YOUR MINDS ARE. This is TOTALLY beyond question. And when YOU questioned it, you WERE answered. The answer merely UNDOES the question by establishing the fact that to QUESTION reality is to question MEANINGLESSLY. That is why the Holy Spirit NEVER questions. Its sole function is to UNdo the questionable, and thus LEAD TO CERTAINTY. The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt. They do NOT raise questions because NOTHING QUESTIONABLE ENTERS THEIR MINDS. This holds them in perfect serenity because this is what they SHARE, KNOWING what they are.

Healing is both an art and a science, as has so often been said. It is an art because it depends on inspiration in the sense that we have already used the term. Inspiration is the opposite of dis-spiriting, and therefore means to make joyful. The dis-spirited are depressed because they believe that they are literally "without the Spirit," which is an illusion. You do not PUT the Spirit in them by inspiring them, because that would be "magic," and therefore would not be real healing. But you DO recognize the Spirit that is ALREADY THERE, and thereby REAWAKEN IT. This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the LIFE. The SPIRIT is not asleep in the minds of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive it and be glad IS.

Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, whose laws are true. BECAUSE they are true, they are perfectly dependable, and therefore universal in application. The real aim of science is neither prediction nor control, but ONLY UNDERSTANDING. This is because it does NOT establish the laws it seeks; CANNOT discover them through prediction, and has NO control over them at all. Science is nothing more than an approach to WHAT ALREADY IS. Like inspiration, it can be misunderstood as magic, and WILL be whenever it is undertaken as SEPARATE from what already is, and perceived as a means for ESTABLISHING it. To believe this is possible is to believe YOU CAN DO IT. This can ONLY be the voice of the ego.

Truth can only be RECOGNIZED, and NEED only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both therefore come from the same Source, because inspiration comes from the voice FOR God and certainty comes from the laws OF God. Healing does not come DIRECTLY from God, who knows His Creations as perfectly whole. But healing is nevertheless OF God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their RESULT in a state of mind which does not know Him. The STATE is unknown to Him, and therefore does not exist. But those who sleep are stupefied, or better, UNAWARE. And BECAUSE they are unaware THEY DO NOT KNOW.

The ego's goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit's, and it is BECAUSE of this that their goals can NEVER be reconciled in ANY way or to ANY extent. The ego ALWAYS seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit ALWAYS seeks to unify and HEAL. As you heal, you ARE healed because the Holy Spirit sees NO ORDER OF HEALING. Healing IS the way to undo the belief in differences, because it is the ONLY way of perceiving the Sonship WITHOUT this belief. This perception is therefore IN accord with the laws of God even in a state of mind which is OUT of accord with His. But the strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind INTO accord with His, because it yields to His pull which IS in all of you.

To oppose the pull or the will of God is not an ability but a real delusion. The ego believes that it HAS this ability, and can offer this ability to YOU as a gift. YOU DO NOT WANT IT. It is NOT a gift. It is NOTHING AT ALL. God HAS given you a gift, which you both HAVE and ARE. When you do not USE it, you do not know you HAVE it. By not knowing this, you do NOT know what you ARE. Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you. But the LAWS are not meaningless, because all meaning is contained BY them, and IN them.

Lesson 103 "God, being Love, is also happiness."

Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it, nor can it be experienced where love is not. Love has no limits, being everywhere. And therefore joy is everywhere as well. Yet can the mind deny that this is so, believing there are gaps in love where sin can enter, bringing pain instead of joy. This strange belief would limit happiness by redefining love as limited, and introducing opposition in what has no limit and no opposite.

Allow this one correction to be placed within your minds each waking hour today. Then welcome all the happiness it brings, as truth replaces fear, and joy becomes what you expect to take the place of pain. God being Love, it will be given you. Bolster this expectation frequently throughout the day, and quiet all your fears with this assurance, kind and wholly true:

"God, being Love, is also happiness.

And it is happiness I seek today.

I cannot fail, because I seek the truth."

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.

The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind, as they operate in this world, is that by obeying them, and I assure you that you MUST obey them, you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes are BELIEVED in. The laws of mind govern thoughts, and you DO respond to two conflicting voices. You have heard many arguments on behalf of "the freedoms," which would indeed have BEEN freedom if man had not chosen to FIGHT for them. That is why they perceive "the freedoms" as many instead of ONE.

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.

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.

Lesson 64 "Let me not forget my function."

Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation.

To review our last few lessons, your function here is to be the light of the world, a function given you by God. It is only the arrogance of the ego which leads you to question this, and only the fear of the ego which induces you to regard yourself as unworthy of the task assigned to you by God Himself. The world's salvation awaits your forgiveness because through it does the Son of God escape from all illusions and thus from all temptation. The Son of God is you.

Only by fulfilling the function given you by God will you be happy. That is because your function is to be happy by using the means by which happiness becomes inevitable. There is no other way. Therefore every time you choose whether or not to fulfill your function, you are really choosing whether to be happy or not.

Let us remember this today. Let us remind ourselves of it in the morning and again at night, and all through the day as well. Prepare yourself in advance for all the decisions you will make today by remembering that they are all really very simple. Each one will lead to happiness or unhappiness. Can such a simple decision really be difficult to make?

Let not the form of the decision deceive you. Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content. It is impossible that any decision on earth can have a content different from just this one simple choice. That is the only choice the Holy Spirit sees. Therefore it is the only choice there is.

Today, then, let us practice these thoughts:

"Let me not forget my function.

Let me not try to substitute mine for God's.

Let me forgive and be happy."

At least once devote ten or fifteen minutes to reflecting on this with closed eyes. Related thoughts will come to help you, if you remember the crucial importance of your function to you and to the world.

In the frequent applications of today's idea to be made throughout the day, devote several minutes to reviewing the thoughts, and then to thinking about them and about nothing else. This will be difficult at first particularly, since you are not proficient in the mind discipline which it requires. You may need to repeat "Let me not forget my function" quite often, to help you concentrate.

Two forms of the shorter practice periods are required. At times, do the exercises with your eyes closed, trying to concentrate on the thoughts you are applying. At other times keep your eyes open after reviewing the thoughts and look slowly and unselectively about you, telling yourself:

"This is the world it is my function to save." W(119)

Lesson 109 "I rest in God."

We ask for rest today, and quietness unshaken by the world's appearances. We ask for peace and stillness in the midst of all the turmoil born of clashing dreams. We ask for safety and for happiness, although we seem to look on danger and on sorrow. And we have the thought that will answer our asking with what we request.

"I rest in God." This thought will bring to you the rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and the safety and the happiness you seek. "I rest in God." This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is. Here is the end of suffering for all the world, and everyone who ever came and yet will come to linger for a while. Here is the thought in which the Son of God is born again, to recognize Himself.

"I rest in God." Completely undismayed this thought will carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God. There is no suffering it cannot heal. There is no problem which it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God.

This is the day of peace. You rest in God, and while the world is torn by winds of hate, your rest remains completely undisturbed. Yours is the rest of truth. Appearances cannot intrude on you. You call to all to join you in your rest, and they will hear and come to you because you rest in God. They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.

In Him you have no cares and no concerns, no burdens, no anxiety, no pain, no fear of future and no past regrets. In timelessness you rest, while time goes by without its touch upon you, for your rest can never change in any way at all. You rest today. And as you close your eyes, sink into stillness. Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind that all its frantic fantasies were but the dreams of fever that has passed away. Let it be still and thankfully accept its healing. No more fearful dreams will come now that you rest in God. Take time today to slip away from dreams and into peace.

Each hour that you take your rest today a tired mind is suddenly made glad, a bird with broken wings begins to sing, a stream long dry begins to flow again. The world is born again each time you rest, and hourly remember that you came to bring the peace of God into the world, that it might take its rest along with you.

With each five minutes that you rest today the world is nearer waking. And the time when rest will be the only thing there is comes closer to all worn and tired minds, too weary now to go their way alone. And they will hear the bird begin to sing, and see the stream begin to flow again, with hope reborn and energy restored to walk with lightened steps along the road that suddenly seems easy as they go.

You rest within the peace of God today, quiet and unafraid. Each brother comes to take his rest, and offer it to you. We rest together here, for thus our rest is made complete, and what we give today we have received already. Time is not the guardian of what we give today. We give to those unborn and those passed by, to every Thought of God, and to the Mind in Which these Thoughts were born, and where they rest. And we remind them of their resting place each time we tell ourselves:

"I rest in God."

Section 7 - The Vision of Christ

The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it.

You cannot perceive the soul, but you will not KNOW it while you perceive anything ELSE as more valuable. The Holy Spirit is your strength because He perceives nothing BUT your soul AS YOU. He is perfectly aware that you do NOT know yourselves, and perfectly aware of how to teach you what you are. BECAUSE He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory BECAUSE of Him.

You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so. And THEREFORE, you CAN decide otherwise. As it was MY decision, so is it YOURS. YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you. As self value comes from self EXTENSION, so does the PERCEPTION of self value come from the projection of loving thoughts outward.

The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight, the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision WITH you. He will SHOW you the real world, because God GAVE you Heaven. Through Him, your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world, and BY this, he will learn to REinvest in HIMSELF. For reality is one with the Father AND the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.

When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you WILL remember us. But you must learn the cost of sleeping, AND REFUSE TO PAY IT. Only then will you decide to awake. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of YOU. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you, because He knows of the Father's love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours.

In perfect peace, He waits for you at His Father's altar, holding out the Father's love to you, in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self. Every Child of God is one in Christ, for his Being is in Christ, as Christ's is in God. Christ's love for you is His love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His Father's love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ, at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge, because perception has become so holy that its transfer to Holiness is merely its natural extension.

Love transfers to love without ANY interference, for the situations are identical. Only the ABILITY to make this transfer is the product of learning. As you perceive more and more common elements in ALL situations, the transfer of your training, under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually, you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability IS universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the Laws of God. What is One cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation IS the reinstatement of knowledge.

At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father, and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself which is His Son. The world has no purpose, as it blends into the Purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There, the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God, and of each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God, it must ALSO be in you.

Section 6 - Heralds of Eternity

In this world, God's Son comes closest to himself in a holy relationship. There he begins to find the certainty his Father has in him. And there he finds his function of restoring his Father's laws to what was held OUTSIDE them, and finding what was lost. Only in time can anything BE lost, but never lost forever. So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No-one who has a single purpose, unified and sure, can BE afraid. No-one who SHARES his purpose with him can NOT be one with him.

It is impossible to over-estimate your brother's value. Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it WANTS the other for ITSELF, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimable clearly cannot BE evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far BEYOND your judgment you cannot even SEE it? Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. It will be GIVEN you to see your brother's worth, when all you WANT for him is peace. And what you want for HIM, you will receive.

How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you? What would you want EXCEPT his offering? His worth has been established by his Father, and you will RECOGNIZE it as you receive his Father's gift through him. What is in him will shine so brightly in your grateful vision, that you will merely love him, and be glad. You will not think to judge him. Who would SEE the face of Christ, and yet insist that judgment still has meaning? For this insistence is of those who do NOT see. Vision OR judgment is your choice, but never BOTH of these.

Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line. Why should it take so many holy instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do? There IS but one. The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light is all the same. Nothing before it; nothing afterwards.

You look upon each holy instant as a DIFFERENT point in time. IT NEVER CHANGES. All that it ever held or will ever hold is here right now. The past takes nothing FROM it, and the future will ADD no more. Here, then, is EVERYTHING. Here is the loveliness of your relationship, with means and ends in perfect harmony ALREADY. Here is the perfect faith that you will one day offer to each other, ALREADY offered you. And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other is ALREADY given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen.

Can you EVALUATE the giver of a gift like this? Would you EXCHANGE this gift for ANY other? This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance. And merely BY remembering them, the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death MUST be forgotten. This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet have faith that He Who sees the gift in BOTH of you, will offer and receive it for you BOTH. And through His vision will YOU see it, and through His understanding RECOGNIZE it, and love it as your own.

Be comforted, and feel the Holy Spirit watching over you, in love and perfect confidence in what He sees. He knows the Son of God. And shares his Father's certainty the universe rests in his gentle hands in safety and in peace. Let us consider now what he must learn, to SHARE his Father's confidence in him. What IS he, that the Creator of the universe should offer it to him, and KNOW it rests in safety? He looks upon himself not as his Father knows him. And yet it is impossible the confidence of God should be misplaced.

Section 4 - The Fundamental Law of Perception

To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this. The rest but stem from this, to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception's form, adapted to this world, of God's more basic law; that Love creates Itself, and nothing BUT Itself.

God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere. NOT that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. ONLY because His Son BELIEVES it is, and from His Son's belief He COULD not let Himself be separate entirely. He could not enter His Son's insanity with him, but He could be sure His sanity went there WITH him, so he could not be lost forever in the madness of his wish.

Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not. Knowledge has but one law BECAUSE it has but One Creator. But this world has two who made it, and they do NOT see it as the same. To each it has a DIFFERENT purpose, and to each it is a perfect means to serve the goal for which it is perceived. For specialness it is the perfect frame to set it off; the perfect battleground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for the illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds in its perception; not one but can be fully justified.

There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose.

In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it. The lamps of Heaven are NOT for it to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, AND YOU AGREE, then must the Maker of the world correct your error, lest you still remain in darkness, where the lamps are NOT.

Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no-one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven's help within him, ready to lead him OUT of darkness into light at ANY time. The time he chooses can be ANY time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to AVAIL himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger, turned to an event which justifies his love.

He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and FAR more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will re-interpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy. How CAN a misperception be a sin? Let ALL your brother's errors be to you nothing except a chance for YOU to see the workings of the Helper given YOU to see the world HE made, instead of yours.

What, then, is justified? WHAT DO YOU WANT? For these two questions ARE the same, and, when you see them AS the same, your choice is made. For it is SEEING them as one that brings release from the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to offer to your peace, and many chances to extend your own forgiveness. Such its PURPOSE is, to those who WANT to see peace and forgiveness descend on THEM, and offer THEM the light. The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that SEEMS to stand BETWEEN you and His gentleness. It is not there in His forgiving eyes. And THEREFORE it need not be there in yours.

Sin is the fixed belief perception CANNOT change. What has been damned IS damned, and damned forever, BEING FOREVER UNFORGIVABLE. If, then, it IS forgiven, sin's perception MUST have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy Spirit, too, sees what HE sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on His Vision sin can NOT encroach. For sin HAS BEEN corrected by His sight. And thus IT MUST HAVE BEEN AN ERROR, NOT a sin. For what it claimed could never be, HAS BEEN. Sin is ATTACKED by punishment, and so PRESERVED. But to FORGIVE it is to change its state from error into truth.

Lesson 184 "The Name of God is my inheritance."

You live by symbols. You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it. This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted with a name.

This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world's perception is achieved. You see something where nothing is, and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you. Thus do you think that you have given life in separation. By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will.

What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things ununified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awarenesses? You gave these names to them, establishing perception as you wished to have perception be. The nameless things were given names, and thus reality was given them as well. For what is named is given meaning, and will then be seen as meaningful, a cause of true effects, with consequence inherent in itself.

This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth. Its enemy is wholeness. It conceives of little things, and looks upon them. And a lack of space, a sense of unity or vision which sees differently become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with and deny.

Yet does this other vision still remain a natural direction for the mind to channel its perception. It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved and concepts can be meaningfully shared.

This is the sum of the inheritance the world bestows. And everyone who learns to think that it is so accepts the signs and symbols which assert the world is real. It is for this they stand. They leave no doubt that what is named is there. It can be seen, as is anticipated. What denies that it is true is but illusion, for it is the ultimate reality. To question it is madness; to accept its presence is the proof of sanity.

Such is the teaching of the world. It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through. But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable are its premises, how doubtful its results, the sooner does he question its effects. Learning which stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, and all the arbitrary names the world bestows can be withdrawn as they are raised to doubt.

Think not you made the world. Illusions, yes! But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming. When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his.

Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you; the One Identity Which all things share; the one acknowledgment of what is true. And then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world which darkness rules.

Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality. The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has One Name, One Meaning and a single Source Which unifies all things within Itself. Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.

God has no name. And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. All names are unified; all space is filled with truth's reflection. Every gap is closed, and separation healed. The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven. In our practicing, our purpose is to let our minds accept what He has given as the answer to the pitiful inheritance you made as fitting tribute to the Son He loves.

No one can fail who seeks the meaning of the Name of God. Experience must come to supplement the Word. But first you must accept One Name for all reality, and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see but have not interfered with truth at all. One Name we bring into our practicing. One Name we use to unify our sight.

And though we use a different name for each awareness of an aspect of God's Son, we understand that they have but One Name Which He has given them. It is this Name we use in practicing. And through Its use, all foolish separations disappear which kept us blind. And we are given strength to see beyond them. Now our sight is blessed with blessings we can give as we receive.

"Father, our Name is Yours. In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their One Creator. What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Your Own Reality. And we are glad and thankful we were wrong. All our mistakes we give to you, that we may be absolved of all effects our errors seemed to have. And we accept the truth You give in place of every one of them. Your Name is our salvation and escape from what we made. Your Name unites us in the Oneness which is our inheritance and peace. Amen."

Section 4 - Beyond All Idols

Idols are quite specific. But your will is universal, being limitless. And so it has NO form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. Idols are LIMITS; they are the belief that there are FORMS which will bring happiness, and that, BY limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This LITTLE thing I want, and it will BE as everything to me." And this MUST fail to satisfy, because it IS your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols, and you ask for LOSS. Decide for truth, and everything IS yours.

IT IS NOT FORM YOU SEEK. What form can be a substitute for God the Father's Love? What form can take the place of all the love in the divinity of God the Son? What idol can make two of what IS one? And CAN the limitless be limited? You do not WANT an idol. It is NOT your will to have one. It will NOT bestow on you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the FORM of what you want, you LOSE the understanding of its purpose. So you see YOUR will within the idol, thus reducing it to a SPECIFIC form. But this could never BE your will, because what shares in all creation CANNOT be content with SMALL ideas and LITTLE things.

Behind the search for EVERY idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form BECAUSE it is unlimited. To seek a special person or a thing to ADD to you to make yourself complete, can ONLY mean that you believe some FORM is missing. And, by finding THIS, you will achieve completion in a FORM you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look BEYOND it, to the source of your belief that you ARE incomplete. ONLY if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the IDEA you are alone, and separated OFF from what is whole. And thus it WOULD be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made BEYOND the boundaries of limits on yourself.

It NEVER is the idol that you want. But what you think it OFFERS you, you want indeed, and have the RIGHT to ask for. Nor could it be POSSIBLE it be denied. Your will to be complete IS but God's will, and this is given you BY being His. God knows not form. He CANNOT answer you in terms which have no meaning. And YOUR will could not BE satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap which is not there. It is not this you WANT. Creation gives no SEPARATE person and no SEPARATE thing the power to complete the Son of God. What idol CAN be called upon to give the Son of God what he already HAS?

Completion is the FUNCTION of God's Son. He has no need to SEEK for it at all. Beyond ALL idols stands his holy will to be but what he IS. For MORE than whole is meaningless. If there were change in him; if he could be reduced to ANY form and limited to what is NOT in him, he would not BE as God created him. What idol CAN he need to be himself? For CAN he give a part of him away? What is not whole cannot MAKE whole. But what is REALLY asked for CANNOT be denied. Your will IS granted. NOT in any form that would content you not, but in the whole, completely lovely Thought God holds of you.

Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them, and in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change. Thoughts are not born and cannot die. They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a separate life, apart from him. The thoughts YOU think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind Which thought of you. And so there ARE no separate parts in what exists within God's Mind. It is forever One, eternally united and at peace.

The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there.

Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take, quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains EXACTLY as It always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, It rests in certainty and perfect peace. Here is your ONE reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. In perfect sureness of Its changelessness and of Its rest in Its eternal home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of Its Creator, Whom It knows as Its Creator knows that It is there.

Where could the Thought God holds of you EXIST but where you are? Is your reality a thing APART from you, and in a world which your reality knows NOTHING of? Outside you there IS no eternal sky, no changeless star, and NO reality. The Mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can HAVE no end. You have not two realities, but One. Nor can you be AWARE of more than one. An idol OR the Thought God holds of you is your reality. Forget not, then, that idols MUST keep hidden what you are, NOT from the Mind of God, but from your own. The star shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.

Section 7 - Experience and Perception

It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally impossible to see what you do NOT believe. Perceptions are built up on the basis of experience, and experience leads to beliefs. It is not until BELIEFS are fixed that perceptions stabilize. In effect, then, what you believe you DO see. That is what I meant when I said, "Blessed are ye who have not seen and still believe," for those who believe in the resurrection WILL see it. The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom.

Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father? For these questions are all the same, and are answered together. There has been much confusion about what perception means, because the same word is used both for awareness and for the INTERPRETATION of awareness. Yet you cannot BE aware without interpretation, and what you perceive IS your interpretation. This course is perfectly clear. You do not see it clearly because you are interpreting AGAINST it, and therefore do not BELIEVE it. And if belief determines perception, you do NOT perceive what it means and therefore do not ACCEPT it.

Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions. For perceptions are learned WITH beliefs, and experience teaches. I am leading you to a new kind of experience which you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. HIS perceptions are your NATURAL awareness, and it is only distortions which YOU introduce that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret FOR you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs which are unworthy of God's Son. For until Christ comes into His Own, the Son of God WILL see himself as fatherless.

I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and NOT perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and NOT perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and it has been accomplished IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time and no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished FOR you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God's Son as His Father created him.

Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God's Son, nor the power of the god he worships over him. For he places HIMSELF at the altar of his god, whether it be the god he made or the God Who created him. That is why his slavery is as complete as his freedom, for he will obey ONLY the god he accepts. The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey. In his name they crucify THEMSELVES, believing that the power of the Son of God is born of sacrifice and pain. The God of the resurrection demands nothing, for He does not will to TAKE AWAY. He does not require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom.

Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly because it is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what YOU want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered you through the grace of God. And you can ACCEPT it by His grace, for God IS gracious to His Son, accepting him without question as His Own. Who, then, is YOUR own? The Father has given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours WITH them. Guard them in their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God, safely surrounded by what is yours forever.

You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God's Son and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of the crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather THAT I DID NOT DIE by demonstrating that I LIVE IN YOU. For the UNDOING of the crucifixion of God's Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His blameless Son. Having given HIMSELF to him, how could it be otherwise?

You have nailed YOURSELF to a cross and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crucified you are asleep. And as long as you believe that YOU can crucify him you are only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of dreams and have not yet forgotten them.

God's Son IS saved. Bring only THIS awareness to the Sonship, and you will have a part in the redemption as valuable as mine. For your part must be LIKE mine if you learn it of me. If you believe that YOURS is limited, YOU are limiting MINE. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness. The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. What does not exist HAS no size and no measure. To God ALL things are possible. And to Christ it is given to be LIKE the Father.

Section 5 - Entering the Ark

Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so. For YOU give power as the laws of this world INTERPRET giving; as you give, you LOSE. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, GIVEN by Him, and RE-AWAKENED by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that, as you give you GAIN. He gives NO power to sin, and therefore it HAS none. Nor to its results, as this world sees them; sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred, because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free of them.

Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives EVERYTHING to God, Who has already given AND RECEIVED all that is true. The UNtrue He has neither received NOR given. Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him INSTEAD, and Heaven is lost to YOU. But see him as he IS, and what is yours shines from him to you.

Your Savior gives you ONLY love. But what you would RECEIVE of him, is up to you. It lies in him to overlook ALL your mistakes, and therein lies his OWN salvation. And so it is with YOURS. Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established OTHER laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not. Your insane laws were made to GUARANTEE that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by ACCEPTING their results as your just due.

What COULD this be but madness? And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own. For this you SHARE. What God has given follows HIS laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source. Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God. And they will give it only to what GOD has given, to SHARE with them.

Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for THEMSELVES the power to share with you. The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM.

To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself. In the world of separation, each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. But those who KNOW that they are all the same, need not salvation. And each one FINDS his Savior, when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless. The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given YOU to learn. For He Who knows the rest will see to it WITHOUT your help. But think not that He does not need your part, to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed WITHOUT your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it SHARES His purpose. And, as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises, in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter WITHOUT fear. And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom.

Think you, when this has been achieved, that you will rest WITHOUT them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you, and forget part of myself. You may wonder how you can BE at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done BEFORE the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to YOU. But ask yourself if it is possible that GOD would have a plan for your salvation that does NOT work. Once you accept HIS plan as the ONE function that you would fulfill, there WILL be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not ARRANGE for you, WITHOUT your effort.

He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As THAT was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?

Chapter 18 - How do God's Teachers deal with Their Pupils' Thoughts of Magic?

This is a crucial question both for teacher and pupil. If this issue is mishandled, the teacher of God has hurt himself and has also attacked his pupil. This strengthens fear and makes the magic seem quite real to both of them. How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God's teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. He can be sure as well that he has asked for depression, pain, fear and disaster to come to him. Let him remember, then, it is not this that he would teach because it is not this that he would learn.

There is, however, a temptation to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. Nor is this always obvious. It can, in fact, be easily concealed beneath a wish to help. It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes. Nor should it be forgotten that the outcome that results will always come to teacher and to pupil. How many times has it been emphasized that you give but to yourself? And where could this be better shown than in the kinds of help the teacher gives to those who need his aid? Here is his gift most clearly given him. For he will give only what he has chosen for himself. And in this gift is his judgment upon the holy Son of God.

It is easiest to let error be corrected where it is most apparent, and errors can be recognized by their results. A lesson truly taught can lead to nothing but release for teacher and pupil, who have shared in one intent. Attack can enter only if perception of separate goals has entered. And this must indeed have been the case if the result is anything but joy. The single aim of the teacher turns the divided goal of the pupil into one direction, with the call for help becoming his one appeal. This then is easily responded to with just one answer, and this answer will enter the teacher's mind unfailingly. From there it shines into his pupil's mind, making it one with his.

Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts. Regardless, too, of the intensity of the anger which is aroused. It may be merely slight irritation, perhaps too mild to be even clearly recognized. Or it may also take the form of intense rage, accompanied by thoughts of violence, fantasied or apparently acted out. It does not matter. All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.

Anger in response to perceived magic thoughts is a basic cause of fear. Consider what this reaction means, and its centrality in the world's thought system becomes apparent. A magic thought, by its mere presence, acknowledges a separation from God. It states, in the clearest form possible, that the mind which thinks it believes it has a separate will that can oppose the Will of God and succeed. That this can hardly be a fact is obvious. Yet that it can be believed as fact is surely so. And herein lies the birthplace of guilt. Who usurps the place of God and takes it for himself now has a deadly "enemy." And he must stand alone in his protection, and make himself a shield to keep him safe from fury that can never be abated and vengeance that can never be satisfied.

But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts? They can but reawaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, "You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten." Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry Father pursues His guilty Son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed, and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.

Into this hopeless situation God sends His teachers. They bring the light of hope from God Himself. There is a Way in which escape is possible. It can be learned and taught, but it requires patience and abundant willingness. Given that, the lesson's manifest simplicity stands out like an intense white light against a black horizon, for such it is. If anger comes from an interpretation and not a fact, it is never justified. Once this is even dimly grasped, the Way is open. Now it is possible to take the next step. The interpretation can be changed at last. Magic thoughts need not lead to condemnation, for they do not really have the power to give rise to guilt. And so they can be overlooked, and thus forgiven in the truest sense.

Madness but seems terrible. In truth it has no power to make anything. Like the magic which becomes its servant, it neither attacks nor protects. To see it and to recognize its thought system is to look on nothing. Can nothing give rise to anger? Hardly so. Remember then, teacher of God, that anger recognizes a reality that is not there; yet is the anger certain witness that you do believe in it as fact. Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist. The fear of God is causeless. But His Love is Cause of everything beyond all fear, and thus forever real and always true.

Section 3 - Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing

Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE. To forgive is to OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared, and that its sharing IS its reality.

You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you. You do not know how to OVERLOOK errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you can CORRECT them without a GUIDE TO CORRECTION. And if you do not FOLLOW this Guide, your errors will NOT be corrected. The plan is not yours BECAUSE of your limited ideas about WHAT YOU ARE. But this limitation IS where ALL ERRORS ARISE. The way to UNDO them is, therefore, not OF you, but FOR you.

The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability. By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created. But if you would accomplish this THROUGH Him, you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as IT does. All their harmfulness lies in ITS judgment. All their HELPFULNESS lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

The ego has a plan of forgiveness, because you are ASKING for one, but not of the right teacher. The EGO's plan, of course, MAKES NO SENSE and WILL NOT WORK. By following it, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego ALWAYS leads you. Its plan is to have you SEE ERROR CLEARLY FIRST, and THEN overlook it. But how CAN you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you HAVE made it real, and CANNOT overlook it.

Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are NATURAL, and when they do NOT occur, something has gone wrong. Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your function, and unless you accept this, you CANNOT learn what your function IS.

The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego, that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that ALL functions belong to IT, even though it has no idea what they ARE. This is more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity AND confusion, that makes it likely that the ego will attack anyone and anything, for no reason at all. This is exactly what it DOES. It is TOTALLY unpredictable in its responses, because it has no idea WHAT it heard.

If one has no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you EXPECT him to react? But you might still ask yourself, regardless of how you can ACCOUNT for the reactions, whether they place the ego in a very sound position as a guide for YOURS. It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it seems, is REALLY the crucial issue in the whole separation fantasy.

Anyone who elects a totally insane guide, MUST be totally insane himself. It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane. YOU know it because I know it, and you HAVE judged it by the same Standard as I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and ITS days ARE numbered. Do not fear the last judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego's time is borrowed from YOUR eternity. This IS the Second Coming, which was made FOR you, as the First was created.

The Second Coming is merely the return of SENSE. Can this POSSIBLY be fearful? What can be fearful but fantasy, and no one turns to fantasy unless he despairs of satisfaction in reality. But it is CERTAIN that he will NEVER find satisfaction in fantasy, so that his ONLY hope is to change his mind about REALITY. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is WRONG, can GOD be right. And I ASSURE you that God IS right.

Be glad, then, that you HAVE been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you WERE. Had you REMEMBERED, you could no more have been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen ONLY in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies, you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of THESE you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.

Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but NO ONE calls them TRUE. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, they ARE true for them. But when Reality dawns, they are gone. REALITY has NOT gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the AWARENESS of Reality, not its RETURN. Behold, my children, Reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only THIS awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.

Lesson 136 "Sickness is a defense against the truth."

No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach which carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.

Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self deception. And like all the rest its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by your self.

Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and as wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.

Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when, for an instant, truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth.

You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.

Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than Everlasting Life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slaves to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?

God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts, and yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.

It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion. For it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.

Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where it has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.

This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free. And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness, and let the truth be as it has always been:

"Sickness is a defense against the truth.

I will accept the truth of what I am,

And let my mind be wholly healed today."

Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this; the body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains, and nothing more.

Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am,

For I mistook my body for myself.

Sickness is a defense against the truth,

But I am not a body. And my mind

Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

Section 2 - The Illusion of an Enemy

An ancient lesson is not overcome by the OPPOSING of the new and old. It is not VANQUISHED that the truth be known, or fought against to LOSE to truth's appeal. There is no battle which must be prepared, no time to be expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. There IS an ancient battle being waged AGAINST the truth, but truth does not respond. Who COULD be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? He HAS no enemy in truth. And CAN he be assailed by dreams? Let us review again what seems to stand BETWEEN you and the truth of what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment. The first is a decision which YOU make. But afterwards, the truth is GIVEN you.

You would ESTABLISH truth. And by your wish, you set two choices to be made each time you think you must decide on anything. NEITHER is true. Nor ARE they different. Yet must we see them both, before you can look PAST them, to the ONE Alternative that IS a different choice. But not in dreams you made, that this might be OBSCURED to you. What YOU would choose between is NOT a choice, and gives but the ILLUSION it is free, for it will have ONE outcome either way. Thus is it really not a choice at all. The leader and the follower emerge as SEPARATE roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace.

You see yourself divided into both these roles, forever split between the two. And every friend or enemy becomes a means to help you save yourself from this. Perhaps you call it love. Perhaps you think that it is murder justified at last. You hate the one you gave the leader's role when YOU would have it, and you hate as well his NOT assuming it, at times you want to let the follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. And this is what you made your brother FOR, and learned to think that this his purpose IS. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by you. And thus he merits death, because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you.

And what of him? What does he want of YOU? What COULD he want, but what you want of him? Herein is life as easily as death, for what you choose you choose as well for him. Two calls you make to him, as he to you. Between these two IS choice, because from them there IS a different outcome. If he be the leader or the follower to you, it matters not, for you have chosen death. But if he calls for death or calls for life, for hate or for forgiveness and for help, is NOT the same in outcome. Hear the one, and you are separate from him, and are lost. But hear the other, and you join with him, and in your answer is salvation found.

We make no gains he does not make with us, and we fall back if he does not advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. And we go separately along the way unless you keep him safely by your side. BECAUSE he is your equal in God's Love will YOU be saved from all appearances, and answer to the Christ Who calls to you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about this Son of God who calls to you. Christ calls to all with EQUAL tenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but ONE Answer to them all. Because He hears one Voice, He cannot hear a DIFFERENT answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him His only Son.

Be very still an instant. Come without all thought of what you ever learned before, and put aside all images you made. The old will fall away before the new, without your opposition or intent. There will be no attack upon the things you thought were precious, and in need of care. There will be no assault upon your wish to hear a call that never has been made. Nothing will hurt you in this holy place to which you come to listen silently, and learn the truth of what you really want. No more than this will you be asked to learn. But as you hear it, you will understand you need but come away WITHOUT the thoughts you did not want, and that were NEVER true.

Forgive your brother ALL appearances, which are but ancient lessons that you taught yourself about the sinfulness in you. Hear but his call for mercy and release from all the fearful images he holds of what HE is, and of what YOU must be. He is afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a bit ahead, would be a safer place for him to be. Can YOU make progress if you think the same, advancing only when he would step back, and falling back when he would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey's goal which is but to decide to walk WITH him, so neither leads nor follows. Thus it is a way you go together, NOT alone. And in THIS choice is learning's outcome changed, for Christ has been reborn to BOTH of you.

An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great Companion is and what he SHOULD be asking for, will be enough to let this happen. And you will perceive his purpose is the same as yours. He asks for what YOU want, and needs the SAME as you. It takes, perhaps, a different FORM in him, but it is NOT the form you answer to. He asks and YOU receive, for you have come with but ONE purpose; that you both may learn you love each other with a brother's love. And AS a brother, must his Father be the same as yours, as he is like yourself. Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted by you both. Alone it is denied to both of you.

Is it not clear that while you still insist on leading or on following, you think you walk alone, with no-one by your side? This is the road to nowhere, for the light cannot be given while you walk alone, and so you cannot SEE which way you go. And so there IS confusion, and a sense of endless doubting, as you stagger back and forward in the darkness and alone. Yet are these but appearances of what the journey is, and how it must be made. For next to you is One Who holds the light before you, so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the road. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the way itself grow dark. And He Who travels with you HAS the Light.

Section 9 - The "Hero" of the Dream

The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart.

The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and good. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not NEED, and does not even WANT. It hires OTHER bodies, that they may protect it, and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies which can SHARE its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies which would hurt and torture it.

The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; - that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And YOU are ITS effect, and CANNOT be its cause. Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives.

That this is all the BODY does, is true. For it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream, UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?

The INSTANT that he sees them as they ARE, they HAVE no more effects on him BECAUSE he understands he GAVE them their effects BY CAUSING THEM, and MAKING them seem real. How willing are you to ESCAPE effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let NO dream appear to be the cause of what it is YOU do? Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the SECOND part, whose CAUSE lies in the first.

No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be! And no-one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. We CAN remember this, if we but look directly at their CAUSE. And we will see the grounds for laughter, NOT a cause for fear. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as SEPARATE from himself, and done to him.

The world you see depicts EXACTLY what you thought YOU did. Except that NOW you think that what you did is being done to YOU. The guilt for what YOU thought is being placed OUTSIDE yourself, and on a guilty world which dreams your dreams, and thinks your thoughts INSTEAD of you. It brings ITS vengeance, not your own. IT keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the sinful things the body does within ITS dream. You have NO power to make the body stop its evil deeds, because you did NOT make it, and can NOT control its actions, or its purpose, or its fate.

The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; - you WILL believe that others do to you EXACTLY what you think you did to them. But, once deluded into blaming THEM, you will not see the CAUSE of what they do BECAUSE you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is this petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt OUTSIDE yourself, but NEVER letting go! It is not easy to perceive the jest, when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but WITHOUT their trifling cause. Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. Yet they but follow. And it is their CAUSE which follows nothing, and is but a jest.

In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks NOT to effects. How else could He correct YOUR error, who have OVERLOOKED the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him, that you may look TOGETHER on its foolish cause, and laugh with Him a while. YOU judge effects, but HE has judged their CAUSE. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's JOINED with His.

The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.

The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned. Salvation is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The universe proclaims it so. But, to its witnesses, you pay no heed at all. For they attest the thing you do not WANT to know. They seem to keep it secret FROM you. Yet you need but learn you choose but NOT to listen, NOT to see.

How differently will you perceive the world, when this is recognized! When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does YOUR guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed.

Section 3 - The Mechanism of Miracles

Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it. Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence.

By interpreting fear correctly, as a POSITIVE AFFIRMATION OF THE UNDERLYING BELIEF IT MASKS, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which do not work AT ALL are AUTOMATICALLY discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to CLEAR-CUT, UNEQUIVOCAL PRE-DOMINANCE, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The mask which YOU have drawn across the face of Love has disappeared.

If you would look upon Love, which IS the world's reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense AGAINST it, the underlying appeal FOR it? And how could you better learn of its reality, than by answering the appeal for it by GIVING it? The Holy Spirit's interpretation of fear DOES dispel it, for the AWARENESS of truth cannot BE denied. Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity. For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true.

Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.

Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer HIMSELF. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF.

You have no idea of the intensity of your wish to get rid of each other. This does NOT mean that you are not strongly impelled TOWARD each other, but it DOES mean that LOVE IS NOT THE ONLY EMOTION. Because your love has become more in awareness, the conflict can no longer be "settled" by your previous attempts to MINIMIZE the fear. The love makes attack untenable, BUT YOU STILL FEEL THE FEAR. Instead of trying to resolve it directly, you have a strong tendency to TRY TO ESCAPE FROM THE LOVE. Yet this is the LAST thing you would want to ESCAPE from. And even if you did, you can escape from everything ELSE, but not from this. Be glad indeed that there IS no escape from salvation.

You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. Yet if you are each other's salvation, what can this mean except that you PREFER attack to salvation? Be glad that neither your reality nor your salvation is a matter of your preference, for you HAVE much cause for joy. But that the cause is NOT of your making is surely obvious. You DO hate and fear each other, and your love, which is very real, is TOTALLY obscured by it. How can you know the meaning of love UNLESS it is total?

This will be a very difficult period for you, but it will not be so for long. You are in danger, but you WILL be helped, and nothing will happen. But you cannot remain in darkness, and this will BE the way out. Look as calmly as you can upon hatred, for if we are to deny the denial of truth, we must first RECOGNIZE what we are denying. Remember that knowledge PRECEDES denial, and that the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. And so the way back is to retrace the way to magnitude.

Your hatred is not real, But it is real to you. IT HIDES WHAT YOU REALLY WANT. Surely you are willing to look upon what you do NOT want without fear, EVEN IF IT FRIGHTENS YOU, if you can thereby get rid of it? For you CANNOT escape salvation, and you WILL not escape fear until you WANT salvation. Be not afraid of this journey into fear, for it is not your destination. And we will walk through it in safety, for peace is not far, and you will be led in its light.

Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ASK for enlightenment, AND ACCEPT IT, their fears vanish. But if they HIDE their nightmares, they will KEEP them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not know what his perceptions mean. But you believe you DO know. Little children, you are hiding your heads under the covers of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourselves. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and LOOK AT THEM.

Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for YOU. Take off the covers, and look at what you are afraid of. Only the ANTICIPATION will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the END of strife, and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable, because it is eternal.

The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you DESPITE your preference. YOU STILL WILL WHAT GOD WILLS, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish it, BECAUSE it is His Will. Awake and remember your purpose, for it is YOUR will to do so. What has been accomplished FOR you MUST be yours. Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him.

A little while, and you WILL see me. For I am not hidden because you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke FOR you. In MY Resurrection is YOUR release. Our mission is to ESCAPE CRUCIFIXION; - not Redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you, as our Father walked with me. Did you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with US on the journey?

There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you. You do not fear the UNKNOWN, but the KNOWN. You will not fail in your mission, because I failed not in mine. Give me but a little trust, in the name of the COMPLETE trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the goal of perfection together. For perfection IS, and cannot be denied. To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth. And what we can accomplish together MUST be believed, when you SEE it as accomplished. You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded. But you who choose to banish fear WILL succeed.

The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would you not exchange THIS awareness for the awareness of your fear? When we have OVERCOME fear, not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, not by denying its full import in ANY way, THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL REALLY SEE. You cannot lay aside the obstacle to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside means to judge AGAINST. If YOU will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, AND WILL JUDGE TRULY. He cannot shine away what YOU keep hidden, for you have not offered it TO Him, and He CANNOT take it FROM you.

We therefore are embarking on an organized, well-structured, and carefully planned program, aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything you do NOT want. HE knows what to DO with it. You do NOT know how to use what He knows. Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God, is gone. But you must reveal it to YOURSELF in perfect willingness, for otherwise His knowledge remains useless TO you. Surely He will not fail to help you, since help is His ONLY purpose. Do you not have greater reason for fearing the world, as you perceive it, than for looking at the cause of fear, and letting it go forever?