"We thank you, Father, for the light that shines forever in us. And we honor it, because You share it with us. We are one, united in this light and one with You, at peace with all creation and ourselves."

Lesson 218 "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

Section 4 - The Holy Encounter

There is no limit on your learning, because there is no limit on your MINDS. There is no limit on His will to teach, because He was created by unlimited Will in ORDER to teach. KNOWING His function perfectly, He wills to fulfill it perfectly, because that is His joy AND YOURS. To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully KNOWN, because it is the only function that can be FULLY EXPERIENCED. When this is accomplished, then, there IS no other experience. But the WISH for other experience will block this, because God's Will CANNOT be forced upon you, being an experience of total WILLINGNESS.

This is perfect creation by the perfectly created in union with the Perfect Creator. The Father MUST give fatherhood to His Sons, because His Own Fatherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy function of extending His Fatherhood by placing no limits upon it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you HOW to do this, for you will know what it MEANS of God Himself.

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet they are given another chance at Salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation TO him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there WITH you, in remembrance of YOU.

Whenever you are with a brother you are learning what you are, because you are TEACHING what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher YOU are following. HE will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, AND SO WILL YOU. Never forget your responsibility to him, because it is your responsibility to YOURSELF. Give him HIS place in the Kingdom, and you will have YOURS. The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone.

To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you CANNOT listen to the ego. Its purpose is to DEFEAT ITS OWN GOAL. It does not know this, because it does not know anything. But YOU can know this, and you WILL know it if you are willing to look at what the ego has made of YOU. This IS your responsibility, because once you have really done this you WILL accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make?

Chapter 23 - The War Against Yourself

Section 1 - Introduction

Do you not see the OPPOSITE of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? INNOCENCE IS STRENGTH, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear. And fear of any kind is weakness. The show of strength attack would use to COVER frailty, conceals it not. For how can the unreal BE hidden? No-one is strong who has an enemy. And no-one can attack, unless he thinks he HAS. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in WEAKNESS. And what is weak is NOT the Will of God. Being OPPOSED to It, it is Its "enemy." And God is feared, as an OPPOSING will.

How strange indeed becomes this war against Yourself! You will believe that EVERYTHING you use for sin can hurt you, AND BECOME YOUR ENEMY. And you will fight AGAINST it, and try to weaken it, BECAUSE of this. And you will think that you succeeded, and attack again. It is as certain you will fear what you attack, as it is sure that you will love what you perceive as sinless. He walks in peace who travels sinlessly along the way Love shows him. For Love walks WITH him there, PROTECTING him from fear. And he will see ONLY the sinless, who can NOT attack.

Let not the little interferers pull you to littleness. There CAN be no attraction of guilt in innocence. Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom, for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's attraction. Would you, for all these meaningless distractions, lay Heaven aside? Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean peace where littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance with littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin.

Nothing around you but is PART of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to understand all that is given you. In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value MORE than this? For here is YOUR salvation and YOUR freedom. And it MUST be complete, if YOU would recognize it.

Section 5 - The Inheritance of God's Son

Could you try to make God homeless, and know YOU are at home? Can the Son deny the Father, WITHOUT believing that the Father has denied HIM? God's laws hold ONLY for your protection, and they never hold in vain. What you experience, when you deny your father, is still for your protection, for the power of your will cannot be lessened without the intervention of God AGAINST it, and any limitation on YOUR power is NOT the Will of God. Therefore, look ONLY to the power that God gave you to save you, remembering that it is yours BECAUSE it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace.

The peace of YOUR Soul lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you. Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? You could not do so, if you realized that YOU CAN ONLY DARKEN YOUR OWN MIND. As you bring HIM back, so will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son.

ONLY YOU CAN DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF ANYTHING. Do not oppose this realization, for it is truly the beginning of the dawn of light. Remember also that the denial of this simple fact takes many forms, and these you must learn to recognize, and oppose steadfastly and WITHOUT EXCEPTION. This is a crucial step in the re-awakening. The beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within.

It is difficult, at first, to realize that this is EXACTLY the same thing, for there IS no distinction between within and without. If your brothers are part of YOU, and you blame THEM for your deprivation, you ARE blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself WITHOUT blaming them.

The door is NOT barred, and it is impossible for you to be unable to enter the place where God would have you be. But love yourself with the love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You CAN refuse to enter, but you CANNOT bar the door which Christ holds open. Come unto me who hold it open FOR you, for while I live, it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my Life and YOURS, and NOTHING is denied by God to His Son. At God's altar, Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in YOU.

There is no condemnation in the Son, for there is no condemnation in the Father. Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son. Peace be unto you who rest in God, and in whom the whole Sonship rests.

Lesson 211 "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

Section 3 - The Rationale for Choice

There IS a rationale for choice. Only ONE teacher KNOWS what your reality is. If learning that is the PURPOSE of the curriculum, you MUST learn it of Him. The ego does NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS TRYING TO TEACH. It is trying to teach you what you are WITHOUT KNOWING IT. The ego is expert ONLY in confusion. It does not understand ANYTHING ELSE. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and TOTALLY CONFUSING.

Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible, you could learn nothing from the ego, because the ego KNOWS nothing. Is there ANY possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the TOTAL disregard of ANYTHING it teaches make anything BUT sense? Is THIS the teacher to whom a Son of God should turn to find HIMSELF? The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. Simply on the grounds of your own experience with the ego's teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher?

But the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of WHAT YOU HAVE. But when you are taught AGAINST your nature, you will lose by your learning, because your learning will IMPRISON you. Your will is IN your nature, and therefore CANNOT go AGAINST it. The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free.

That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you. His voice teaches ONLY His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson, because that is what you ARE. The LESSON is that your will and God's CANNOT be out of accord because they ARE one. This is the UNdoing of EVERYTHING the ego tries to teach. It is not, then, only the DIRECTION (of the curriculum?) which must be unconflicted, but also the CONTENT.

The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE God's Will. This unnatural lesson CANNOT be learned, but the ATTEMPT to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, and makes you AFRAID of your will BECAUSE it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes ANY imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, KNOWING that the will of the Son IS the Father's. He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back.

We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS DISTINCTION WITHOUT HIM. That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they ARE the same to teach you the DIFFERENCE?

The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God. But He cannot conceive of God without YOU, because it was not God's Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy. Deny YOURSELF this, and you ARE denying God His Kingdom, because He created you FOR this.

Question 6 - What is the Christ?

Christ is God's Son as He created him. He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another, and with God as well. He is the Thought Which still abides within the Mind That is His Source. He has not left His holy home, nor lost the innocence in which He was created. He abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God.

Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair. For hope forever will abide in Him. Your mind is part of His, and His of yours. He is the part in Which God's Answer lies; where all decisions are already made, and dreams are over. He remains untouched by anything the body's eyes perceive. For though in Him His Father placed the means for your salvation, yet does He remain the Self Who, like His Father, knows no sin.

The Holy Spirit reaches from the Christ in you to all your dreams, and bids them come to Him, to be translated into truth. He will exchange them for the final dream which God appointed as the end of dreams. For when forgiveness rests upon the world and peace has come to every Son of God, what could remain to keep things separate, for what remains to see except Christ's face?

Lesson 250 "Let me not see myself as limited."

"He is Your Son, my Father. And today I would behold his gentleness instead of my illusions. He is what I am, and as I see him so I see myself. Today I would see truly, that this day I may at last identify with him."

Section 4 - Littleness versus Magnitude

But what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation OF YOURSELF. Choose littleness, and you will NOT have peace, for you will have judged yourself UNWORTHY of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute, is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is NO form of littleness that can EVER content you. You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your homecoming. For you will be content ONLY in magnitude, which IS your home.

There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must learn to remember ALL the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it, when you realize that it is true, and constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought AND FOUND littleness, remember this: Every decision that you make stems from WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE, and represents the value that you PUT upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and, by LIMITING yourself, you will NOT be satisfied. For your function is NOT little, and it is only by finding your function, and fulfilling it that you can ESCAPE from littleness.

There is no doubt about what your function IS, for the Holy Spirit KNOWS what it is. There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him, FROM Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it, because you HAVE it. All your striving must be directed AGAINST LITTLENESS, for it DOES require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness, in a world of littleness, is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude, and NOT your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.

The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of the magnitude of His dear Son. Search for the little, and you DENY yourself His power. God is not willing that His Son be content with less than everything. For He is not content without His Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than His Father has given him. We asked you once before, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?" Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit in you, EVERY time you make a decision. For every decision you make DOES answer this, and invites sorrow or joy, accordingly.

When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM. All your attempts to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, CANNOT make little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is made for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you AWARENESS of what you decided FOR. The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of ALL littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your minds, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But for this, you cannot side AGAINST Him in what He wills for you.

In this season, which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for YOU. It is our task TOGETHER to restore the awareness of magnitude, to the host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond ALL your littleness to give the gift of God, but NOT beyond YOU. For God would give Himself THROUGH you. He reaches from you to everyone, and beyond everyone, to His Son's creations, but WITHOUT leaving you. Far beyond your little world, but still in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all his extensions to you, as host to Him.

My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who MUST remain forever BEYOND littleness. Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will as my Father wills, knowing His Will is constant, and at peace forever with Itself. You will be content with nothing BUT His Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. What my Father loves, I love as He does, and I can no more accept it as what it is NOT, than He can. And no more can YOU.

When you have learned to accept what you are, you will make no more gifts to offer to yourselves, for you will know you are COMPLETE, in need of nothing, and unable to accept ANYTHING for yourself. But you will gladly give, HAVING received. The host of God need not seek to find ANYTHING. If you are wholly willing to leave Salvation to the plan of God, and UNwilling to attempt to grasp for peace YOURSELF, Salvation will be GIVEN you. But think not you can substitute YOUR plan for His. Rather, join with me in His, that we may release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God is host to Him.

Thus will we let no-one forget what YOU would remember. And thus WILL you remember it. Call forth in everyone ONLY the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would help your brother be, there will you think YOU are. Hear not his call for hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. God's power is forever on the side of His host, for it protects ONLY the peace in which He dwells. Lay not littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars, and reaches even to Heaven, because of what is GIVEN it.

Lesson 237 "Now would I be as God created me."

"Christ is my eyes today, and His the ears which listen to the Voice of God today. Father, I come to You through Him Who is Your Son and my true Self as well. Amen."

Lesson 241 "This holy instant is salvation come."

"We have forgiven one another now, and so we come at last to You again. Father, Your Son, who never left, returns to Heaven and his home. How glad are we to have our sanity restored to us, and to remember that we all are one."

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.

Lesson 326 "I am forever an Effect of God."

Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will.

Section 4 - Perception without Deceit

WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns. Perception is the medium by which ignorance is BROUGHT to knowledge. But the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise, it becomes the messenger of ignorance, rather than a helper in the search for truth.

The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that INTERFERES with truth. TRUTH IS. And can be neither lost, nor sought, nor found. It is there, wherever YOU are, being WITHIN you. But it CAN be recognized or unrecognized, real or false, to YOU. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you, BECAUSE you hid it, and SURROUNDED IT WITH FEAR. Under each cornerstone of fear, on which you have erected your insane system of belief, THE TRUTH LIES HIDDEN. Yet you cannot know this, for, by HIDING truth in fear, you see no reason to believe the more you LOOK at fear, the LESS you see it, and the clearer WHAT IT CONCEALS becomes.

It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. From their point of view, IT IS NOT TRUE. Yet it IS true, because GOD knows it. These are clearly opposite viewpoints of what the "unknowing" ARE. To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist. It is only this BELIEF that the unknowing have, and BY it, they are wrong about themselves. They have DEFINED themselves as they were NOT created. Their creation was NOT a point of view, but rather, a CERTAINTY. Uncertainty BROUGHT to certainty does not retain ANY conviction of reality.

You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. You will realize that salvation MUST come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation IS. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them.

You CANNOT have them both, for each DENIES the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each, in a SEPARATE place, CAN be endowed with firm belief. BRING THEM TOGETHER, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One WILL go, BECAUSE the other is seen in the SAME place. Light cannot enter darkness, when a mind BELIEVES in darkness, and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle AGAINST ignorance, and love does not ATTACK fear. What needs no protection, does not defend itself. Defense was of YOUR making. God knows it not.

The Holy Spirit uses defenses ON BEHALF of truth, only because you made them AGAINST it. His perception of them, according to HIS purpose, merely changes them into a CALL FOR what you have ATTACKED WITH them. Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own good, translated by Him from means of self-destruction, to means of preservation and release. His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you.

Do not delay yourselves in your return to peace, by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows! You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little He SUGGESTS you do, trusting Him only to the small extent of believing that, if He asks it, you can do it. You will SEE how easily ALL that He asks can be accomplished. He asks of you but this; - bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness, and lighten it away.

At YOUR request, He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness, if you make the darkness OPEN to Him. But what you hide, He cannot look upon. For He sees FOR YOU, and unless you look WITH Him, He CANNOT see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him WITH YOU. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them WITH Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They CANNOT coexist, when both of you TOGETHER look on them. His judgment MUST prevail, and He will GIVE it to you, as you join your perception to His. Joining with Him in seeing, is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge.

You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you, teaches you how to RECOGNIZE what you see. It is the recognition that NOTHING you see means ANYTHING alone. Seeing WITH Him will SHOW you that all meaning, INCLUDING YOURS, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into one meaning, one emotion and one purpose. God has one Purpose, which He shares with you. The single vision, which the Holy Spirit offers you, will bring this Oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense, you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His love as yours. All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God.

To what He promised God, He is wholly faithful, for He shared WITH God the promise that was given to Him to share with YOU. He shares it still, FOR YOU. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise GIVEN unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God WITHOUT His Son. And NOTHING brought there that is not equally worthy of BOTH, but will be REPLACED by gifts wholly acceptable to Father AND to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are NOT apart, and gifts to one ARE offered to the other.

You know not God, because you know not this. And yet you DO know God, and ALSO this. All this is safe WITHIN you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting-place where God, UNITED with His Son, speaks to His Son THROUGH Him. Communication between what cannot BE divided CANNOT cease. The holy meeting-place of the unseparated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit, and in YOU. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as BOTH would have it be. And so it IS.

There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you, as you are brought into the place where you must MEET with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding, which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are YOU. Such IS the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge GIVEN you by God into UNknowing. Everything God created KNOWS its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished, by the Creator, and by His creations. In the holy meeting-place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son, with them together.

There is one link which joins them all together, holding them in the Oneness out of which creation happens. The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create LIKE Him, can NEVER be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with ALL of creation, and with its One Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for YOU. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist BESIDE it. Here, your meager offerings are BROUGHT TOGETHER with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it was intended. To whom God gives Himself, He IS given. Your little gifts will vanish, on the altar where He has placed His Own.

Lesson 191 "I am the holy Son of God Himself"

Here is your declaration of release from bondage of the world. And here as well is all the world released. You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailor to the Son of God. What could it be but vicious and afraid, fearful of shadows, punitive and wild, lacking all reason, blind, insane and sad?

What have you done that this should be your world? What have you done that this is what you see? Deny your own identity and this is what remains. You look on chaos and proclaim it as yourself. There is no sight that fails to witness this to you. There is no sound that does not speak of frailty within you and without; no breath you draw that does not seem to bring you nearer death; no hope you hold but will dissolve in tears.

Deny your own identity and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought which mocks creation and which laughs at God. Deny your own identity and you assail the universe alone, without a friend, a tiny particle of dust against the legions of your enemies. Deny your own identity and look on evil, sin and death, and watch despair snatch from your fingers every scrap of hope, leaving you nothing but the wish to die.

Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality.

But let today's idea find a place among your thoughts, and you have risen far above the world and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner. And from this place of safety and escape you will return and set it free. For he who can accept his true identity is truly saved. And his salvation is the gift he gives to everyone in gratitude to Him Who pointed out the way to happiness that changed his whole perception of the world.

One holy thought like this and you are free; you are the holy Son of God Himself. And with this holy thought you learn as well that you have freed the world. You have no need to use it cruelly and then perceive this savage need in it. You set it free of your imprisonment. You will not see a devastating image of yourself walking the world in terror, with the world twisting in agony because your fears have laid the mark of death upon its heart.

Be glad today how very easily is hell undone. You need but tell yourself:

"I am the holy Son of God Himself.

I cannot suffer; cannot be in pain;

I cannot lose, nor can I fail to do

All that salvation asks."

And in that thought is everything you look on wholly changed.

You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you.

They must await your own release. They stay in chains 'til you are free. They cannot see the mercy of the world until you find it for yourself. They suffer pain until you have denied its hold on you. They die 'til you accept your own Eternal Life. You are the holy Son of God Himself. Remember this and all the world is free. Remember this and earth and Heaven are one.

Section 5 - The Awareness of the Holy Spirit

How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you, EXCEPT by His EFFECTS? You cannot see Him with your eyes, nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you INSPIRE joy, and others react to you WITH joy, even though you are not experiencing joy yourself, there must be SOMETHING IN YOU that IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING IT. If it is in YOU, and CAN produce joy, and if you see that it DOES produce joy in others, you MUST be dissociating it in yourself.

It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in you, ONLY because YOU DO NOT CONSISTENTLY AROUSE JOY IN OTHERS. Their reactions to you ARE your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent, you will not always GIVE RISE to joy, and so you will not always recognize HIS consistency. What you offer to your brother, you offer to Him, because He cannot GO BEYOND your offering in HIS giving. This is NOT because HE limits His giving, but simply because YOU have limited your RECEIVING.

Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole. Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn YOUR wholeness, UNTIL YOU SEE IT EVERYWHERE. You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God. When you awake in Him, you will know your magnitude by accepting HIS limitlessness as YOURS. But meanwhile, you will judge it as you judge your brothers', and will accept it as you accept theirs.

You are not yet awake, but you can learn HOW to awaken. Very simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken, you will learn WHAT WAKING MEANS. And because you have willed to wake them, their gratitude, and their appreciation of what you have given them, will TEACH YOU ITS VALUE. THEY will become the witnesses to your reality, as YOU were created witnesses to God's. But when the Sonship COMES TOGETHER and accepts its oneness, it will be known by ITS creations, who witness to its reality, as the Son does to the Father.

Miracles have no place in eternity because they are reparative. But while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to your reality THAT YOU CAN RECOGNIZE. You cannot perform a miracle FOR YOURSELF, because miracles are a way of GIVING ACCEPTANCE AND receiving it. In TIME, the giving comes FIRST, though they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot BE separated. When you have learned that they ARE the same, the need for time is over. Eternity is ONE time, its ONLY dimension being "always."

But this cannot mean anything to you, until you remember God's open arms, and finally know His open Mind. Like Him, YOU are ALWAYS, in His Mind, and with a mind like His. In your open mind are YOUR creations, in perfect communication, born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you would not want ANYTHING the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless. God's meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your creations.

Accept your brother in this world, and accept NOTHING ELSE, for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU.

Question 2 - What is salvation?

Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God's Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts, and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.

The Thought of peace was given to God's Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given without opposite, and merely was. But when the mind is split, there is a need of healing. So the Thought Which has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind which still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness. Now it did not know itself, and thought its own identity was lost.

Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed; an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before It, and the memory of God not far behind.

From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all.

Section 6 - The Ladder Ends

Prayer is a way to true humility. But here again it rises up, slowly at first, and grows in strength and love and holiness. Let it but leave the ground where it begins to rise to God, and true humility will come at last to grace the mind that thought it was alone and stood against the world. Humility brings peace because it does not claim that you must rule the universe, nor judge all things as you would have them be. All little gods it gladly lays aside, not in resentment, but in honesty and recognition that they did not serve.

High has the ladder risen. You have come almost to Heaven. There is little more to learn before the journey is complete. Now you say to everyone who joins in prayer with you:

"I cannot go without you, for you are a part of me."

And so he is in truth. Now must you pray only for what you truly share with him. For you have understood he never left, and you, who seemed alone, are one with him.

The ladder ends with this, for learning is no longer needed. Now you stand before the gate of Heaven, and your brother stands beside you there. The lawns are deep and still, for here the place appointed for the time when you should come has waited long for you. Here will time end forever. At this gate eternity itself will join with you. Prayer has become what it was meant to be, for you have recognized the Christ in you.

Lesson 94 "I am as God created me."

Today we continue with the one idea which brings complete salvation; the one statement which makes all forms of temptation powerless; the one thought which renders the ego silent and entirely undone. You are as God created you. The sounds of this world are still, the sights of this world disappear, and all the thoughts which this world ever held are wiped away forever by this one idea. Here is salvation accomplished. Here is sanity restored.

Today we will again devote the first five minutes of each waking hour to the attempt to feel the truth in you. Begin these times of searching with these words:

"I am as God created me.

I am His Son eternally."

Now try to reach the Son of God in you. This is the Self Which never sinned, nor made an image to replace reality. This is the Self Which never left Its home in God, to walk the world uncertainly. This is the Self Which knows no fear, nor could conceive of loss or suffering or death.

Nothing is required of you to reach this goal except to lay all idols and self-images aside; go past the long list of attributes, both "good" and "bad," you have ascribed to yourself; and wait in silent expectancy for the truth. God has Himself promised that it will be revealed to all who ask for it. You are asking now. You will not fail because He cannot fail.

If you do not meet the requirement of practicing for the first five minutes of every hour, at least remind yourself hourly:

"I am as God created me.

I am His Son eternally."

Tell yourself frequently today that you are as God created you. And be sure to respond to anyone who seems to irritate you with these words:

"You are as God created You.

You are His Son eternally."

Make every effort to do the hourly exercises today. Each one you do will be a giant stride toward your release, and a milestone in learning the thought system which this course sets forth.

Section 2 - True Empathy

True empathy is of Him Who knows what it is. YOU will learn HIS interpretation of it, if you let Him use YOUR capacity for strength, and NOT for weakness.

The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.

The meaning of love is lost in any relationship which looks to weakness, and hopes to find it there. The POWER of love, which IS its meaning, lies in the strength of God, which hovers over it and blesses it silently, by enveloping it in healing wings. LET THIS BE, and do not try to substitute YOUR "miracle" for this.

We once said that, if a brother asks a foolish thing of you, to do it. But be certain that this does NOT mean to do a foolish thing that would hurt either him or you, for what would hurt one WILL hurt the other. Foolish requests ARE foolish, for the simple reason THAT THEY CONFLICT, because they contain an element of specialness. Only the Holy Spirit recognizes foolish needs, AS WELL AS real ones. And He will teach you how to meet BOTH, without losing either.

YOU will be able to do this ONLY IN SECRECY. And you will think that, by meeting the needs of one, you do NOT jeopardize another, because you keep them SEPARATE, and secret from each other. This is NOT the way, for it leads not to light and truth. No needs will long be left unmet, if you leave them ALL to Him Whose FUNCTION is to meet them. This is His function, and NOT YOURS. He will NOT meet them secretly, for He would share everything you give through Him. And that is WHY He gives it. What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, NOT FOR PART OF IT. Leave Him His function, for He WILL fulfill it, if you but ask Him to enter your relationships, and bless them FOR you.

Chapter 5 - The Father's Love

There is a secret place in everyone in which God's gifts are laid, and his to Him. It is not secret to the eyes of Christ Who sees it plainly and unceasingly. Yet it is hidden to the body's eyes, and to those still invested in the world and caring for the petty gifts it gives, esteeming them and thinking they are real. Illusions' gifts will hide the secret place where God is clear as day, and Christ with Him. Oh let this not be secret to the world so full of sorrow and so racked with pain. You could relieve its grief and heal its pain, and let the peace of God envelop it as does a mother rock a tired child until it sighs and slips away to rest.

Rest could be yours because of what God is. He loves you as a mother loves her child; her only one, the only love she has, her all-in-all, extension of herself, as much a part of her as breath itself. He loves you as a brother loves his own, born of one father, still as one in him, and bonded with a seal that cannot break. He loves you as a lover loves his own; his chosen one, his joy, his very life, the one he seeks when she has gone away, and brings him peace again on her return. He loves you as a father loves his son, without whom would his self be incomplete, whose immortality completes his own, for in him is the chain of love complete - a golden circle that will never end, a song that will be sung throughout all time and afterwards, and always will remain the deathless sound of loving and of love.

Oh be at peace, beloved of the Lord! What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love? What is your purpose here but to recall into His loving arms the son He loves, who has forgotten Who his Father is? What is your only goal, your only hope, your only need, the only thing you want, but to allow the secret place of peace to burst upon the world in all its joy, and let the Voice within it speak of Him Whose love shines out and in and in between, through all the darkened places to embrace all living things within its golden peace?

Section 4 - God's Witnesses

Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved. On saving YOU depends his happiness. For who is Savior, but the one who GIVES salvation? Thus he learns it must be his to give. UNLESS he gives, he will not know he HAS, for giving is the proof of having. Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. For who COULD give unless he has, and who could lose by giving what must be INCREASED thereby?

Think you the Father LOST Himself when He created you? Was HE made weak because He shared His Love? Was He made incomplete by YOUR perfection? Or are you the proof that He IS perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream His Son prefers to his reality. He must be Savior FROM the dream he made, that he be free of it. He must see someone ELSE as NOT a body, one with him, without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live. Within the dream of bodies and of death, is yet one theme of truth. No more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God shines still.

There, in its place, God's Witness has set forth the gentle way of kindness to God's Son. Whom you forgive is GIVEN power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto YOU. Make way for love which you did not create, but which you CAN extend. On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness may be lifted from YOUR mind. When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his Savior, leaving him unsaved. For it was in YOUR face he saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he walks through darkness to the everlasting Light.

How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your Savior in the midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. See how eagerly he comes, and steps aside from heavy shadows that have hidden him, and shines on you in gratitude and love. He is himself, but not himself alone. And as his Father lost not part of Him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter still, because you gave your light to him, to save him from the dark. And now the light in you must be as bright as shines in him. This is the spark that shines within the dream; that you can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will rest upon you first, and in his glad salvation YOU are saved.

Section 5 - Where Sin Has Left

Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies. Nothing in boundless love could NEED forgiveness. And what is charity WITHIN the world gives way to simple justice past the gate that opens into Heaven. No-one forgives unless he has believed in sin, and STILL believes that he has much to be forgiven. Forgiveness thus becomes the means by which he learns HE has done nothing to forgive. Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it, until he sees HIMSELF as needing it no more. And thus is he returned to his REAL function of creating, which his forgiveness offers him again.

Who could behold the Face of Christ, and NOT recall His Father as He really is? Who could fear love, and stand upon the ground where sin has left a place for Heaven's altar to rise and tower far above the world, and reach beyond the universe to touch the heart of ALL creation? What IS Heaven, but a song of gratitude and love and praise, by everything created, to the Source of its creation? The holiest of altars is set where once was sin believed to be. For here does every light of heaven come, to be rekindled and increased in joy. For here is what was lost to them restored, and all their radiance made whole again.

Forgiveness brings no little miracles to lay before the gate of Heaven. Here the Son of God Himself comes to receive each gift that brings him nearer to his home. Not one is lost, and none is cherished more than any other. Each reminds him of His Father's Love as surely as the rest. And each one teaches him that what he fears he loves the most. What BUT a miracle could change his mind, so that he understands that love cannot BE feared? What other miracle is there but this? And what else NEED there be, to make the space between you disappear? Where sin once was perceived will rise a world which will become an altar to the truth. And YOU will join the lights of Heaven there, and sing their song of gratitude and praise.

For as they come to YOU to be complete, so will you go with them. For no-one hears the song of Heaven, and remains without a voice that adds its power to the song, and makes it sweeter still. And each one joins the singing at the altar which was raised within the tiny spot that sin proclaimed to be its own. And what WAS tiny then has soared into a magnitude of song, in which the universe has joined with but a single voice. This tiny spot of sin that stands between you still is holding back the happy opening of Heaven's gate. How LITTLE is the hindrance which withholds the wealth of Heaven from you. And how GREAT will be the joy in Heaven when you join the mighty chorus to the Love of God.

Section 10 - For They Have Come

Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven ALL your sins, and left without a single one you cherish still. Forget not that a shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the Face of Christ and memory of God. And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? The ground whereon you stand is holy ground BECAUSE of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it with THEIR innocence and peace. The blood of hatred fades, to let the grass grow green again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light.

Because of Them. It is Their Presence Which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground which hate had scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have They undone. And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans to join with it, and make it like Itself. The shadow of an ancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They have come.

What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands? When They come, time's purpose is fulfilled. What never WAS passes to nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The incomplete is made complete again. And Heaven's joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of insanity, to join Them on the ground whereon you stand.

Heaven is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld so long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has been blocked is opened; what was held APART from light is given up that light may shine on it, and leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world. The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. And They come quickly to the living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. There is no place in Heaven holier. And They HAVE come to dwell within the temple offered them, to be THEIR resting place as well as YOURS.

What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven's radiance. And all the lights in Heaven brighter grow in gratitude for what has been restored. Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and KEEP the light where it has entered in. Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness goes with you. No-one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his home, and sheltered him from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall the Lord of Heaven and His Son give LESS in gratitude for so much MORE?

Now is the temple of the living God rebuilt as host again to Him by Whom it was created. Where He dwells His Son dwells with Him, NEVER separate. And They give thanks that They are welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen Christ, and ancient scars are healed within His sight. An ancient miracle has come to bless, and to REPLACE an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God the Father AND the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever be. Now is the Holy Spirit's purpose done. For They have come! For They have come at last!

Lesson 194 "I place the future in the hands of God."

Today's idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven's gate; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!

Accept today's idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world because you have received.

In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced, or loss perceived. In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne and worshipped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain, and even death itself.

God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They are one to Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are but asked to let the future go, and place it in God's hands. And you will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present in His hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless.

If you can see the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can to make it be a part of you. As it becomes a thought which rules your mind, a habit in your problem-solving repertoire, a way of quick reaction to temptation, you extend your learning to the world. And as you learn to see salvation in all things, so will the world perceive that it is saved.

What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving hands of God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain, or bring experience of loss to him? What can he fear? And what can he regard except with love? For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten. He is sure that his perception may be faulty, but will never lack correction. He is free to choose again when he has been deceived; to change his mind when he has made mistakes.

Place, then, your future in the hands of God. For thus you call the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby, and every living creature not respond with healed perception? Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the Hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security. He lays aside the sick illusions of the world along with his, and offers peace to both.

Now are we saved indeed. For in God's hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be seen replaced by love's reflection. And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind. No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its friends.

Section 7 - Communication and the Ego-Body Equation

Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body. You do not have to ATTACK physically to accept this interpretation; you ARE accepting it simply by the belief that attack can GET YOU SOMETHING YOU WANT. If you did NOT believe this, the IDEA of attack would have no appeal to you.

When you equate yourself with a body, you will ALWAYS experience depression. When a Child of God thinks of himself in this way, he is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself ONLY in them, he has cut himself off from salvation. Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body ONLY as a means of communication. Being the communication link between God and His separated Sons, He interprets everything YOU have in the light of what HE is.

The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS.

This is God's way of making unlimited what YOU have limited. His Voice does not see the body as YOU do, because He knows the ONLY reality that ANYTHING can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function HE has given. Communication ENDS separation. Attack PROMOTES it. The body is ugly or beautiful, savage or holy, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see the use to which you put YOURS.

If the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of the union of the Sonship, you will not see ANYTHING physical except as WHAT IT IS. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly. MISuse it and you WILL misunderstand it, because you have already done so BY misusing it. Interpret ANYTHING apart from the Holy Spirit, and you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack and LOSS OF PEACE.

Remember that the Bible says, "The word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly speaking, this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely SEEM to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be MADE into flesh except by belief, because thought is NOT physical. But thought IS communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only NATURAL use to which it can be put. To use the body UNnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.

There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to place him in a curriculum which he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he MUST become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately WHY the world is depressing. The Holy Spirit's curriculum is NEVER depressing because it is a curriculum in joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it IS. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is NOT. It becomes ONLY a means by which the part of the mind which you have separated from your Soul can reach beyond its distortions and RETURN to the Soul. The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense the body DOES become a temple to God, because His Voice abides in it by directing the use TO WHICH YOU PUT IT.

Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. ALL mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind CANNOT be made physical, but it CAN be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching OUT, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not STOP at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else.

To use a medium of communication as a medium of ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE PURPOSE. This releases the mind from the temptation to see it in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One Light in which it can be really understood at all.

To confuse a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be meaningfully arrested at its own aids, and hope to understand them OR its real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY.

The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression INSTEAD of joy, you CANNOT be listening to God's joyous teacher, and you MUST be learning amiss. To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind's purpose IS one.

Attack can only be an assumed goal of the body, but the body APART from the mind HAS NO PURPOSE AT ALL. You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made flesh. But mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing this limit ON YOURSELF. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape FROM limitations?

To conceive of the body as a means of attack of any kind, and to entertain even the possibility that joy could POSSIBLY result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum, and is interfering with his ability to accept it AS HIS OWN.

Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is ONLY God's. When yours is unified, it IS His. Interfere with His purpose, and YOU NEED SALVATION. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more are any of the RESULTS of your condemnation. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have condemned yourself. But if ALL condemnation is unreal, and it MUST be unreal because it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE no results.

Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness OF its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them. THERE IS NO ATTACK, but there IS unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is EXTENSION. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to Creation in God.

Section 11 - Obstacles to Peace - 4 - The Fear of God

What would you see, WITHOUT the fear of death? What would you feel and think, if death held NO attraction for you? Very simply, YOU WOULD REMEMBER YOUR FATHER. The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember. And, as this Memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final obstacle, AFTER which is salvation completed, and the Son of God ENTIRELY restored to sanity. For here, your world DOES end.

This is the darkest veil, -- upheld by the belief in death, and protected by its attraction. The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is but the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego, never to lift this veil, not to approach it, nor even to SUSPECT that it is there. This is the secret bargain, made with the ego, to keep what lies BEYOND the veil forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to allow union to call you OUT of separation; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from you; THE FEAR OF GOD, the final step in your dissociation.

See how the belief in death would seem to 'save' you. For, if this is gone, what can you fear but life? It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel, and tyrannical. You are no more afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen FRIENDS. For, in your secret alliance with them, you have agreed never to let the fear of God be lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ, and join Him in His Father. Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; the fear that RAISED it yields to the love beneath, and so the fear is gone. And so it is with this.

The desire to get rid of peace and drive the Holy Spirit FROM you, fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love Him. The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the Spirit, which you love as you could NEVER love the body. And the appeal of death is lost forever, as love's attraction stirs and calls to you. From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet, when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared.

And now you stand in terror before what you swore never to look upon. Your eyes look down, remembering your promise to your "friends." The "loveliness" of sin; the delicate appeal of guilt, the "holy" waxen image of death, and the fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood not to desert, all rise and bid you NOT to raise your eyes. For you realize that if you look on THIS, and LET the veil be lifted, THEY WILL BE GONE FOREVER. All of your "friends," your "protectors," and your "home," will vanish. Nothing that you remember NOW, will you remember.

It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you, if you but raise your eyes. Yet all that WILL occur is YOU will leave the world forever. This is the re-establishment of YOUR will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things BEYOND you, forces you can NOT control, and thoughts that come to you AGAINST your will. It IS YOUR WILL TO LOOK ON THIS. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One.

Section 6 - The Changeless Dwelling-Place

There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten. Where no memory of sin and of illusion linger still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. Where Both abide are They remembered Both. And where They are is Heaven and is peace. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must YOU be.

The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the Son of God, and would behold him waken and be glad: He is a part of you, and you of him, BECAUSE he is his Father's Son, and not for ANY purpose you may see in him. Nothing is asked of you but to ACCEPT the Changeless and Eternal that abide in him, for YOUR Identity is there.

The peace in you CAN but be found in him. And every thought of love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening to peace eternal and to endless joy. This sacred Son of God is like yourself; the mirror of his Father's Love for you, the soft reminder of his Father's Love by which he was created, and which still abides in him, as It abides in you. Be very still, and hear God's Voice in him, and let It tell you what his function is. He was created that YOU might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's Completion, Which created you.

If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God's Son unto His Father's house. Would you not WANT to be a friend to him, created by his Father as His home? If God esteems him worthy of Himself, would YOU attack him with the hands of hate? Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself, and hope to find its peace? Your brother thinks he holds the hand of death. Believe him not. But learn, instead, how blessed are you who can release him, just by offering him yours.

A dream is given you in which he is your Savior, NOT your enemy in hate. A dream is given you in which you have forgiven him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you SHARE with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? Because, unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for hate, and will continue in death's services. Each form it takes in some way calls for death. And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die.

Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from use by Him Who sees a different function for a dream. When dreams are SHARED, they lose the function of attack and separation, even though it was for this that every dream was made. Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life.

Section 12 - The State of Grace

The Holy Spirit will ALWAYS guide you truly, because YOUR joy IS His. This is His will for everyone, because He speaks for the Kingdom of God which IS joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing which IS easy, because it is NOT of the world and is therefore NATURAL. The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace.

Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make.

Consider the Kingdom which YOU have made, and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect his peace, and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving IS his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving?

That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. But when they deny Him they do NOT know this, because THEY deny themselves everything. You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves. I call upon you again to remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom TO the Kingdom. There are no exceptions to this lesson because the lack of exceptions IS the lesson.

Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect teacher, because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit, who wants to teach him everything He knows. When a mind has only light, it KNOWS only light. Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. The majesty of God is there, for YOU to recognize and appreciate and KNOW.

Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift to anyone ELSE, you have acknowledged what He has given YOU. Nothing is as easy to perceive as truth. This is the perception which is immediate, clear, and natural. You have trained yourselves NOT to see it, and this HAS been very difficult for you. OUT of your natural environment you may well ask, "what is truth?" because truth IS the environment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourselves because you do not know YOUR Creator. You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them WITH you.

Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than YOU can establish God's. But you can KNOW both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created to know what THEY have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation.

Section 4 - From Darkness to Light

When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently. God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind, it does not see whom it attacks. But it ALWAYS attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is YOU.

God's Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does, believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders homelessly. At home in God he is lonely, and amid all his brothers he is friendless. Would God let this be real, if He did not will to be alone Himself? And if your will is His, it CANNOT be true of you, BECAUSE it is not true of Him. Oh my children, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete! And what He wills HAS happened, for it was ALWAYS true.

When the light comes, and you have said, "God's Will is mine," you will see such beauty that you will KNOW it is not of you. Out of your joy, you will create beauty in His Name, for YOUR joy could no more be contained than His. The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your hearts are not ready. But I CAN tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for YOU, and what He wills for you IS yours.

The way is not hard, but it IS very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. THAT way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you, and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God's Son. Walk in light, and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created OF Light and IN Light. The Great Light ALWAYS surrounds you, and shines out FROM you. How can you see the dark companions in a Light such as this? If you see THEM, it is only because you are denying the Light. But DENY THEM INSTEAD, for the Light is here, and the way is clear.

Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them enter the mind of God's Son, for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to deny Him, remember that there ARE no other Gods that you CAN place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace. For you CANNOT accept it otherwise. Only God's Comforter CAN comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours. GIVE His peace that you may enter the temple, and find it waiting for you. But be holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind, because it was not in His Thought, and therefore does not belong to Him. And YOUR minds must be as pure as His, if you would know what belongs to YOU.

Guard carefully His temple, for He Himself dwells there, and abides in peace. You cannot enter God's Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone. All your brothers must enter WITH you, for until you have accepted them, YOU cannot enter. For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded, if he would know the wholeness of his Father.

In your mind you can ACCEPT the whole Sonship, and bless it with the light your Father gave it. Then you will be worthy to dwell in the temple WITH Him, because it is YOUR will not to be alone. God blessed His Son forever. If you will bless him in TIME, you will BE in eternity. Time cannot separate you from God, if you use it on BEHALF of the eternal.

Lesson 126 "All that I give is given to myself."

Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about. If you believed this statement there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.

Let us consider what you do believe in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor theirs on yours. Therefore your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

When you "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. He has no claim on your forgiveness. It holds out a gift to him but hardly to yourself.

Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved; a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. The sin which you forgive is not your own. Someone apart from you committed it and if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, your gift is no more yours than was his sin.

If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. It is an eccentricity in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world's salvation to depend on this? Would not His care for you be small indeed if your salvation rested on a whim?

You do not understand forgiveness. As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for you.

Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? Salvation is a better gift than this, and true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.

Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today's idea. It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.

In silence close your eyes upon the world which does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. Repeat today's idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.

As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:

"All that I give is given to myself.

The Help I need to learn that this is true

Is with me now. And I will trust in Him."

Then spend the quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.

Section 5 - The Light of the World

If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience ONLY this you MUST be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace, it can only be because you do not believe you are IN HIM. Yet He is all in all. His peace IS complete, and you MUST be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern EVERYTHING. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you CAN disobey them. But if you do, and ONLY if you do, you WILL feel lonely and helpless, because you ARE denying yourself everything.

I am come as a light into the world which DOES deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself FROM everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, MAINTAINED by fear of the same loneliness which IS its illusion. I have told you that I am with you always even to the end of the world. That is WHY I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are NOT alone.

My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, YOU shine it away WITH ME. The light becomes OURS, and you CANNOT abide in darkness, any more than darkness can abide anywhere you go. The remembrance of me IS the remembrance of yourself and of Him Who sent me to you.

You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world.

The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me ARE the reactions of the world to God. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are DENYING the world and ACCEPTING GOD. My will IS His, and YOUR will to hear me IS the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As He sent me to you, so will I send you to others. But I will go to them WITH you, so we can teach them union and peace.

Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will NOT receive it. If you will to have it of me, you MUST give it. Rehabilitation does not come from anyone ELSE. You can have GUIDANCE from without, but you must ACCEPT it from within. The guidance must become what YOU want, or else it will be meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to DO, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I KNOW what to do. Only then will your MIND will to follow me.

Without YOUR will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are deciding AGAINST healing, and your veto of my will FOR you MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless our wills ARE joined you CANNOT be healed. This is obvious when you consider what healing is FOR.

Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by UNION. It CANNOT be overcome by separating. The WILL to unite must be unequivocal, or the will ITSELF is separated or NOT WHOLE. Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot OVERCOME yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal.

All things BECOME possible through our joint will. But my will alone will not help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His.

If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true.

When your will is NOT mine, it is not Our Father's. This means that you have imprisoned YOURS, and have not LET it be free. Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF. I will ALWAYS remember you, and in MY remembrance OF you lies your remembrance of YOURSELF. In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him.

Join then with me in praise of Him AND you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is.

Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One.

The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One. If you exclude YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You MUST be included in It, because It IS everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function AS part of It, It is as bereft as YOU are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its Truth is to be known.

Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. The delusional believe that truth will ASSAIL them, and so they DO NOT SEE IT because they prefer the delusion. Judging truth as something they do NOT want, they perceive deception and block knowledge. Help them by offering them YOUR unified will on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on YOURS. Alone we can do nothing, but TOGETHER our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.

By NOT BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established IN ours and AS ours. This will is invincible BECAUSE it is undivided. The UNDIVIDED will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it IS. YOU cannot be exempt from it, if you are to understand what it is and what YOU are. By separating your will from mine, you ARE exempting yourself from the Will of God which IS yourself.

But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to UNITE with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness IS to recognize the Father. If YOUR perfection is in Him and ONLY in Him, how can you KNOW it WITHOUT recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There IS no separation of God and His Creation. You will learn this as you learn that there is no separation of YOUR will and mine.

The miracles WE do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting WITH His Will FOR us. When you unite with me, you are uniting WITHOUT the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore CANNOT unite with yours. OUR union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in YOURSELVES. The truth in both of us is BEYOND the ego. By willing that, you HAVE gone beyond it toward truth.

Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share my perfect confidence IN His Promise because I know He gave me this confidence for both of us and ALL of us. I bring His Peace back to all His Children, because I received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's. Would ye know the Will of God for YOU? Ask it of me, who knows it for you, and you will find it. I will deny YOU nothing, as God denies ME nothing.

Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is ALWAYS because the ego has attempted to JOIN the journey with us AND CANNOT DO SO. Sensing defeat and angered by it, it regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation BECAUSE I AM WITH YOU. On this journey, you have chosen me as your companion INSTEAD of your ego. Do not try to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.

The ego's way is not mine, but it is also NOT YOURS. The Holy Spirit has one direction for ALL minds, and the one He taught me IS yours. Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for ONLY illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God's Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey, because it HAS none, and the journey is the way to what is TRUE. Leave ALL deception behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back.

I DO go before you, because I AM beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you WANT to transcend the ego. My will will NEVER be wanting, and if you want to share it YOU WILL. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need YOU as much as you need ME.

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

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

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

You make what you defend against, and by

your own defense against it is it real

and inescapable. Lay down your arms,

and only then do you perceive it false.

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

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

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

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

Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.

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

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

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

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

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

Section 7 - The Justification for Forgiveness

Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL. You are NOT asked to offer pardon where attack is due, and WOULD be justified. For this would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is REALLY there. THIS IS NOT PARDON. For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is NOT justified, your PARDON will become the answer to attack which HAS been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being granted where it is NOT due.

Pardon is ALWAYS justified, and has a sure foundation. You do NOT forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a REAL attack that calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being asked to make unnatural responses, which are inappropriate to what is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is NOT real, by not perceiving what has not occurred. If pardon WERE unjustified, you WOULD be asked to sacrifice your rights when you return forgiveness for attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the NATURAL reaction to distress which rests on error, and thus calls for help. Forgiveness is the ONLY sane response. It KEEPS your rights from being lost to you.

This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror. Fear cannot ARISE unless attack is justified. And if it HAD a real foundation, pardon could have none. The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified. While you regard it as a gift unwarranted, it MUST uphold the guilt you would "forgive." Unjustified forgiveness IS attack. And this is all the world can ever give. It pardons "sinners" sometimes, but remains AWARE that they have sinned. And so they do not MERIT the forgiveness that it gives.

This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to KEEP the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just, it seems impossible His pardon COULD be real. Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No-one who sees himself as guilty CAN avoid the fear of God. But he is SAVED from this dilemma if HE can forgive. The mind MUST think of its Creator as it looks upon itself. If you can see your brother MERITS pardon, you have learned forgiveness is YOUR right, as much as his. Nor will you think that God intends for you a fearful judgment which your brother does not merit. For it is the truth that you CAN merit neither more nor less than he.

Forgiveness RECOGNIZED as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to OVERLOOK illusions. This is how you learn that you must be forgiven too. There CAN be no appearance that can NOT be overlooked. For, if there were, it would be necessary FIRST there be some sin which stands BEYOND forgiveness. There would be an error that is MORE than a mistake; a special FORM of error, which remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake which had the power to UNDO creation, and to make a world which could REPLACE it and DESTROY the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be SOME appearances which could withstand the miracle, and NOT be healed by it.

There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness CANNOT cure. This means that you prefer to keep SOME idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let ALL idols go. And thus you think that SOME appearances are real, and not appearances at all. Be not deceived about the MEANING of a fixed belief that SOME appearances are harder to look past than others are. It ALWAYS means you think forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a limited escape from guilt FOR YOU. What can this be, except a false forgiveness of YOURSELF, and everyone who seems APART from you?

It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL. Its purpose cannot be to judge which FORMS are real, and which APPEARANCES are true. If one appearance must remain APART from healing, one illusion must be part of truth. And you could NOT escape all guilt, but only SOME of it. You must forgive God's Son ENTIRELY. Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within, and find escape from EVERY idol there. Salvation rests on faith there CANNOT be some forms of guilt which you can NOT forgive. And so there cannot be appearances which have replaced the truth about God's Son.

Here is the joyful statement that there are NO forms of evil which can overcome the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has NOT succeeded, by your wish, to make illusions real. And what is this, except a simple statement of the truth? Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he COULD not make an error that could change the truth in him. It is NOT difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. But what you see as having power to make an idol of the Son of God, you will NOT pardon. For he has become to you a graven image, and a sign of death. Is THIS your Savior? Is his Father WRONG about His Son? Or have YOU been deceived in him who has been given you to heal for YOUR salvation and deliverance?

Review 5 - Introduction

May 11, 1970

We now review again. This time we are ready to give more effort and more time to what we undertake. We recognize we are preparing for another phase of understanding. We would take this step completely, that we may go on again more certain, more sincere, with faith upheld more surely. Our footsteps have not been unwavering, and doubts have made us walk uncertainly and slowly on the road this course sets forth. But now we hasten on, for we approach a greater certainty, a firmer purpose and a surer goal.

Steady our feet, our Father; let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.

This is the thought which should precede the thoughts that we review. Each one but clarifies some aspect of this thought, or helps it be more meaningful, more personal and true, and more descriptive of the holy Self we share and now prepare to know again:

"God is but Love, and therefore so am I."

This Self alone knows love. This Self alone is perfectly consistent in Its thoughts; knows Its Creator, understands Itself, is perfect in Its knowledge and Its love, and never changes from Its constant state of union with Its Father and Itself.

And it is This that waits to meet us at the journey's ending. Every step we take brings us a little nearer. This review will shorten time immeasurably if we keep in mind that This remains our goal, and as we practice it is This to which we are approaching. Let us raise our hearts from dust to life as we remember This is promised us, and that this course was sent to open up the path of light to us, and teach us, step by step, how to return to the Eternal Self we thought we lost.

I take the journey with you. For I share your doubts and fears a little while, that you may come to me who recognize the road by which all fears and doubts are overcome. We walk together. I must understand uncertainty and pain, although I know they have no meaning. Yet a Savior must remain with those he teaches, seeing what they see, but still retaining in his mind the way which led him out, and now will lead you out with him. God's Son is crucified until you walk along the road with me.

My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain. I am reborn each time a brother's mind turns to the light in him and looks for me. I have forgotten no one. Help me now to lead you back to where the journey was begun, to make another choice with me.

Release me as you practice once again the thoughts I brought to you from Him Who sees your bitter need, and knows the answer God has given Him. Together we review these thoughts. Together we devote our time and effort to them. And together we will teach them to our brothers. God would not have Heaven incomplete. It waits for you as I do. I am incomplete without your part in me. And as I am made whole, we go together to our ancient home, prepared for us before time was, and kept unchanged by time, immaculate and safe, as it will be at last, when time is done.

Let this review be then your gift to me. For this alone I need; that you will hear the words I speak and give them to the world. You are my voice, my eyes, my feet, my hands, through which I save the world. The Self from Which I call to you is but your Own. To Him we go together. Take your brother's hand, for this is not a way we walk alone. In him I walk with you and you with me. Our Father wills His Son be One with Him. What lives but must not then be one with you?

With this we start each day of our review. With this we start and end each period of practice time. And with this thought we sleep, to waken once again with these same words upon our lips to greet another day. No thought that we review but we surround with it, and use the thoughts to hold it up before our minds, and keep it clear in our remembrance throughout the day. And thus when we have finished this review, we will have recognized the words we speak are true.

Yet are the words but aids and to be used, except at the beginning and the end of practice periods, but to recall the mind, as needed, to its purpose. We place faith in the experience that comes from practice, not the means we use. We wait for the experience, and recognize that it is only here conviction lies. We use the words, and try and try again to go beyond them to their meaning, which is far beyond their sound. The sound grows dim and disappears as we approach the Source of meaning. It is here that we find rest.

Chapter 1 - The Dream of Fear

Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content. Never far, even in form, from what its purpose is, never with power to escape its cause, and never but a counterfeit of peace, it rests uncertainly upon a bed of lies. Here it was born and sheltered by its seeming comfort. Here it remains where it was born, and where its end will come. For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned it has any meaning in the Mind of God.

If you were certain - wholly sure and with consistent grasp of what the world can give - fear would be laid aside as easily as joy and peace unite on love's behalf. But first there must be certainty that there can be no love where fear exists, and that the world will never give a gift that is not made of fear, concealed perhaps, but which is surely present somewhere in the gift. Accept it not, and you will understand a gift far greater has been given you.

Let not the world deceive you. It was made to be deception. Yet its snares can be so easily escaped a little child can walk through safely, and without a care that would arrest its progress. Dreams are dreams, and every one is equally untrue. This is the only lesson to be learned. Yet will fear linger until every one is recognized as nothingness, and seen exactly as it is and nothing more. There is no person, thing, or circumstance that you can value as your own without the "gift" of fear arising in your heart. For you have seen them all as they are not, and love for them has fled as if from you. And you will think that God has ceased to care for you who have betrayed the Son He loves, and chosen fear and guilt to be their friends.

Does God deceive or does the world? For it is sure that one must lie. There is no point at which their thoughts agree, their gifts unite in kind or purpose. What you take from one the other will obscure. There is no hope of compromise in this. Nor can there be a shifting of the mind between the two without the fear that every dream must bring. How fearful it must be to see yourself as maker of reality and truth, the lord of destiny and time's domain, and arbiter appointed for the world.

Dreams never change. Remember only this, but do not let it slip away at times and let yourself give way to fear again. Deny the dream but do not fail the truth, for what is true alone will never fail. All else deceives, all else will terrify, and even when it seems to please the most it brings with it a heavy cost of pain. Be free of suffering now. There is no cost for any gift that comes to you from God. His way is certain, for His gifts remain forever as He gave them. Do not think that fear can enter where His gifts abide. But do not think His gifts can be received where fear has entered and has touched your sight with gross distortions that the world thinks real.

There are no scraps of dreams. Each one contains the whole of fear, the opposite of love, (in all its ways), the hell that hides the memory of God, the crucifixion of His holy Son. Therefore, be vigilant against them all, for in their single purpose they are one, and hell is total. It can seem to be forever for this lesson to be learned, and yet it need not be. I came to speak in time of timelessness. Have you not learned the pain of dreaming yet? There is no need to hug it to your heart, and to forget the dreadful cost of salvaging despair and building up deceptions once again.

The tiniest of dreams, the smallest wish for values of the world is large enough to stand between you and the sweet release that God would offer you. He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you. Yet it is certain you will turn to Him and suddenly remember. But be sure of this and do not let it slip away:

What God has joined is one. And one as well is everything that fear has made to be the great deceiver and the substitute for God's creation. You can choose but one, and which you choose is total. Everything the world can offer promises some joy that it will never give. And everything that God has promised you will never fail in anything. No need will be unmet, no hurt unhealed, no sorrow kept unchanged, no darkness undispelled. The smallest pain will vanish suddenly before His gifts.

An unremembered world will leave no trace behind its going, when God's gifts have been accepted as the only thing you want. "Choose once again" is still your only hope. Darkness cannot conceal the gifts of God unless you want it so. In peace I come, and urge you now to make an end to time and step into eternity with me. There will not be a change that eyes can see, nor will you disappear from things of time. But you will hold my hand as you return because we come together. Now the hosts of Heaven come with us, to sweep away all vestiges of dreams and every thought that rests on nothingness.

This is my offering: A quiet world, with gentle ordering and kindly thoughts, alive with hope and radiant in joy, without the smallest bitterness of fear upon its loveliness. Accept this now, for I have waited long to give this gift to you. I offer it in place of fear and all the "gifts" of fear. Can you choose otherwise, when all the world is standing breathless, waiting on your choice? Come now to me and we will go to God. There is no way that we can go alone. But when we come together there can be no way in which the Word of God can fail. For His the Word that makes us one in Him, and mine the Voice that speaks this Word to you.

Section 6 - The Power of Joint Decision

WE are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together.

I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. But God did not will the destruction of His Creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you FOR yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom it has no power.

No-one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal. That is not because he is DEPRIVED of anything else, but because nothing else is WORTHY of him. What God AND His Sons create IS eternal, and in this and this only is their joy. Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God's treasure is and YOURS.

This son of a loving father left his home and thought he squandered everything for nothing of any value, though he did not know its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father, because he thought he had hurt him. But when he came home the father welcomed him with joy, because only the son himself WAS his father's treasure. HE WANTED NOTHING ELSE.

God wants only His Son, because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations, as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left YOUR Creator. But they EXTEND your creation, as God extended Himself to YOU. Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what IS real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? YOUR creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE.

How, then, can you accept anything else, or GIVE anything else, and expect joy in return? And what else BUT joy would you want? You made neither yourself nor your function. YOU have made only the DECISION to be unworthy of both. But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER. YOUR function is to ADD to God's treasure by creating YOURS. His will TO you is His Will FOR you. He would not withhold creation from you, because HIS joy is in it.

You CANNOT find joy EXCEPT as He does. HIS joy lay in creating YOU, and He extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can extend yourself AS HE DID. You do not understand this because you do not understand Him. No one who does not know his function can understand it. And no one CAN know his function unless he knows who he IS. Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you TO CREATE. Your will was not created separate from His, and so it wills as HE wills.

An unwilling will does not mean anything, because it is a contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. You can make yourself powerless only in a way that has NO MEANING AT ALL. When you THINK you are unwilling to will with God, YOU ARE NOT THINKING. God's will IS thought. It cannot be contradicted BY thought. God does not contradict HIMSELF. And His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves OR Him. But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE. This choice DOES make the Son's function unknown TO HIM, but never to his Creator. And BECAUSE it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him.

There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself: "Do I want to know my Father's Will for me?" HE will not hide it. He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him, and learned of what He had already given. Our function is to function together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God's Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very simple reason. You who are God's own treasure do not regard yourselves as valuable. Given this belief YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.

I share with God the knowledge of the value HE puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being born of my knowledge of myself AND Him. We cannot BE separated. Whom God has joined CANNOT be separated, and God has joined all His Sons WITH HIMSELF. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance, to a goal that has never changed.

Truth can only be EXPERIENCED. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the CONDITIONS of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself. What God has willed for you IS yours. He has given His Will to His treasure, whose treasure It is. Your heart lies where your treasure is, as His does. You who are beloved of God are wholly blessed. Learn this of me, and free the Holy Will of all those who are as blessed as you are.

Section 4 - The Voice for God

It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls. The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy.

Before the separation you did not need guidance. You KNEW as you will know again, but you do not know now. God does not guide, because He can share only PERFECT KNOWLEDGE. Guidance is EVALUATIVE, because it implies that there is a RIGHT way and also a WRONG way, one to be chosen and the other avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other. This IS a conflict state. It MEANS that knowledge has been lost, because knowledge is SURE.

God is not in you; YOU are part of HIM. When you willed to leave Him, He gave you a voice to speak FOR Him, because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken, because you had made another voice through another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition, in which opposites are possible. As a result, there ARE choices which you must make. In the holy state, the will is free in the sense that its CREATIVE power is unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.

Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different. Choosing MEANS divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way. God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they left Him. The voice they put in their minds was NOT the voice of His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is stronger than the call to depart, but it speaks in a different way.

The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you OF. It brings to your mind the OTHER way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war, because it heals. War is DIVISION, not increase. No-one gains from strife.

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which ALWAYS speaks for the right choice, because he speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt, but cannot destroy.

The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds. The voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not THINGS. They are DEVOTIONS. But you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you will to serve. The call you answer now IS an evaluation, because it is a DECISION. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.

My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation.

You understand the role of models in the learning process, and the importance of the models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God, I showed you that this decision CAN be made, and that YOU can make it. I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in YOU, and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This mind is unequivocal, because it hears only ONE VOICE, and answers in ONE WAY.

You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping, but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad. The world is very tired, because it is the IDEA of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the call for God. Everyone will answer the call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?

Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and MAKING IT STRONGER. As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the Oneness in which it was created.

Remember that "Yoke" means "join together," and "burden" means message. Let us reconsider the biblical statement "my yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way. Let us join together, for my message is Light. I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK.

Psychology has become the study of BEHAVIOR, but no-one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to MOTIVATION, and motivation is will. I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. It teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and behave like me as a result.

The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief, but NOT beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits, because the call for God IS the call to the unlimited. Child of God, my message is for YOU, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.

Section 8 - The Total Commitment

Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother, YOU will feel deprived. This is because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally AT TIMES. You CANNOT be totally committed SOMETIMES. Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone FOR YOU. REALITY CANNOT BE PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost awareness of ALL of it.

That is the negative side of the law as it operates in this world. But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively. Used negatively, it WILL be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of God. Stated positively, the law requires you only to recognize PART of reality to appreciate ALL of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will NEVER be able to exclude yourself from what you project.

When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is YOURS. YOU need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it EXCEPT by giving it. This IS the law of God, and it HAS NO EXCEPTIONS. What you deny you LACK, not because it IS lacking, but because you have denied it in another, and therefore are not aware of it in YOU. Every response you make is determined by what you think you ARE. And what you WANT to be IS what you think you are. Therefore, what you WANT to be determines every response you make.

You do NOT need God's blessing, because that you have forever. But you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. But you can very easily escape FROM it, or better, leave it behind. You are NOT there, and that is not YOU. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you HAVE accepted it as you. ALL illusions about the Sonship are DISPELLED together, as they were MADE together. Teach no-one that HE is what YOU do not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you will see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole.

You MADE perception, and it MUST last as long as you WANT it. Illusions are investments. They will last as long as you value them. Values are relative, but they are powerful because they are MENTAL JUDGMENTS. The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw ALL investment from them, and they will HAVE no life for you because you have put them OUT OF YOUR MIND. While you include them IN it, you are GIVING them life. Except there is nothing there to receive your gift.

The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU. You are unaware of YOUR gift BECAUSE you do not give it. You CANNOT make nothing live, because it cannot BE enlivened. Therefore, you have NOT extended the gift you both have and are, and so you do NOT know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life, because this is NOT the will of your Creator. You CAN do nothing apart from Him, and you DO do nothing apart from him. Keep His Way to remember yourselves, and teach His Ways lest you forget yourself. Give only honor to the sons of the living God, and count yourself among them gladly.

ONLY honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of honor and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation which God accords them always, because they are His Beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased. You CANNOT be apart from them, because you are not apart from Him. Rest in His love, and protect your rest by loving. But love EVERYTHING He created, of which YOU are part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift FOR yourself and AS yourself. You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you.

One Child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all your minds, and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE BLESSED. They attack BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE DEPRIVED. Give therefore of YOUR abundance, and teach them THEIRS. Do not share their delusions of scarcity, or you will perceive YOURSELF as lacking.

Attack could never PROMOTE attack unless you perceived it as a means of depriving you of SOMETHING YOU WANT. But you cannot lose ANYTHING unless YOU do not value it and therefore DO NOT WANT IT. This makes you feel DEPRIVED of it, and by projecting YOUR rejection, you believe that others are TAKING IT FROM YOU. One MUST be fearful if he believes that his brother is attacking him to tear the Kingdom of Heaven from him.

This is the ultimate basis for ALL of the ego's projection. Being the part of your mind which does NOT believe it is responsible for ITSELF, and being without allegiance to God, it is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief that YOU have been treacherous to YOUR Creator, it believes that your brothers, who are as incapable of this as you are, are out to TAKE GOD FROM YOU. Whenever a brother attacks another, THIS IS WHAT HE BELIEVES. Projection ALWAYS sees YOUR will in others. If you will to separate YOURSELF from God, that is what you will think others are doing TO you.

You ARE the will of God. Do not accept anything else AS YOUR will, or you ARE denying what you are. Deny THIS and you WILL attack, because you believe you have BEEN attacked. But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you as you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God IS understanding this.

Lesson 151 "All things are echoes of the Voice of God."

No one can judge on partial evidence. That is not judgment. It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt, because of all the doubting underneath.

You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?

How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth. This is awareness which you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice of God Himself.

Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.

This thing it speaks of and would yet defend it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is its own despair it sees in you.

Hear not its voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.

Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son.

He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego's dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness.

Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin, unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of His holy Face. And thus He judges you. Accept His word of what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality.

He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain.

He will select the elements in them that represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening which seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven's blessing on the world.

Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is One with Him. So will you see the holy Face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God's Voice.

We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time you spend with God. We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.

Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind Which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone, and what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers Its perfection everywhere.

Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. No one can fail to listen when you hear the Voice of God give honor to God's Son. And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.

Such is your Eastertide. And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt. Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.

And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. As we give thanks, the world unites with us, and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry 'round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.

Section 8 - The End of Illusions

It is impossible to let the past go, WITHOUT relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to RE-ENACT the past, AND CHANGE IT. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations, all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded SELF-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special partner, WITHOUT the past? EVERY such choice is made because of something "evil" in the past, TO WHICH YOU CLING, and for which must SOMEONE ELSE "atone."

The special relationship TAKES VENGEANCE ON THE PAST. By seeking to remove suffering IN THE PAST, it OVERLOOKS the present, in its preoccupation with the past, and its TOTAL COMMITMENT to it. NO SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IS EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT. Shades of the past envelop it, and make it what it is. It HAS no meaning in the present, and, if it means nothing NOW, it cannot have any REAL meaning at all. How can you change the past, EXCEPT in fantasy? And who can give you what you think THE PAST deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the past IS GONE.

You cannot REALLY not let go what has ALREADY gone. It MUST be, therefore, that YOU are maintaining the illusion that it has NOT gone, because you think it serves some purpose that you WANT FULFILLED. And it must also be that this purpose COULD NOT BE FULFILLED IN THE PRESENT, but ONLY in the past. Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is COMPLETELY savage, and COMPLETELY insane. For the ego remembers everything that YOU have done that offended it, and seeks retribution OF YOU. The fantasies it brings to the special relationships it chooses, in which to act out its hate, are fantasies of YOUR destruction.

For the ego holds the past AGAINST YOU, and, in your ESCAPE from it, it sees ITSELF deprived of the vengeance it believes that you so justly merit. Yet, without your ALLIANCE in your own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past. In the special relationship, YOU ARE ALLOWING YOUR DESTRUCTION TO BE. That this is insane, is obvious. But what is LESS obvious to you, is that the PRESENT is useless to you, while you pursue the ego's goal, as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the special relationship, which binds you to it, and would teach you that SALVATION is past, and that you must RETURN to the past, to FIND salvation. There is NO fantasy that does not contain the dream of retribution for the past. Would you ACT OUT the dream, or let it go?

Against the ego's insane notion of salvation, the Holy Spirit gently lays the holy instant. We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons, and uses opposites to point to truth. The holy instant is the OPPOSITE of the ego's fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant, it is ACCEPTED that the past is gone, and WITH its passing, the drive for vengeance HAS BEEN uprooted, and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of NOW, enfold you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone, EXCEPT THE TRUTH.

For a time, you may attempt to bring illusions INTO the holy instant, to hinder your full awareness of the COMPLETE DIFFERENCE, in ALL respects, between your EXPERIENCE of truth and illusion. But you will not attempt this long. In the holy instant, the power of the Holy Spirit WILL prevail, BECAUSE YOU JOINED HIM. The illusions you bring with you, will weaken the EXPERIENCE of Him for a while, and will prevent you from KEEPING the experience in your mind. Yet the holy instant IS eternal, and your illusions of time will NOT prevent the timeless from being what it is, nor you from EXPERIENCING it as it is.

What God has given you is truly given. AND WILL BE TRULY RECEIVED. For God's gifts HAVE no reality, APART from your receiving them. YOUR receiving completes HIS giving. You will receive, BECAUSE it is His Will to give. He gave the holy instant, to be given you. And it is impossible that you receive it not, BECAUSE He gave it. When He willed that His Son be free, His Son WAS free. In the holy instant is His reminder that His Son will ALWAYS be EXACTLY as he was created. And EVERYTHING the Holy Spirit teaches you, is to remind you that you HAVE received what God has given you.

There is nothing you CAN hold against reality. All that must be forgiven are the ILLUSIONS you have held against your brothers. Their reality HAS no past, and ONLY illusions can BE forgiven. God holds nothing against ANYONE, for He is INCAPABLE of illusions of ANY kind. Release your brothers from the slavery of THEIR illusions, by forgiving them for the illusions which YOU perceive in them. Thus will you learn that YOU have been forgiven, for it is YOU who offered THEM illusions. In the holy instant, this is done for you IN TIME, to bring to you the true condition of Heaven.

Remember that you ALWAYS choose between truth and illusion, between the REAL Atonement that would heal, and the ego's "atonement," that would destroy. The power of God, and all His Love, without limit, will support you, as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love. Be an ally of God, and NOT the ego, in seeking how Atonement can come to you. His help suffices, for His Messenger understands how to restore the Kingdom TO you, and to place ALL your investment in salvation in your relationship with Him.

Seek and FIND His message in the holy instant, where ALL illusions are forgiven. From here the miracle extends to bless everyone, and to resolve ALL problems; be they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible. There is NOTHING that will not give place to Him, and to His Majesty. To join in close relationship with Him, is to accept relationships AS REAL. And, through THEIR reality, give over ALL illusions, for the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with Him, and to no other. The truth lies here, AND NOWHERE ELSE. You choose this, or NOTHING.

Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are NO illusions, and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is YOURS. What can there be in us that NEEDS forgiveness, when YOURS is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember YOUR forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is NOT Your Will. And let us receive ONLY what YOU have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created, and which You love. Amen.

Section 2 - Guilt and Guiltlessness

The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other AS LIKE HIMSELF, making them unable to communicate, because each sees the other UNLIKE the way he sees himself. God can communicate ONLY to the Holy Spirit in your mind, because only He shares the knowledge of what you are WITH God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for YOU, for only He knows what God IS. Everything ELSE, that YOU have placed within your mind, CANNOT exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God, has never been. Communication with God is Life. Nothing without it IS at all.

The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He for you. This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is NOTHING of value here, and EVERYTHING of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and to God through Him. He speaks of you to YOU. There IS no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son, as the Son is blessed in Him.

Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each to share is always the same; GOD's SON IS GUILTLESS. Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. But UNTIL he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness, that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. HIS plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. You know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God, He holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how to be happy.

Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created FOR you. Who can condemn whom God has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share his shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in ALL its forms. To accuse is NOT TO UNDERSTAND. The happy learners of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the RIGHT of all that God created. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it from them alone.

The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or you will ASK for guilt and WILL experience it. PROTECT his purity from every thought that would steal it away, and keep it from his sight. BRING INNOCENCE TO LIGHT, in answer to the call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt, within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. So will the world of separation slip away, and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son.

The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which MUST have been denied, to produce NEED of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness, and release from suffering of every kind, lies in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his. But those who have failed to learn need TEACHING, NOT attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn FROM them.

Join your own efforts to the Power that cannot fail, and MUST result in peace. No-one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself BEYOND the power of God if you teach only this. You will NOT be exempt from the effect of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right of God's creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end. And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for all, in everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace.

Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity, from which no-one is excluded. Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no-one left outside, to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle, and attract all tortured minds to join with you, in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it, as teachers of Atonement, NOT of guilt.

Blessed are ye who teach with me. Our power comes not of us, but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling YOU to peace. Teach peace with me, and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father's power, that He has given them. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. Stand not outside, but join with me within. Fail not the only purpose to which MY teaching calls you. Restore to God His Son, as He created him, by teaching him his innocence.

The crucifixion had no part in the Atonement. Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness. Whomever you perceive as guilty, you would crucify. But you RESTORE guiltlessness to whomever you SEE as guiltless. Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and, in His gentleness, He would RELEASE from fear, and re-establish the reign of love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify, nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore becomes YOUR altar, for it was re-built through YOU. And everything you give to God IS yours. Thus He creates, and thus must YOU restore.

Each one you see you place, within the holy circle of Atonement, or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or redemption. If you bring him INTO the circle of purity, you will rest there WITH him. If you leave him without, you JOIN him there. Judge not, except in quietness which is NOT of you. Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no-one out, for this is what HE seeks along with you. Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one, within the cause of peace.

Section 8 - Choose Once Again

How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained! You ALWAYS choose between YOUR weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the Light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead. Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you.

In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altars unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be.

Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. The Saviors of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who chose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen APART from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined to all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is ONLY what He wills.

Learn, then, the happy habit of response to ALL temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:

"I am as God created me. His Son

can suffer nothing. And I AM His Son."

Thus is Christ's strength INVITED to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God, and that can NEVER fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony APPEARED to be before the choice for holiness was made. For IN that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to INTERFERE with truth.

You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, REGARDLESS of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this, and you will see ALL pain in EVERY form WHEREVER it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS.

Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world, uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to JOIN with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him. My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your OWN release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before.

But this a vision is which you must SHARE with everyone you see. For otherwise you will behold it not. To GIVE this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it BE for you. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where His gift can once again be recognized as ours. And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone, and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared.

Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot call in vain. And in His certainty I rest content. For you WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free. I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what they are, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them.

Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You.

And now we say "Amen." For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm Eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the Face of Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly, and all creation recognizes You and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your Likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are One, and we ARE home where You would have us be.

Section 7 - Salvation from Fear

Before your brother's holiness the world is still, and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete, that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night. He is your Savior from the dreams of terror. He is the healing of your sense of sacrifice, and fear that what you have will scatter with the wind, and turn to dust. In him is your assurance God is here, and with you now. While he is what he is, you can be sure that God is knowable, and WILL be known to you. For He could never leave His own creation. And the sign that this is so lies in your brother, offered you that all your doubts about yourself may disappear before his holiness.

See in him God's creation. For in him his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created YOU as part of Him. Without you, there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe, and no reality. For what God wills is whole, and part of Him BECAUSE His Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of Him, and nothing is but IS alive in Him. Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.

Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that God created has He failed to lay before you lovingly, as yours forever. And no thought within His Mind is absent from your own. It is His Will you SHARE His love for you, and look upon yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world began, and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him. Your brother IS as He created him. And it is this that saves YOU from a world that He created not.

Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is for. That is the ONLY purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it HAS. Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time, and ALL appearances, you will NOT know the Father OR yourself. For you will use the world for what is NOT its purpose, and will NOT escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is GIVEN you to be BEYOND its laws in ALL respects, in EVERY way, and EVERY circumstance; in ALL temptation to perceive what is NOT there, and ALL belief God's Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not.

Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS. Let not his specialness obscure the truth in him, for not one law of death you bind him to will YOU escape. And not one sin you see in him but keeps you BOTH in hell. Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being.

It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him. Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. And let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were MEANT to see from you. Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness.

Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you choose in countless situations, and through time which seems to have no end, until the truth be your decision. For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him. And where is YOUR salvation, if he is but a body? Where is YOUR peace, but in his holiness? And where is God Himself but in that part of Him He set forever in your brother's holiness, that YOU might see the truth about yourself set forth at last in terms you recognized and understood?

Your brother's holiness is sacrament and benediction unto YOU. His errors can NOT withhold God's blessing from himself, nor you who see him truly. His mistakes can cause delay, which it is given YOU to take from him, that both may end a journey that has never been begun, and NEEDS no end. What never was is NOT a part of you. Yet will you think it is, until you realize that it is not a part of him who stands beside you. He is the mirror of yourself, wherein you see the judgment you have laid on BOTH of you. The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not.

Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for YOU? Then see HIM not as prisoner to them. It CANNOT be what governs part of God holds not for all the rest. You place YOURSELF under the laws you see as ruling HIM. Think, then, how great the Love of God for YOU must be, that He has given you a part of Him, to save from pain and give YOU happiness. And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear before the Will of God Who loves each part of Him with equal love and care. The Christ in you CAN see your brother truly. And would you decide AGAINST the holiness He sees?

Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light. Always attacked and always furious, with anger always fully justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never thought to yield, and effort that you never thought to cease. And all this grim determination was for this: YOU WANTED SPECIALNESS TO BE THE TRUTH.

Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far LESS vigilance, with little effort and with little time, and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising success. Yet, of the two, it is THIS one you find more difficult. The SACRIFICE of self you understand, nor do you deem THIS cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet, to the dedication to the truth as GOD established it, NO sacrifice is asked, NO strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and GUARANTEE the goal's accomplishment.

You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do. Forget not that this judgment MUST apply to what you do with IT as your ally. For what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him, this judgment makes no sense at all, for ONLY what His Father wills is possible, and there IS no alternative for Him to see. Out of His LACK of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose come the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.

Section 2 - Projection versus Extension

You have made by projection, but God has created by extension. The cornerstone of God's creation is YOU, for HIS thought system is light. Remember the rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of HIS thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the foundation of the ego's thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. But even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and hold it up to the foundation of the ego's thought system bravely. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark stone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.

My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at last looked at the ego's foundation without shrinking, you will also have looked upon ours. I come to you from our Father, to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for ITS protection will not save you. I GIVE you the lamp, and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?

You HAVE learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything ELSE to the Sonship, KNOWING your need of it for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of knowledge; the foundation on which God will help you build again the thought system which you share WITH Him. Not one stone you place upon it but will be blessed by Him. For you will be restoring the holy dwelling place of His Son, where He wills His Son to be, and where he IS. In whatever part of the mind of God's Son you restore this reality, you restore it to YOURSELF. For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.

To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end? No-one can BE beyond the limitless, because what has NO limits, must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the Universe, or from God, Who IS the Universe? I and my Father are one with YOU, for you are part of us. Do you REALLY believe that part of God can be missing or lost to Him?

If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone EXCEPT you, and your filling it WAS your creation, WITHOUT you, there would be an empty place in God's Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your DENIAL of its reality arrests it in time, but not in Eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended, and why so much is waiting for your return.

Waiting is possible ONLY in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind, simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation nor upon those who create like Him. You do not know this, simply because you have tried to limit what HE created, and so you believe that ALL creation is limited. How, then, could you know YOUR creations, having DENIED Infinity? The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe YOU are absent from God, you WILL believe He is absent from you.

Infinity is meaningless WITHOUT you, and YOU are meaningless without God. There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him.

To give without limit is God's Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy which is His, and which He wills to share with YOU. Your love is as boundless as His because it IS His. Could any part of Him be WITHOUT His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except LIKE Him, if you would know His gift to YOU? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much HE has given YOU. Your ability to ACCEPT Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are One.

God willed to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that YOU will to create, since your will follows from His. And being the extension of His will, yours MUST be the same. Yet what you will, you do not know. This is not strange, when you realize that to deny IS to not know. God's Will was that you are His Son. By DENYING this, you denied your OWN will, and therefore DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS. The reason you must ask what God's Will is in everything, is merely because It IS yours. YOU do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit REMEMBERS IT FOR YOU.

Ask him, therefore, what God's Will is for you, and He will tell you YOURS. It cannot be too often repeated that you do NOT KNOW it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is ONLY because YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN WILL. The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God's Will is OUTSIDE yourself, and therefore NOT YOURS. In THIS interpretation, it IS possible for God's Will and yours to conflict. God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do NOT want to give, and thus DEPRIVE you of what you want. Would God, Who wants ONLY your will, be capable of this? Your will is His Life, which He has GIVEN to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM.

Creation is your will because it is His. You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you CHANGE this, because it is immutable. But it is immutable by God's Will AND YOURS, for otherwise His Will would not have been extended. You are afraid to know God's Will, because you believe it is NOT yours. This belief is your whole sickness, and your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here, because this is the belief that makes you want not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness, denying that the Light is in YOU.

You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for YOU. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you. Always remember that what He gives He holds, so that nothing He gives CAN contradict Him. You who share His Life must share it to KNOW it, for sharing IS knowing. Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father, is to know your own. For it is YOUR will to be LIKE Him, Whose Will it is that it be so.

God's Will is that His Son be One, and united with Him in His Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that YOUR WILL IS HIS.

Section 6 - Healing and the Changelessness of Mind

The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It is therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite apart from what the potential is used FOR. This IS a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here. But the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body ONLY for communication has such direct connection with healing that it DOES need clarification. The unhealed healer OBVIOUSLY does not understand his own vocation.

ONLY minds communicate. Since the ego CANNOT obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to CREATE, it can only try to teach you that the BODY can both communicate AND create, and therefore DOES NOT NEED THE MIND. The ego, then, tries to teach you that the body can ACT like the mind, and therefore IS self-sufficient. But we have learned that behavior is NOT the level for either teaching OR learning. This MUST be so, because you CAN act in accordance with what you do NOT believe. But this will weaken you as teachers AND learners because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you DO believe. An inconsistent lesson WILL be poorly taught and POORLY LEARNED. If you teach both sickness AND healing, you ARE both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and THE ONLY ONE HE KNOWS. He recognizes no other, because he does NOT accept the ego's confusion of mind and body. Minds CAN communicate, but they CANNOT hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other BODIES, but this CANNOT occur UNLESS the body has ALREADY been confused WITH the mind. This fact, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must realize that magic is ALWAYS the belief that healing is HARMFUL. This is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.

Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else does not share WITH him. Magic ALWAYS sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does NOT have it. He may believe that this gift comes from God TO him, but it is quite evident that he does NOT understand God if he thinks HE has something that others DO NOT. You might well ask why SOME healing CAN result from this kind of thinking, and there is a real reason for this.

However misguided the "magical healer" may be, and however much he may be trying to strengthen his ego, HE IS ALSO TRYING TO HELP. He IS conflicted and unstable, but AT TIMES he is offering SOMETHING to the Sonship, and the ONLY thing the Sonship can ACCEPT IS healing. When the so-called healing "works," then, the impulse both to help and BE helped have coincided. This is co-incidental, because the healer may NOT be experiencing HIMSELF as truly helpful at the time, and the belief that he IS, in the mind of ANOTHER, HELPS HIM.

The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that he can SOMETIMES heal and SOMETIMES not, the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting INconsistency. He is therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict.

Can ANYTHING of God NOT be for all and always? Love is incapable of ANY exceptions. Only if there is fear does the whole IDEA of exceptions of any kind seem to be meaningful. Exceptions ARE fearful because they were made BY fear. The "fearful healer" is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that ONLY a conflicted mind could POSSIBLY perceive as meaningful. Fear does NOT gladden. Healing DOES. Fear ALWAYS makes exceptions. Healing NEVER does. Fear produces dissociation because it induces SEPARATION. Healing ALWAYS induces harmony because it proceeds from integration.

Healing is predictable BECAUSE it can be counted on. EVERYTHING that is of God can be counted on, because everything of God is WHOLLY REAL. HEALING can be counted on BECAUSE it is inspired by His voice, and is in accord with His laws. But if healing IS consistence, it CANNOT be inconsistently understood. Understanding MEANS consistence, because GOD means consistence. And because that IS His Meaning, it is also YOURS. YOUR meaning CANNOT be out of accord with His, because your whole meaning, and your ONLY meaning, comes FROM His and is LIKE His. God CANNOT be out of accord with HIMSELF, and YOU cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannot separate your SELF from YOUR Creator, who created YOU by sharing HIS Being WITH you.

The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but he is NOT grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something TO them, and is NOT receiving something equally desirable in return. His TEACHING is limited because he is LEARNING so little. His HEALING lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in an instant, and change the world in the next. That is because by changing HIS mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created FOR change.

This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as GOD created it. But YOU think that you HAVE changed it, as long as you learn through the ego. This DOES place you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which SEEMS contradictory: you must learn to change your mind ABOUT your mind. Only by this can you learn that it IS changeless.

When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear, but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will UNDERSTAND it. Understanding is APPRECIATION, because what you understand you can identify WITH, and by making it part of YOU you have accepted it with love. This is how God Himself created YOU, in understanding, in appreciation, and in love.

The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does NOT understand what it makes. It does NOT appreciate it, and it does NOT love it. It incorporates to TAKE AWAY. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something IT has increased. We have spoken often of the INCREASE of the Kingdom by YOUR creations, which can only BE created as YOU were.

I do not want to share my BODY in communion because this is to share nothing. Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most Holy Father? But I do want to share my MIND with you because we ARE of one Mind, and that Mind IS ours. See ONLY this Mind everywhere, because only this IS everywhere and in everything. It IS everything, because it encompasses all things within ITSELF. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. Come therefore unto me and learn of the truth in YOU.

The mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM. This light will shine back upon YOU and on the whole Sonship because this IS your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to Him, and therefore to His Sons. This is the true communion of the Spirit Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to YOUR appreciation calls upon you to love God and His Creation.

Section 5 - Perception and the Two Worlds

God established His relationship with you TO MAKE YOU HAPPY, and nothing YOU do which does NOT share His purpose CAN be real. The purpose GOD ascribed to anything IS its only function. Because of HIS reason for creating HIS relationship with you, the function of relationships became forever "to make happy." AND NOTHING ELSE. To fulfill this function, you relate to your creations as GOD to HIS. For nothing God created is APART from happiness, and nothing God created but would EXTEND happiness, as its Creator did. Whatever fulfills this function NOT, CANNOT BE REAL.

In this world, it is impossible to create. Yet it IS possible to make happy. We have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not DEPRIVE you of your special relationships, but would TRANSFORM them. And by that, all that is meant is that He will RESTORE to them the function that was GIVEN them, by God. The function YOU have given them is clearly NOT to make happy. But the holy relationship SHARES God's purpose, rather than aiming to make a SUBSTITUTE for it. Every special relationship that YOU have made IS a substitute for God's Will, and glorifies yours instead of His, BECAUSE OF THE DELUSION THEY ARE DIFFERENT.

You have VERY REAL relationships, even in this world, which you do not recognize, simply because you have raised their SUBSTITUTES to such predominance that, when truth calls to you, as it does constantly, YOU ANSWER WITH A SUBSTITUTE. Every special relationship which you have ever undertaken has, as its fundamental purpose, the aim of occupying your minds so completely that YOU WILL NOT HEAR the call of truth. In a sense, the special relationship was the EGO's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's Answer to the separation. For, although the ego did not understand WHAT had been created, it WAS aware of threat.

The whole defense system that the ego evolved, to PROTECT the separation from the Holy Spirit, was in response to the Gift with which God blessed it, and BY His blessing enabled it to be HEALED. This Blessing holds, WITHIN ITSELF, the truth about everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit IS in close relationship with you, because, in Him, is your relationship with God restored to you. The relationship with Him has never been broken, because the Holy Spirit has not been separate from anyone SINCE the separation. And through Him, have all your holy relationships been carefully preserved, to serve God's purpose FOR you.

The ego IS hyper alert to threat, and the part of your mind into which the ego was accepted is VERY anxious to preserve its reason, AS IT SEES IT. It does NOT realize that it is totally insane. And YOU must realize JUST WHAT THIS MEANS, if YOU would be restored to sanity. The insane PROTECT their thought systems, BUT THEY DO IT INSANELY. And ALL their defenses are AS INSANE AS WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT. The separation has NOTHING in it, no PART, NO 'reason,' and NO attribute, that is NOT insane. And its 'protection' IS part of it, as insane as the whole.

The special relationship, which is its chief defense, MUST therefore be insane. You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the thought-system it protects, is but a system of delusions. You recognize, at least in general terms, that the ego is insane. But the special relationship still seems to you somehow TO BE DIFFERENT. Yet we have looked at it far closer than at many other ASPECTS of the ego's thought-system which you have been more willing to let go. While this ONE remains, you will not LET the others go. FOR THIS ONE IS NOT DIFFERENT. RETAIN this one, and you HAVE retained the whole.

It is essential to realize that ALL defenses DO what they would DEFEND. The underlying basis for their effectiveness is that they OFFER what they defend. What they defend is placed IN them for safe-keeping, and as THEY operate, THEY BRING IT TO YOU. Every defense operates BY GIVING GIFTS, and the gift is ALWAYS a miniature of the thought-system the defense protects, set in a golden frame. The frame is very elaborate, all set with jewels, and deeply carved and polished. Its purpose is to be of value IN ITSELF, and to divert YOUR attention from what it encloses. But the frame WITHOUT the picture, you CANNOT have. Defenses operate TO MAKE YOU THINK YOU CAN.

The special relationship has the most imposing and deceptive frame of all the defenses the ego uses. Its thought-system is offered here, surrounded by a frame so heavy and so elaborate, that the picture is almost obliterated by its imposing structure. Into the frame are woven all sorts of fanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set with dreams of sacrifice and self-aggrandizement, and interlaced with gilded threads of self-destruction. The glitter of blood shines like rubies, and the tears are faceted like diamonds, and gleam in the dim light in which the offering is made.

LOOK AT THE PICTURE. Do NOT let the frame distract you. This gift is given you for your damnation, and if you TAKE it, you WILL believe that you are damned. YOU CANNOT HAVE THE FRAME WITHOUT THE PICTURE. What you VALUE is the FRAME, for THERE you see no conflict. But the frame is only the wrapping for the GIFT of conflict. THE FRAME IS NOT THE GIFT. Be not deceived by the most superficial ASPECTS of this thought-system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete with EVERY aspect. Death lies in this glittering gift. Let not your gaze dwell on the hypnotic gleaming of the frame. LOOK AT THE PICTURE, and realize that DEATH is offered you.

That is why the holy instant is so important in the defense of truth. The truth itself NEEDS no defense, but YOU DO need defense against your own ACCEPTANCE of the gift of death. When you who ARE truth, accept an idea so DANGEROUS to truth, YOU THREATEN TRUTH WITH DESTRUCTION. And YOUR defense must now be undertaken, TO KEEP TRUTH WHOLE. The power of Heaven, the Love of God, the tears of Christ and the joy of His Eternal Spirit are marshalled to defend you from your own attack. For you attack THEM, being PART of them, and they must SAVE you, for they love themselves.

The Holy instant is a miniature of Heaven, sent you FROM Heaven. It is a picture, too, set in a frame. But if you accept THIS gift, you will NOT see the frame at all, because the gift can only BE accepted through your willingness to focus ALL your attention ON THE PICTURE. The holy instant is a miniature of eternity. It is a picture of timelessness, set in a frame of time. If you focus on the picture, you will realize that it was only the frame that made you THINK it was a picture. WITHOUT the frame, the picture IS SEEN AS WHAT IT REPRESENTS. For, as the whole thought-system of the ego lies in ITS gifts, so the whole of Heaven lies in this instant, borrowed from eternity, and set in time for YOU.

Two gifts are offered you. Each is complete, and cannot be partially accepted. Each is a picture of all that you can have, SEEN VERY DIFFERENTLY. You CANNOT compare their value by comparing a picture to a frame. It MUST be the PICTURES ONLY that you compare, or the comparison is wholly without meaning. Remember that it is the picture that is the gift. And ONLY on this basis are you REALLY free to choose. LOOK AT THE PICTURES. BOTH of them. One is a tiny picture, hard to see at all beneath the heavy shadows of its enormous and disproportionate enclosure. The other is lightly framed, and hung in light, lovely to look upon for what it IS.

You who have tried so hard, and are STILL trying, to fit the better picture into the wrong frame, and so combine what cannot BE combined, accept this and be glad; These pictures are each framed perfectly, for what they represent. One is FRAMED to be out of focus, and NOT seen. The other is framed for perfect clarity. The picture of darkness and of death grows less convincing as you search it out amid its wrappings. As each senseless stone that SEEMS to shine in darkness from the frame is EXPOSED TO LIGHT, it becomes dull and lifeless, and ceases to distract you from the picture. And finally, you look upon the PICTURE ITSELF, seeing at last that, unprotected by its FRAME, it HAS no meaning.

The other picture is lightly framed, for time cannot contain eternity. There is NO distraction here. The picture of Heaven and eternity grows MORE convincing, as you look at it. And now, by REAL comparison, a TRANSFORMATION of both pictures can at last occur. And each is given its RIGHTFUL place, when both are seen IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER. The dark picture, BROUGHT TO LIGHT, is NOT perceived as fearful. But the fact that IT IS JUST A PICTURE is brought home at last. And what you SEE there, YOU will recognize as what it is; a picture of what YOU THOUGHT WAS REAL, and nothing more. For, BEHIND this picture, YOU WILL SEE NOTHING.

The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture. As you look on THIS, you realize that IT IS NOT A PICTURE, but a reality. This is no figured REPRESENTATION of a thought-system, but the Thought Itself. What IT represents is THERE. The frame fades gently, and God rises to your remembrance, offering you the whole of creation, in exchange for your little picture, wholly without value, and entirely deprived of meaning. As God ascends into HIS rightful place and you to yours, you will experience again the MEANING of relationship, and know it to be true.

Section 7 - The Test of Truth

But the essential thing is learning that YOU DO NOT KNOW. Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you. For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind.

Yet all that stands between you, and the power of God in you, is but your learning of the false, and your attempts to UNDO THE TRUE. Be willing, then, for ALL of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it. Can God learn how NOT to be God? And can His Son, GIVEN all power BY Him, learn to be powerLESS? What have you taught yourselves that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you HAVE, and what you ARE?

Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourselves in the past, by showing you ONLY what you ARE NOW. Learning HAS BEEN accomplished, BEFORE its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore IN THE PAST, but its influence DETERMINES the present, by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. Your learning gives the present NO MEANING AT ALL. Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. Your past IS what you have taught yourselves.

LET IT ALL GO. Do NOT attempt to understand ANY event, or ANYTHING, or ANYONE in its light, for the light of darkness, by which you TRY to see, can ONLY obscure. Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for if you do, you CONTRADICT the light, and thereby THINK you see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot BE seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. You who have not yet brought ALL of the darkness you have taught yourselves unto the light in you, can hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet God did not abandon you. And so you have another lesson, sent from Him, ALREADY learned for every Child of Light, by Him to Whom God gave it.

You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are WHOLLY free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet, or even THINK of you, SHARE in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned GOD's lesson, and NOT yours. Unless all this is true, there ARE dark lessons in your minds, which hurt and hinder you, AND EVERYONE AROUND YOU. The ABSENCE of PERFECT peace means but ONE thing; you THINK you do not will for God's Son what His Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this, on one form or another. And each bright lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will REPLACE the dark ones you do NOT accept and hide, teaches you that you will WITH the Father unto His Son.

Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so COMPLETELY different from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything YOU learned you DO NOT WANT. Ask to BE taught, and do NOT use your experiences to confirm what YOU have learned. When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in ANY way, say to yourself, "I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now." By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you, will speak to you. HE will take His rightful place in your awareness, the instant YOU abandon it, and offer it to Him.

YOU cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary. And, because you did, the means on which you can DEPEND for miracles, has been provided FOR you. God's Son can make no needs His Father will not meet, if he but turn to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot COMPEL His Son to turn to Him, and remain Himself. It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless. The miracle ACKNOWLEDGES His changelessness, by seeing His Son as he always was, and NOT as he would make himself. The miracle brings the effect which ONLY guiltlessness CAN bring, and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness MUST BE.

How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish FOR YOURSELF your guiltlessness? This is impossible. But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it IS impossible. It is only because you think that you can run some little part, or deal with certain aspects of your lives alone, that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is limited. Thus would you make HIM undependable, and USE this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons FROM Him. And, by so limiting the guidance that you would ACCEPT, YOU are unable to DEPEND on miracles, to answer ALL your problems FOR you.

Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you GIVE, He would withhold from YOU? You have NO problems which He cannot solve, by offering YOU a miracle. Miracles are for YOU. And EVERY fear or pain or trial you have HAS BEEN undone. HE has brought ALL of them to light, having ACCEPTED them INSTEAD of you, and recognized that they never were. There ARE no dark lessons He has not ALREADY lightened FOR you. The lessons you would teach yourselves, He has corrected already. They do not exist in His Mind at all. For the past binds HIM not, and therefore binds not you.

He does not see time as you do. And each miracle He offers you, CORRECTS your use of time, and makes it His. He Who has freed you from the past, would teach you, you ARE free of it. He would but have you accept His accomplishments AS YOURS, because He did them FOR you. And because He did, they ARE yours. He has MADE you free of what you made. You can deny Him, but you CANNOT call upon Him in vain. He ALWAYS gives what HE has made, IN PLACE of you. He would establish His bright teaching so firmly in your mind, that no dark lessons of guilt can abide in what He has established as holy by His Presence.

Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you. God's Son will ALWAYS be indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so do we learn as one in Him. God's Teacher is as like to His Creator as is His Son, and through His Teacher does God proclaim His Oneness AND His Son's. Listen in silence, and do NOT raise your voice against Him. For He teaches the miracle of Oneness, and before HIS lesson, division disappears. Teach LIKE Him here, and you WILL remember that you have ALWAYS created like your Father. The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this.

Those who remember always that THEY know nothing, but who have become willing to learn EVERYTHING, will learn it. But whenever they trust THEMSELVES, they will NOT learn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning, BY THINKING THEY ALREADY KNOW. Think not you understand ANYTHING, until you pass the test of perfect peace, for peace and understanding GO TOGETHER, and never can be found alone. Each brings the other WITH it, for it is the law of God that they be not separate. They are cause and effect, each to the other, so, where one is absent, the other CANNOT be.

Only those who see they CANNOT know, UNLESS the effects of understanding are with them, can really learn at all. And for this, IT MUST BE PEACE THEY WANT, and nothing else. Whenever you think YOU know, peace will depart from you, because you have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully realize that YOU KNOW NOT, peace will return, for you will have invited Him to do so, by abandoning the ego on behalf of Him. Call not upon the ego for ANYTHING. It is only that, that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, OF HIMSELF, fill every mind that so makes room for Him. If you want peace, you MUST abandon the teacher of attack.

The Teacher of Peace can NEVER abandon YOU. YOU can desert HIM, but He will never reciprocate. For His faith in you IS His understanding. It is as firm as is His faith in His Creator, and He knows that faith in His Creator MUST encompass faith in creation. In this consistency, lies His holiness, which He CANNOT abandon, for it is not His Will to do so. With your perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace to everyone who perceives the NEED for peace, and who would have it. Make way for peace, and it will come. For understanding IS in you, and from it, peace MUST come.

The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is His. You think you know Him not, only because, alone, it is impossible to know Him. But see the mighty works that He will do through you, and you MUST be convinced you did them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of effects so powerful, they COULD not be of you. Leave room for Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power, that NOTHING will prevail against your peace. And this will be the test by which you recognize that you HAVE understood.

Section 9 - The Decision to Forget

Unless you KNOW something, you CANNOT dissociate it. Knowledge therefore PRECEDES dissociation, and dissociation is nothing more than a DECISION TO FORGET. What has been FORGOTTEN then appears to be fearful, but ONLY because the dissociation was an ATTACK ON TRUTH. You are fearful BECAUSE you have forgotten. And you have REPLACED your knowledge by an awareness of dreams, BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID OF YOUR DISSOCIATION, NOT of what you have dissociated. Even in this world's therapy, when dissociated material is ACCEPTED, it ceases to be fearful, for the laws of mind always hold.

To remember is merely to restore to your mind WHAT IS ALREADY THERE. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what has BEEN made AND REJECTED. The ability to ACCEPT truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God WILL do His part if you will do yours, and HIS return in exchange for yours IS the exchange of knowledge for perception. NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking.

Whenever you attack, you are denying YOURSELF. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are NOT what you are. YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE. If you understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why this is ALWAYS fearful. If you further recognize that you are PART of God, you will also understand why it is that YOU ALWAYS ATTACK YOURSELF FIRST.

ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because, when you attack, you MUST have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God's, when YOU attack, you are not remembering HIM. This is not because He is gone, but because you are ACTIVELY WILLING NOT TO REMEMBER HIM.

If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind, you COULD not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe that it can GET YOU SOMETHING YOU WANT. It follows, then, that you want something OTHER than peace of mind, and you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.

You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking your SELF, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and ONLY this, can BE attacked by you. What you THINK you are CAN be hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. The destruction is no more real than the image, but those who make idols DO worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness.

God would have them released from their sickness, and returned to His Mind. He will not limit your power to help them, because He has given it TO you. Do not be afraid of it, because it is your salvation. What Comforter can there be for the sick children of God except His power through YOU? Remember that it does not matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is ALWAYS accepted for all, and when your mind receives Him, the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship.

Heal your brothers simply by accepting God FOR them. Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing, because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His Children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them, because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick. To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that PART OF GOD CAN SUFFER.

Love CANNOT suffer, because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God, even if HE believes in it, for YOUR acceptance of God in him ACKNOWLEDGES the love of God which he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as PART OF GOD teaches him the truth about himself, WHICH HE IS DENYING. Would you STRENGTHEN his denial of God, and thus lose sight of YOURSELF? Or would you remind him of his wholeness, and remember your Creator WITH him?

To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. God created love, NOT idolatry. ALL forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds, who are too divided to know that Creation SHARES power, and NEVER usurps it. Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU. But this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who IS all power. A sick god MUST be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks HE is. And that is exactly what the ego DOES perceive in a Son of God; -- a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable.

Is this the idol you would worship? Is this the image you would be vigilant to SAVE? Are you REALLY afraid of losing THIS? Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the ego's thought-system, and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this IS what it offers you. To obtain THIS, you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of YOURS. And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect this idol, which you think will save you from dangers WHICH THE IDOL ITSELF STANDS FOR, but which do not exist.

There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for every Soul which God created, because of the calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. God's Son knows no idols, but He DOES know His Father. Health in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I contribute to you, but my love, for you do not value yourselves. When you do not value yourself you become sick, but MY value of you can heal you, because the value of God's Son is one.

When I said, "my peace I give unto you," I meant it. Peace came from God through me to YOU. It was FOR you, but you did not ask. When a brother is sick, it is because HE IS NOT ASKING FOR PEACE, and therefore he does not know he HAS it. The ACCEPTANCE of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, merely by denying them completely in himself.

I CAN heal you, because I KNOW you. I know your value FOR you, and it is this value that makes you whole. A whole mind is not idolatrous, and does not know of conflicting laws. I will heal you merely because I have only ONE message, and it is true. Your faith in it will make you whole, when you have faith in me. I do not bring God's message with deception, and you will learn this as you learn that you ALWAYS receive as much as you ACCEPT. You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear.

God is not jealous of the gods you make, but YOU are. You would save them and serve them, because you believe that THEY MADE YOU. You think they are your father, because you are projecting onto them the fearful fact that YOU MADE THEM TO REPLACE GOD. But when they seem to speak to you, remember that NOTHING can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attempted ARE nothing. Very simply, then, you may BELIEVE you are afraid of nothingNESS, but you are REALLY afraid of NOTHING. And in THAT awareness you ARE healed.

You WILL hear the god you listen to. You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal. If God has but one Son, there is but one God. You share reality with Him, BECAUSE reality is not divided. To accept other gods before Him, is to place other images before YOURSELF. You do not realize how much you listen to your gods, and how vigilant you are on their behalf. But they exist only because you honor them.

Place honor where it is due, and peace WILL be yours. It is your inheritance from your REAL Father. You cannot make your father, and the father you made did NOT make you. Honor is not due to illusions, for to honor them is to honor nothing. But fear is not due them either, for nothing cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love BECAUSE of its perfect harmlessness. And because of this fear, you have been willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness, and your own perfect Help. Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard, when you place no other gods before Him.

You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him. And if you accept him, you WILL bow down and worship him, because HE WAS MADE AS GOD's REPLACEMENT. He is the belief that YOU CAN CHOOSE WHICH GOD IS REAL. Although it is perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with REALITY, it is equally clear that it has EVERYTHING to do with REALITY AS YOU PERCEIVE IT.

Section 4 - The Unreality of Sin

The attraction of guilt is found in sin, NOT error. Sin will be repeated, BECAUSE of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin is denied the acting out, but, while the guilt REMAINS attractive, the mind will suffer, and not let go the IDEA of the sin. For guilt still calls to it, and the mind hears it and yearns for it, making it a willing captive to its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that can not BE corrected, and will be forever DESIRABLE. As an ESSENTIAL part of what the ego thinks you ARE, you will ALWAYS want it. And only an AVENGER, with a mind UNLIKE your own, could stamp it out through FEAR.

The ego does not think it possible that love, NOT fear, is really called upon by sin, AND ALWAYS ANSWERS. For the ego brings sin to FEAR, demanding punishment. But punishment is but another form of guilt's protection. For what is deserving punishment, must have been REALLY DONE. Punishment is always the great preserver of sin; treating it with respect, and honoring its enormity. What must be punished, MUST BE TRUE. And what is true MUST be eternal, and WILL be repeated endlessly. For what you think is real YOU WANT, and will NOT let it go.

An ERROR, on the other hand, is NOT attractive. What you see clearly AS A MISTAKE, you WANT corrected. Sometimes a sin can be repeated over and over, with OBVIOUSLY distressing results, but WITHOUT the loss of its appeal. And suddenly you change its status from a sin to a MISTAKE. Now you will NOT repeat it; you will merely stop, and let it go. UNLESS THE GUILT REMAINS. For then, you will but change the FORM of sin, granting that it was an error, but KEEPING IT UNCORRECTABLE. This is not really a change in your perception, for it is SIN that calls for punishment, NOT error.

The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all, as God entrusted Him to do. But SIN He knows not, nor can He RECOGNIZE mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is MEANINGLESS to Him. Mistakes are FOR correction. They call for NOTHING ELSE. What calls for punishment, must call for NOTHING. Yet every mistake MUST be a call for love. What, then, is sin? What COULD it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for help that you would keep UNHEARD, and thus UNANSWERED?

In time, the Holy Spirit CLEARLY sees the Son of God can make mistakes. On this, you SHARE His vision. Yet you do NOT share His recognition of the difference between time and eternity. And when correction is completed, time IS eternity. Time is like a downward spiral, that seems to travel down from a long, unbroken line, along another plane, but which in no way BREAKS the line, or interferes with its smooth continuousness. Along the spiral, it SEEMS as if the line MUST have been broken, but, at the LINE, its wholeness is apparent.

Everything seen from the spiral is misperceived. But, as you approach the line, you realize that IT was not affected by the drop into another plane at all. But, FROM this plane, the LINE seems discontinuous. And this is but an error in perception, which can be easily corrected IN THE MIND, although the body's eyes will see no change. The eyes see many things the mind corrects, and YOU respond, NOT to the eyes' illusions, BUT TO THE MIND's CORRECTIONS. You SEE the line as broken, and as you shift to different aspects of the spiral, the line looks different. Yet in your mind is One Who KNOWS it is unbroken, and forever changeless.

This One can teach you how to look on time differently, and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin. In error, yes, for this CAN be corrected by the mind. But sin is the belief that YOUR perception is UNCHANGEABLE, and that the MIND must ACCEPT AS TRUE what it is told THROUGH it. If it does not obey, the MIND is judged insane. The ONLY power that could CHANGE perception is thus kept impotent, held to the body by the FEAR of changed perception, which its Teacher, Who is One with it, would bring.

When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this: If sin is real, both God AND YOU are not. If creation is EXTENSION, the Creator MUST have extended HIMSELF, and it is impossible that what is PART of Him is totally unlike the rest. If sin is real, God must be at war WITHIN HIMSELF. HE must be split, and torn between good and evil; partly sane and partially insane. For He must have created what wills to destroy Him, and HAS THE POWER TO DO SO. Is it not EASIER to believe that YOU have been mistaken, than to believe in this?

While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere. And God and His creation seem to be split apart, and overthrown. For sin would PROVE what God created holy could not prevail against it, nor remain ITSELF before the power of sin.

Sin is perceived as mightier than God, before which God HIMSELF must bow, and offer His creation to its conqueror. Is this humility, or madness? If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing. For there would be a power BEYOND God's, capable of making another will, which could attack His Will, and OVERCOME it. And give His Son a will APART from His, and STRONGER. And each part of His fragmented creation would have a DIFFERENT will OPPOSED to His, and in eternal opposition to Him AND TO EACH OTHER.

Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now, the goal of proving THIS is impossible. Heaven has smiled upon it, and the belief in sin has been uprooted in its smile of love. You SEE it still, because you do not realize that its FOUNDATION has gone. Its SOURCE has been removed, and so it can be cherished but a little while, before it vanishes. Only the habit of LOOKING for it still remains. And yet you look with Heaven's smile upon YOUR lips, and Heaven's blessing on your sight.

You will NOT see it long. For, in the NEW perception, the mind CORRECTS it when it SEEMS to be seen, and it becomes invisible. But ERRORS are quickly recognized, and quickly given to correction, to be healed, NOT hidden. YOU will be healed of sin and all its ravages, the INSTANT that you give it no power over EACH OTHER. And you will HELP each other overcome MISTAKES, by joyously RELEASING one another from the belief in sin. In the holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven shining on BOTH of you. And you will shine upon each other, in glad acknowledgment of the grace that has been GIVEN you.

Your relationship is now a temple of healing, a place where all the weary ones can come and find rest. Here is the rest that waits for all, after the journey. And it is brought NEARER to all, by your relationship. As this peace expands, from deep inside yourselves, to embrace ALL the Sonship and give it rest, it will encounter many obstacles. Some of them, YOU will try to impose. Others will seem to arise from elsewhere; from your brothers, and from various aspects of the world OUTSIDE. But peace will gently cover them, extending past, COMPLETELY unhindered.

The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose, from YOUR relationship to others, to bring them gently IN, has already begun. This is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection. And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him.

You will NOT wait to give him this. For you will CALL to him and he will answer, RECOGNIZING in your call the call of God. And you will draw him in and give him rest, as it was given YOU. All this will you do. But the peace that already lies deeply within, must first expand and FLOW ACROSS the obstacles YOU place before it. THIS IT WILL DO. For nothing undertaken WITH the Holy Spirit, remains unfinished. You can indeed be sure of NOTHING you see OUTSIDE you, but of this you CAN be sure.

The Holy Spirit asks that you offer Him a resting-place, where YOU will rest in Him. He answered you, and entered your relationship. Would you not now RETURN His graciousness, and enter into a relationship with Him? For it is HE Who offered YOUR relationship the gift of holiness, without which it would have been forever impossible to appreciate each other. The gratitude you owe to Him, He asks but that YOU receive, FOR Him. And, when you look with gentle graciousness upon each other, you ARE beholding Him. For you are looking where He IS, and NOT apart from you.

You CANNOT see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you NEED to see. When the peace in you has been extended to encompass EVERYONE, the Holy Spirit's function here will be accomplished. What NEED is there for SEEING, then? When God has taken the last step Himself, the Holy Spirit will gather ALL your thanks and gratitude that you have offered Him, and lay them gently before His Creator, in the Name of His most holy Son. And the Father will ACCEPT them, in HIS Name. What need is there of seeing, in the presence of HIS gratitude?

Section 8 - Review of Principles

This is a course in miracles. And, as such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible, it MUST occur. ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness, that it may be carefully preserved from reason's light.

Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin. The Son of God perceives what he would see, because perception IS a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot BE perceived, but only known. What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real. Perception's laws are OPPOSITE to truth, and what IS true of knowledge is NOT true of ANYTHING that is apart from it. Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms.

God's Answer is eternal, though It operates in time, where It is needed. But, because It IS of God, the laws of time do not affect Its workings. It is in this world, but NOT a part of it. For It is real, and dwells where all reality MUST be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but SEEM to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause.

Perception's laws must be reversed, because they ARE reversals of the laws of truth. The laws of truth FOREVER will be true, and cannot BE reversed; yet can be SEEN as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies. It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality.

What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false. Your preference gives them NO reality. Not one is true in ANY way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as Answer to them all. God's Will is One. And ANY wish that SEEMS to go AGAINST His Will has NO foundation in the truth. Sin is not error, for it goes BEYOND correction to impossibility. Yet the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever PAST the hope of healing, and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it.

Then would God's Will be split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of two opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Himself. Thus has He lost His Mind, proclaiming sin has taken His reality from Him, and brought His Love at last to vengeance' heels. For such an insane picture, an insane defense can be expected, but can NOT establish that the picture must be true. Nothing GIVES meaning where no meaning IS. And truth needs NO defense to make it true. Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived.

Forgiveness is the only function here, and serves to bring the joy this world denies to every aspect of God's Son where sin was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not see the role forgiveness plays in ending death, and ALL beliefs that rise from mists of guilt. Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate.

Forgiveness TAKES AWAY what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be JOINED with him, and NOT alone. We call it "wish" because it still conceives of other choices, and has not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. Yet is this wish in line with Heaven's state, and not in OPPOSITION to God's Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full inheritance, it DOES remove the obstacles which YOU have placed between the Heaven where you are, and RECOGNITION of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. But facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known BEFORE they were denied.

Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to REPLACE the world you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin. And EVERY miracle is possible the INSTANT that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are One.

What is the Will of God? He wills His Son have everything. And this He guaranteed when He created him AS everything. It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you HAVE is what you ARE. This is the miracle by which creation became YOUR function, sharing it with God. It is not understood APART from Him, and therefore has no meaning in this world. Here does the Son of God ask NOT too much, but FAR too little. He would sacrifice his own identity WITH everything, to find a LITTLE treasure of his own. And this he cannot do, without a sense of isolation, loss, and loneliness. This IS the treasure he has sought to find. And he COULD only be afraid of it.

Is fear a treasure? Can uncertainty be what you WANT? Or is it a mistake about your will, and what you REALLY are? Let us consider what the error IS, so it can be corrected, NOT protected. Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack. Its failure lies in that you STILL FEEL guilty, though without understanding WHY. Effects are SEPARATED from their source. They SEEM to be BEYOND you to control or to prevent.

What has been KEPT apart can never join. Cause and effect are one, NOT separate. God wills you learn what always has been true. That he created you as part of Him, and this must still be true BECAUSE ideas leave not their source. Such is creation's law; that each idea the mind conceives but ADDS to its abundance, NEVER takes away. This is as true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed, because the mind can wish to be deceived, but CANNOT make it be what it is not. And to believe ideas can leave their source is to invite illusions to be true, WITHOUT SUCCESS. Nor never will success BE possible in trying to deceive the Son of God.

The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, NOT kept separate. The healing of effect WITHOUT the cause can merely shift effects to other forms. And this is NOT release. God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt. For otherwise he still demands that he must make SOME sacrifice, and thus denies that EVERYTHING is his, unlimited by loss of any kind. A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its EFFECTS as is the WHOLE idea of sacrifice. If loss in ANY form is possible, then is God's Son made incomplete and not himself. Nor will he know himself, nor recognize his will. He has foresworn his Father AND himself, and made them both his enemy in hate.

Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one. And what is one to Him must BE the same. If you believe what is the same is different, you but deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be. The miracle but calls your ancient name, which you WILL recognize because the truth is in your memory. And to this name your brother calls for his release and yours. Heaven is shining on the Son of God. Deny him not, that YOU may be released.

To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural. It is NOT arrogant to be as He created you, or to make use of what He gave to answer ALL His Son's mistakes, and set him free. But it IS arrogant to LAY ASIDE the power that He gave, and choose a little, senseless wish instead of what He wills. The gift of God to you is limitless. There is NO circumstance it cannot answer, and NO problem which is not resolved within its gracious light. Abide in peace, where God would have you be. And be the means whereby your brother finds the peace in which YOUR wishes are fulfilled. Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death. For what can save each one of us, can save us all. There is no difference among the Sons of God.

The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them. No wishes lie between a brother and his own. To get from one is to deprive them all. And yet to bless but one gives blessing to them all as one. Your ancient name belongs to everyone, as theirs to you. Call on your brother's name, and God will answer, for on Him you call. Could He refuse to answer, when He has ALREADY answered all who call on Him? A miracle can make no change at all. But it CAN make what always has been true be RECOGNIZED by those who know it not. And by this little gift of truth but let to be itself; the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.