

### A Course in Miracles with Comments

Ron Rasmussen

Published by Ron Rasmussen at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Ron Rasmussen

Another Title by Ron Rasmussen

Choose Again - Moving Beyond A Course in Miracles

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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A Course in Miracles

## With Comments by Ron Rasmussen

### Author of

### Choose Again - Moving Beyond A Course in Miracles

### Preface

This book contains the entire Text of A Course in Miracles which is no longer copyright protected. The comments are mine which are.

I have posted this writing several times over the years on a board called "ARequiredCourse@yahoogroups.com and I have had good comments from the members. This is the first time I have placed it into the hands of readers not associated with that board. I place in your hands with all the love in my heart and know that if you read this book, you will get more from the Course than you ever imagined.

It has taken me several years to write a book but nonetheless I have done it. I have walked through - struggled with and moved on beyond the fears that held me captive for so long. And what I have received from the Course were all the keys to the many doors placed before me.

The copied Text is shown in the smaller and lighter font. My comments are the darker, larger font.

Please enjoy this book knowing I am with you on each page and as close to you as the Internet.

The Course is like a labyrinth to me. I enter it and follow the path before me. I pause often and change my course often but I am always moving forward even though at times it may appear backwards. I journey into the center of my soul - my being - my essence - and there I stop for a while to contemplate all that I have learned, all that I have unlearned and all that I left fall away from me. And then, when the moment is right, I begin the journey once more back to where I began, only now I am not the same as I was in the beginning.

### Index to a Course in Miracles

**Introduction to the Course**Introduction

**Chapter 1 - The Meaning of Miracles** C1

**I. Principles of Miracles**C1SectionI

**II. Revelation, Time and Miracles**C1SectionII

**III. Atonement and Miracles**C1SectionIII

**IV. The Escape from Darkness**C1SectionIV

**V. Wholeness and Spirit**C1SectionV

**VI. The Illusion of Needs**C1SectionVI

**VII. Distortions of Miracle Impulses**C1SectionVII

**Chapter 2 - The Separation and the Atonement**C2

**I. The Origins of Separation**C2SectionI

**II. The Atonement as Defense**C2SectionII

**III. The Altar of God**C2SectionIII

**IV. Healing as a Release from Fear**C2SectionIV

**V. The Function of the Miracle Worker**C2SectionV

A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers

**VI. Fear and Conflict**C2SectionVI

**VII. Cause and Effect**C2SectionVII

**VIII. The Meaning of the Last Judgment**C20SectionVIII

**Chapter 3 - The Innocent Perception**C3

**I. Atonement without Sacrifice**Chapter3SecI

**II Miracles as True Perception**Chapter3SecII

**III. Perception versus Knowledge**Chapter3SecIII

**IV. Error and the Ego**C3SectionIV

**V. Beyond Perception**C3SectionV

**VI. Judgment and the Authority Problem**C3SectionVI

**VII. Creating versus the Self-Image**C3SectionVII

**Chapter 4 - Teaching for Truth**C4

**Introduction**C4Into

**I. Right Teaching and Right Learning**C4SectionI

**II. The Ego and False Autonomy**C4SectionII

**III. Love without Conflict**C4SectionIII

**IV. This Need Not Be**C4SectionIV

**V. The Ego-Body Illusion**C4SectionV

**VI. The Rewards of God**C4SectionVI

**VII. Creation and Communication**C4SectionVII

**Chapter 5 - Healing and Wholeness**C5

**Introduction**C5Intro

**I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit**C5SectionI

**II. The Voice for God**C5SectionII

**III. The Guide to Salvation**C5SectionIII

**IV. Teaching and Healing**C5SectionIV

**V. The Ego's Use of Guilt**C5SectionV

**VI. Time and Eternity**C5SectionVI

**VII. The Decision for God.**C5SectionVII

**Chapter 6 - The Lessons of Love**C6

**Introduction**C6Intro

**I. The Message of the Crucifixion**C6SectionI

**II. The Alternative to Projection**C6SectionII

**III. The Relinquishment of Attack**C6SectionIII

**IV. The Only Answer**C6SectionIV

**V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit**C6SectionV

**A. To Have, Give All to All**C6SectionVA

**B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace and Learn It**C6SectionVB

**C. Be Vigilant only for God and His Kingdom**C6SectionVC

**Chapter 7 - The Gifts of the Kingdom**C7

**I. The Last Step**C7SectionI

**II. The Law of the Kingdom**C27SectionII

**III. The Reality of the Kingdom**C7SectionIII

**IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth**C7SectionIV

**V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind**C7SectionV

**VI. From Vigilance to Peace**C7SectionVI

**VII. The Totality of the Kingdom**C7SectionVII

**VIII. The Unbelievable Beliefs**C7SectionVIII

**IX. The Extension of the Kingdom**C7SectionIX

**X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy**C7SectionX

**XI. The State of Grace**C7SectionXI

**Chapter 8 - The Journey Back**C8

**I. The Direction of the Curriculum**C8SectionI

**II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom**C8SectionII

**III. The Holy Encounter**C8SectionIII

**IV. The Gift of Freedom**C8SectionIV

**V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship**C8SectionV

**VI. The Treasure of God**C8SectionVI

**VII. The Body as a Means of Communication**C8SectionVII

**VIII. The Body as a Mean or End**C8SectionVIII

**IX. Healing as Corrected Perception**C8SectionIX

**Chapter 9 - The Acceptance of the Atonement**C9

**I. The Acceptance of Reality**C9SectionI

**II. The Answer to Prayer**C9SectionII

**III. The Correction of Error**C9SectionIII

**IV. The Holy Spirit's Plan of Forgiveness**C9SectionIV

**V. The Unhealed Healer**C9SectionV

**VI. The Acceptance of Your Brother**C9SectionVI

**VII. The Two Evaluations**C9SectionVII

**VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity**C9SectionVIII

**Chapter 10 - The Idols of Sickness**C10

**Introduction**C10intro

**I. At Home in God**C10SectionI

**II. The Decision to Forget**C10SectionII

**III. The God of Sickness**C10SectionIII

**IV. The End of Sickness**C10SectionIV

**V. The Denial of God**C10SectionV

**Chapter 11 - God or the Ego**C11

**Introduction**C11Intro

**I. The Gifts of Fatherhood**C11SectionI

**II. The Invitation to Healing**C11SectionII

**III. From Darkness to Light**C11SectionIII

**IV. The Inheritance of God's Son.**C11SectionIV

**..V. The 'Dynamics' of the Ego**C11SectionV

**VI. Waking to Redemption**C11SectionVI

**VII. The Condition of Reality**C11SectionVII

**VIII. The Problem and the Answer**C11SectionVIII

**Chapter 12 - The Holy Spirit's Curriculum**C12

**I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit**C12SectionI

**II. The Way to Remember God**C12SectionII

**III. The Investment in Reality**C12SectionIII

**IV. Seeking and Finding**C12SectionIV

**V. The Sane Curriculum**C12SectionV

**VI. The Vision of Christ**C12SectionVI

**VII. Looking Within**C12SectionVII

**VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love**C12SectionVIII

**Chapter 13 - The Guiltless World**C13

**Introduction**C13Intro

**I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability**C13SectionI

**II. The Guiltless Son of God**C13SectionII

**III. The Fear of Redemption**C13SectionIII

**IV. The Function of Time**C13SectionIV

**V. The Two Emotions**C13SectionV

**VI. Finding the Present**C13SectionVI

**VII. Attainment of the Real World**C13SectionVII

**VIII. From Perception to Knowledge**C13SectionVIII

**IX. The Cloud of Guilt**C13SectionIX

**X. Release from Guilt**C13SectionX

**XI. The Peace of Heaven**C13SectionXI

**Chapter 14 - Teaching for Truth**C14

**Introduction**C14Intro

**I. The Conditions of Learning**C14SectionI

**II. The Happy Learner**C14SectionII

**III. The Decision for Guiltlessness**C14SectionIII

**IV. Your Function in the Atonement**C14SectionIV

**V. The Circle of Atonement**C14SectionV

**VI. The Light of Communication**C14SectionVI

**VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit**C14SectionVII

**VIII. The Holy Meeting Place**C14SectionVIII

**IX. The Reflection of Holiness**C14SectionIX

**X. The Equality of Miracles**C14SectionX

**XI. - The Test of Truth**C14SectionXI

**Chapter 15 - The Holy Instant**C15

**I. The Two Uses of Time**C15SectionI

**II. The End of Doubt**C15SectionII

**III. Littleness versus Magnitude**C15SectionIII

**IV. Practicing the Holy Instant**C15SectionIV

**V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships**C15SectionV

**VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God**C15SectionVI

**VII. The Needless Sacrifice**C15SectionVII

**VIII. The Only Real Relationship**C15SectionVIII

**IX. The Holy Instant and the Attraction of God**C15SectionIX

**X. The Time of Rebirth**C15SectionX

**XI. Christmas as the End of Sacrifice**C15SectionXI

**Chapter 16 - The Forgiveness of Illusions**C16

**I. True Empathy**C16SectionI

**II. The Power of Holiness**C16SectionII

**III - The Reward of Teaching**C16SectionIII

**IV. The Illusion and the Reality of Love**C16SectionIV

**V. The Choice for completion**C16SectionV

**VI. The Bridge to the Real World**C16SectionVI

**VII. The End of Illusions**C16SectionVII

**Chapter 17 - Forgiveness and the Holy Relationship**C17

**I. Bringing Fantasy to Truth**C17SectionI

**.II The Forgiven World**C17SectionII

**III. Shadows of the Past**C17SectionIII

**IV The Two Pictures**C17SectionIV

**V. The Healed Relationship**C17SectionV

**VI. Setting the Goal**C17SectionVI

**VII. The Call for Faith**C17SectionVII

**VIII. The Conditions of Peace**C17SectionVIII

**Chapter 18 - The Passing of the Dream**C18

**I. The Substitute Reality**C18SectionI

**II. The Basis of the Dream**C18SectionII

**III. Light in the Dream**C18SectionIII

**IV. The Little Willingness**C18SectionIV

**V. The Happy Dream**C18SectionV

**VI. Beyond the Body**C18SectionVI

**VII. I Need Do Nothing**C18SectionVII

**VIII. The Little Garden**C18SectionVIII

**IX The Two Worlds**C18SectionIX

**Chapter 19 - The Attainment of Peace**C19

**I. Healing and Faith**C19SectionI

**.II. Sin versus Error**C19SectionII

**III. The Unreality of Sin**C19SectionIII

**IV. The Obstacles to Peace**C19SectionIV

**A, The Fist Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It**C19SectionIVA

**i. The Attraction of Guilt**C19SectionIVi

**B. The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable for What It Offer**C19SectionIVB

**i. The Attraction of Pain**C19SectionIVBi

**C. The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death**C19SectionIVC

i. The Incorruptible Body

**D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God**C19SectionIVD

**i. The Lifting of the Veil**C19SectionIVDi

**Chapter 20 - The Vision of Holiness**C20

**I. Holy Week**C20SectionI

**II. The Gift of Lilies**C20SectionII

**III. Sin as an Adjustment**C20SectionIII

**IV. Entering the Ark**C20SectionIV

**V. Heralds of Eternity**C20SectionV

**VI. The Temple of the Holy Spirit**C20SectionVI

**VII. The Consistency of Means and End**C20SectionVII

**VIII. The Vision of Sinlessness**C20SectionVIII

**Chapter 21 - Reason and Perception**C21

**Introduction**C21Intro

**I. The Forgotten Song**C21SectionI

**.II. The Responsibility for Sight**C21SectionII

**III. Faith, Belief and Vision**C21SectionIII

**.IV. The Fear to Look Within**C21SectionIV

**V. The Function of Reasons**C21SectionV

**VI. Reason versus Madness**C21SectionVI

**VII. The Last Unanswered Question**C21SectionVII

**VIII. The Inner Shift**C21SectionVIII

**Chapter 22 - Salvation and the Holy Relationship**C22

**Introduction**C22Intro

**I. The Message of the Holy Relationship**C22SectionI

**II. Your Brother's Sinlessness**C22SectionII

**III. Reason and the Forms of Error**C22SectionIII

**IV. The Branching of the Road**C22SectionIV

**V. Weakness and Defensiveness**C22SectionV

**VI - The Light of the Holy Relationship**C22SectionVI

**Chapter 23 - The War Against Yourself**C23

**Introduction**C23Intro

**I. The Irreconcilable Beliefs**C23SectionI

**II. The Laws of Chaos**C23SectionII

**III. Salvation without Compromise**C23SectionIII

**IV. Above the Battleground**C23SectionIV

**Chapter 24 - The Goal of Specialness**C24

**Introduction**C24Intro

**I. Specialness as a Substitute for Love**C24SectionI

**II. The Treachery of Specialness**C24SectionII

**III. The Forgiveness of Specialness**C24SectionIII

**IV Specialness versus Sinlessness**C24SectionIV

**V. The Christ in You**C24SectionV

**VI Salvation from Fear**C24SectionVI

**VII. The Meeting Place**C24SectionVII

**Chapter 25 - The Justice of God**C25

**Introduction**C25Intro

**I. The Link to Truth**C25SectionI

**II. The Savior from the Dark**C25SectionII

**III. Perception and Choice**C25SectionIII

**.IV. The Light You Bring**C25SectionIV

**V. The State of Sinlessness**C25SectionV

**.VI. The Special Function**C25SectionVI

**VII. The Rock of Salvation**C25SectionVII

**VIII. Justice Returned to Love**C25SectionVIII

**.IX. The Justice of Heaven**C25SectionIX

**Chapter 26 - The Transition**C26

**I. The 'Sacrifice' of Oneness**C26SectionI

**II. Many Form; One Correction** C26SectionII

**III. The Borderland**C26SectionIII

**IV. Where Sin Has Left**C26SectionIV

**V The Little Hindrance**C26SectionV

**VI. The Appointed Friend**C26SectionVI

**VII. The Laws of Hindrance**C26SectionVII

**VIII. The Immediacy of Salvation**C26SectionVIII

**IX. For They Have Come**C26SectionIX

**..X. The End of Injustice**C26SectionX

**Chapter 27 - The Healing of the Dream**C27

**I. The Picture of Crucifixion**C27SectionI

**II. The Fear of Healing**C27SectionII

**III. Beyond All Symbols**C27SectionIII

**IV. The Quiet Answer**C27SectionIV

**V. The Healing Example**C27SectionV

**VI. The Witness to Sin**C27SectionVI

**VII. The Dreamer of the Dream**C27SectionVII

**VIII. The 'Hero' of the Dream**C27SectionVIII

**Chapter 28 - The Undoing of Fear**C28

**I. The Present Memory**C28SectionI

**II. Reversing Effect and Cause**C28SectionII

**III. The Agreement to Join**C28SectionIII

**IV. The Greater Joining**C28SectionIV

**V. The Alternate to Dreams of Fear**C28SectionV

**VI. The Secret Vows**C28SectionVI

**VII. The Ark of Safety**C28SectionVII

**Chapter 29 - The Awakening**C29

**I. The Closing of the Gap**C29SectionI

**II. The Coming of the Guest**C29SectionII

**III. God's Witnesses**C2SectionIII

**IV. Dream Roles**C29SectionIV

**V. The Changeless Dwelling Place**C29SectionV

**VI. Forgiveness and the End of Time**C29SectionVI

**VII. Seek Not Outside Yourself**C29SectionVII

**VIII. The Anti-Christ**C29SectionVIII

**IX. The Forgiving Dream**C29SectionIX

**Chapter 30 - The New Beginning**C30

**Introduction**C30Intro

**I. Rules for Decision**C30SectionI

**II. Freedom of Will**C30SectionII

**III. Beyond All Idols**C30SectionIII

**.IV. The Truth Behind Illusions**C30SectionIV

**V. The Only Purpose**C30SectionV

**VI. The Justification for Forgiveness**C30SectionVI

**VII. The New Interpretation**C30SectionVII

**VIII. Changeless Reality**C30SectionVIII

**Chapter 31 - The Final Vision**C31

**I. The Simplicity of Salvation**C31SectionI

**II. Walking With Christ**C31SectionII

**III. The Self-Accused**C31SectionIII

**IV. The Real Alternative**C31SectionIV

**V. Self-Concept versus Self**C31SectionV

**VI. Recognizing the Spirit**C31SectionVI

**VII. The Savior's Vision**C31SectionVII

**VIII. Choose Once Again**C31SectionVIII

Other Books written by Ron RasmussenAnotherbook

Introduction

1. This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

2. The course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

**Chapter 1.**

THE MEANING OF MIRACLES

**I. Principles of Miracles**

1. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.

One of the most important statements made in the Course. It is a principle that is repeated many times in many ways. If we could but understand its meaning, we would understand the Course completely. This principle contains the very beginning of our thought system. It is the same as saying all problems are the same, and they are; there is no difference in any problem from another.

2. Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.

Notice that "Source" is capitalized telling us that this "Source" is God. God is present in our split mind through the Holy Spirit. That is our link to God. Miracles really don't matter because they are part of the world of the ego. If the miracle is a correction, it is a correction for an illusory thought, which also makes the miracle an illusion. As such, it is only needed in a world of illusion. We do not need nor have them in heaven. We do not need nor have forgiveness in heaven. We only need miracles and forgiveness in a place where we still believe in sin, suffering and separation.

3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

Later on these principles, Jesus tells us that he is the one who inspires miracles. From the point of view of function, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are synonymous. They both serve the function of being the internal Teacher or the inner Voice that will lead us home. This makes sense when you consider Jesus is the one who had totally transcended the ego, which means that the only Voice the he has within him is that of the Holy Spirit. A Course in Miracles tells us that we have two voices that are constantly speaking inside of us: ego and Holy Spirit. Since Jesus no longer has an ego, the only voice that is within him is the Holy Spirit's Voice. They both serve as the inner Voice, the internal Teacher who corrects the errors of the ego.

The real miracle is the love that inspires the miracle, which means that the real miracle is God or the Holy Spirit and Jesus who speak for God inside our minds. This also makes it obvious that the miracle does not come from us. We are not the ones who can shift our perception from ego to the miracle; that is exactly what Holy Spirit does. All that we can do is choose the miracle instead of the ego.

4. 'All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.

This is another way of saying that miracles come from love. They reflect the love of Heaven and they also reflect the life of Heaven, which has nothing at all to do with what we call life of the body and the personality, both of which are of the body. True life comes from God and it is that life that is immortal and eternal. It is the miracle which leads us back to God.

5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

This means that the purpose of the Course is to have us constantly move from our own way of problem solving. We attack a problem; we sift through it and define it, label it, etc, and then we have answers for the problem. We are always doing that. The whole purpose of the Course is to train us look at problems in a different light. When it talks about being "involuntary" we mean that we don't do the miracle. We do choose the miracles but we do not perform them. They simply can't be done without the help of Spirit.

6. Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

The Course tells us that the most natural thing in this world is to be at peace and feel One with God. Peace comes from the Holy Spirit within us. So what are the "unnatural" things in this world? How about anger, depression, conflicts, guilt, anxiety, loss, etc. We say these are not natural because they do not begin with who we really are. These are all products of the ego. What we are saying when we say "when they do occur something has gone wrong," is simply stating that we (ego) has put something in the way of our experiencing that miracle. Miracles are extensions of the love of God. That is precisely what the ego is: an obstruction to God. And from the Course we will learn how to rid ourselves of these blocks to the love of God.

7. Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.

What is meant by purification here is nothing to do with the body. You do not purify a body or deprive a body, because the body is not impure. When we say the body is an illusion, we are also saying that there is nothing you have to do the body. What makes the body impure, sinful or unholy are our thoughts. Notice I said "makes" the body; "makes" is work of the ego. The idea expressed by the Course is that we purify the mind. If love is present in you, in your heart and in your mind, then everything you do or say will be an extension of that love. Therefore, you do need to worry about the body because that is the wrong thing to worry about. That is not where the problem lies. What you can worry about are the thoughts in your mind. The one thought that has to be healed is the thought of guilt. The Course says that miracles are everyone's right, that they are for all us, not a few chosen people. Miracles are not things that certain people do. Miracles are something that we can do and should do. The miracle is simply changing from the ego's view to the perception by the Holy Spirit. That is what a miracle is and that is everyone's right.

8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.

" **Lack" is a word that Course uses from time to time and is part of the scarcity principle. That principle says that we are taught that there is something missing in us or there is something scarce. Now this principle comes from the ego and is part of the guilt we have. The ego never tells us that what we are missing, what we are experiencing as a lack, is God. God is not part of the ego system. The phrase "They are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less" means that the miracle is done when one is in their right mind, as opposed to one being in their wrong mind. "Temporarily" is an important word here. A part in the Course tells us how healing occurs when the healer is without fear. This does not state that the healer is always without fear, only in the instant he choose to heal instead of attack.**

9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver.

Giving to the ego means that you no longer have something if you gave it away. If it given to you, then you have more of it than you had and the giver has less than he had. The miracle corrects that and teaches that what we give we also receive, since we are all one. Actually, I cannot give you anything that is out there, because there is nothing out there. What I give to you, comes from my mind. It can be love if that is what I am thinking; it can be guilt if that is where I am at and I desire to project it on you and attack you with it. And in this exercise of the ego, all I am doing is reinforcing my own guilt. If I give you love, I am reinforcing my own love. There is within us, the presence of the Holy Spirit and it is really Spirit who is giving the love. That is why when we give, we receive. This is one of the key principles of the Course and you will see it mentioned often. Miracles, then, become an exchange. You allow Spirit to extend His love from you, which actually reinforces who you are, a child of God, a child of Love; and it also reinforces who you are and thus heals you and the person you are extending love to. This is opposite to how the world thinks and how the ego thinks. The Prayer of St. Francis is just such a statement of this principle.

10. The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose.

The miracle is the joining in your mind. You might say it is an effect of the miracle, but the miracle only happens in the mind. Why? Because the only place that has a problem is the mind."

11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.

The only prayer of any meaning is for forgiveness because you have everything. And what the Course is saying here is that the only prayer we should ever pray for is the healing of our minds. The Holy Spirit really doesn't have to be told where to extend His love or His miracle. All that is really required is that get out of the way, which is really what forgiveness does for us. Then Holy Spirit can do His things through us. The Course goes in to a lot more detail about prayer later on in the text.

12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.

A miracle is a thought of the Holy Spirit in exchange for a thought of the ego. Miracles are thoughts because everything is a thought. Nothing exists outside of our minds. The miracle is the thought that corrects the thought of separation, the main thought of the ego.

13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.

Think of your path as a carpet that represents the entire span of your experience in this world. What the miracle does is to take certain aspects of this experience, all of which are predicated on the belief in the separation or our guilt, and here is where the beginning and the end will come from. The Course teaches us that when the separation began, in that one instant, the whole world of evolution occurred at the same time. In that one mad moment we believed that we had separated from God. This is the carpet that would constitute the whole world of evolution – the past, present and the future.

Let's say that we are having a particular problem in one of our relationships. The miracle would cause us to focus on that relationship and forgive it. In that way, it would be a beginning and an end because it circumscribes what the problem was.

The Course also teaches us that in that same instant, God created the Holy Spirit, who undid the very thought that made the carpet. It is as if the separation occurred and in that same instant, it was corrected. The problem is that we still believe this world of time and space, which is nothing but a dream, is reality. That is exactly why the Course speaks of the Holy Spirit as a Voice. He is God's Voice that extends into our dream so that we can awaken from the dream.

14. Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.

Many times the Course will comment on the truth with statements such as "bear witness to the truth" or "reflecting the truth" and what is really saying is that truth is not present in this world. Why? Because there is no world. They are convincing because they arise from the conviction that comes from within us all, which is really faith. It is the faith and trust that we will better off, which is easier said than done because we are all convinced that we know best – that anger works, separate interests work, and that our ways of solving problems are the better ones. "Without conviction, etc." This means that when we do not rely on the Holy Spirit, then we rely on the ego to solve the problems, and that is magic. We can define magic as anything that we do to solve a problem that is not there, which means anything we do to solve a problem on the physical level. This is how the ego would always have us solve a problem.

15. Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.

This principle is talking about the fundamental goal of the Course, which is to help us spend every hour of our day, all the days of our lives, continually seeing things as the Holy Spirit has us see them. This means to continue to see everything that occurs in our lives as a lesson that He would have us learn – that every single thing that occurs is a learning opportunity if we avail ourselves of that learning. Thus, everything that confronts us should be seen as an opportunity of choosing either the ego's grievance or the Holy Spirit's miracle.

16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.

This is the same idea as Principle 9. The miracle teaches us that "to give and to receive are one in truth." We are all the same: teacher and pupil; therapist and patient; the who heals and the one who is healed. Remember that the error that the miracle has to correct is the error of believing we are separate. The miracle, then, becomes an expression of our joining, and that is what this principle is talking about.

17. Miracles transcend the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from the bodily level. 3 That is why they heal.

Miracles transcend the body because they teach us the body is not where "it's at." The body is not what the problem is and therefore, by changing our minds we can transcend the laws of the body. It is so important if you are going to work with A Course in Miracles, that it teaches that God did not create this world. The laws of this world – gravity, death, sickness, AND NUTRITION are "man-made"; they are a part of the ego mind. The ego made them, and we give those laws power by virtue of our allegiance to the ego. By shifting that allegiance, we could then transcend all those laws.

18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously.

That is another way of saying what we have already talked about, that the miracle helps us recognize and remember that we are one and the same, and that our worth is established by God. Your worth is the same as mine. If I see you as being worthier that I, or less worthy that I am – victim and victimizer – then that is an attack. An attack on the Sonship and therefore an attack on the Creator of the Sonship.

19. Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation because the Sonship is the sum of all that God created. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time.

This means that what miracles do is restore to our mind the awareness of our oneness in God. Miracles do not make us one in God; miracles remind us that we are one in God...the key idea in the ego system and the ego's way of perceiving is that we are separate. If I believe that my body is sick, then I am making my body real, which means I am making the body's purpose real. This is separation. If I become upset because you are sick, I am doing the very same thing.

20. Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.

Again the same idea that truth and holiness are not found in the body but in our minds. When our minds are healed completely, we will know the truth of identity as spirit. Think about this: the Holy Spirit cannot be in our bodies because the body is not real. God would not place Spirit in someplace that is but an illusion. Bodies neither get sick or get well. It is only the mind that can be sick and therefore, only the mind that can be healed.

21. Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

This is the first statement in the Course on forgiveness. Remember that God does not forgive. When the Course mentions forgiveness of God, it is referring to the love of God. Forgiveness is referred to in other words within the Course. The words: "miracle," "healing," "Atonement," all describe the same process. Later on the Course will describe "forgiveness" as the act of forgiving your brother for what he has not done.

22. Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness can hide. You believe that what your physical eyes cannot see does not exist. This leads to a denial of spiritual sight.

This one gets a little involved for some. The ego teaches that within us is the dark secret spot which is our guilt, and it is this which we really are. This makes us feel like we terrible, sinful people. Then we believe that in some way we can be protected from this "truth" by defending the ego is all of its pursuits.

" **Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness can hide." Once you believe that darkness cannot hide, that the defense we used don't do what we thought they did, then you are ready to understand that nothing has really been hidden anywhere the guilt is not bad; it is but a belief, and illusion that will soon vanish.**

We believe that what our physical eyes cannot see does not exist. If we do see a problem, then the problem doesn't exist. If I cover up my guilt, then it is not there. This, of course, is the idea that darkness can hide. When the Course talks about vision or spiritual sight, it is not referring to seeing with our eyes. It means seeing with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, which is really an attitude. It has nothing to do with physical seeing.

23. Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.

The levels that are being talked of as confusing are the levels of the mind and the body. The ego runs with the problem of guilt which is in our minds and our true sickness and tries to tell us that the body is sick. This miracle puts it right back where it came from and says that the body cannot be sick, only the mind. This is all this miracle does. It puts the problem right back at the source.

24. Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.

The Holy Spirit does not heal the body because first of all, the body cannot be sick and secondly, He cannot heal the body because He did not make it sick. What Spirit does heal is the guilt in our minds that thinks the body can be sick. It does this by helping us change our minds about the guilt which we choose. This is a very important distinction to keep in your mind, so that you do not ask the Holy Spirit to help with something in the material world.

25. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.

This is the first statement about Atonement in the Course. The word is a synonym for the word "correction," and it is the term used in the Course for the plan that came into existence with the Holy Spirit to undo the error that we believe we are separate from God. The creation of the Holy Spirit was of course by God and placed within our mind, and is our link with God while we are in this dream. It undoes the separation belief, thus correcting our error. The Holy Spirit is the expression of the Atonement, which again really states that the separation from God never really happened. Atonement is the Course word for the overall plan of awakening the Son of God (us) from this dream that we are separate.

The Course tells that our only responsibility is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. That further means that we accept the denial of the separation and that guilt is unreal in the specific relationships and situations we come into. Atonement then could be said to be, our own individual spiritual path back to God.

26. Miracles represent freedom from fear. "Atoning" means "undoing." The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.

To look through the eyes of the ego is to look through eyes of fear. We would never attack another or harm another if we were not afraid of them. By asking Holy Spirit for help, we are choosing the eyes of love through which to see, instead of the eyes of fear. "Atoning" means "undoing," which is another word for "correction". When we atone for our supposedly sins, we really undo our belief in sin. We do make it real. we do not give it any power. You can deny the reality of sin by changing it to a mistake. The Course teaches us that sins are punished, and mistakes are corrected.

27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

This is the first time the person Jesus is mentioned in the Course. The miracle has its source of course in God, but is expressed through Jesus. Jesus, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, brings the love of God through us to other people, closing the gap we believe is between us and God. That is what a miracle does. As we forgive, we are forgiven, which means we accept the love of God for ourselves. Naturally, the more we accept forgiveness, the more we extend the same to others. It is an important item to remember: Jesus does the miracles, not us. Our task is only to clear our minds of anything unlike love, which would interfere with the flow of love.

28. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear. Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means and revelation is an end.

" **Earning" does not mean what it means in this world. "Earning means achieving a release from fear. When we experience a revelation, in that sweet instant, there is total lack of fear in us. Something has happened within us making us completely open to God. Unfortunately, revelations do not last, they are temporary in nature. We then revert back to the issues the ego is confronting us with.**

29. Miracles praise God through you. 2 They praise Him by honoring His creations, affirming their perfection. 3 They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm spirit-identification.

One of the Christian ideas is that we should praise God. Simply put, God does not want nor need us to praise Him. God does not have an ego which requires praising. The way a miracle praises God is by reflecting His being and His love, not by words or actions. One way that special love differs from real love is that special love is always an exclusive experience. It will always exclude certain people. The love of God includes everyone. God makes no exceptions, no exclusions. Miracles praise God by uniting all of us in our mind.

30. By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment. This places spirit at the center, where it can communicate directly.

This principle is the same of Number 23. The miracle shows us again that the problem is not in the body, but in the mind. It is a problem of guilt which is our defense against love, who we really are. The true center of our being is not the ego, not guilt; but it is spirit. The Course tells us that perception is not a fact, but merely an interpretation. Therefore we can change our interpretation again and again, if necessary. We see what it we want to see or need to see. We cannot change the world, but we can change how we view it.

31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. You should thank God for what you really are. The children of God are holy and the miracle honors their holiness, which can be hidden but never lost.

Here Jesus is telling us again that we stand in awe of him. Instead, we should be grateful for the miracle because of the healing and peace that it brings. We should be in awe of the Source of the miracle, God, but not of the miracle itself.

32. I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy. By placing you beyond the physical laws they raise you into the sphere of celestial order. In this order you are perfect.

Here Jesus states very clearly that he is the source of miracles. The Course tells us that we do not know our own best interests, let alone someone else's. Naturally we should ask the one that does know. If we try to act on our own, we are trying to be inspirers of miracles, usurping the role of Jesus. This is just how separation came about.

The word intercession is not used as we know it normally. Here it is being used somewhat differently. Jesus intercedes between the holiness of Christ that we truly are and the self we believe we are. This of course tells us that we are holy and perfect and that everything else is but an illusion of the ego system.

33. Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.

Miracles do away with all the illusions about us being separate, of being bodies, about others being bodies also it does away with our role of victimizer, either by ourselves or others. They really help us understand that we are all the same, we are really only One. We all came into this dream together and we will all leave this dream together.

34. Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions.

Miracles restore to the mind its awareness of the abundance of God, which never really left. All the miracle does is to take a veil that the ego placed in the mind to hide the fact of who we really are. By correcting our lack, miracles establish a protection. The ego teaches non-stop that we are always lacking something, needing something which really means we are vulnerable. And this of course means we need protection (another lack). The miracle shows us that we lack nothing and thereby need no protection. Protection of spirit is merely the invulnerability of spirit. We have already heard that a child of God cannot be hurt. That is one of the clearest understandings of the crucifixion. This is what Jesus taught us: despite what the world perceived, nothing was done to him. His body may have been attacked, but he could not have been attacked. He identified with the protection of spirit because he knew who he was, therefore it did not matter what was done to his body. That is the protection of sprit.

35. Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

A short statement but very important. One of the traps we fall into constantly is that we want results. We want the cold to go away, the wounds to heal, AND THE tumor to disappear and if they don't does that mean that we are not good healers? No, of course not. What we have done is fallen into the trap where we believe the body is real. One of the major cautions repeated many times in the Course is: do not make the error real.

36. Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.

Later the Course used the term "right-mindedness" which is thinking along with the Holy Spirit instead of going out with the ego. The miracle does not directly express the truth of God, but it is aligned with it or reflects it. The truth of God is that we are all one. In this dream, we experience that oneness by transcending the barriers of separation made by the ego, i.e. thoughts of anger, hurt, victimization, etc.

37. A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred, knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible.

" **Erroneous perception" is perceiving a problem in the external world. The miracle merely reorganizes perception because it shifts perception back to where the problem really is, and that is in our minds. Jesus introduces the miracle. We have only to ask him for it, to seek his help in seeing a situation that same way he does. This is true perception. Jesus takes all false perceptions that we have made real – sickness, war, anger – and simply shows them to us for what they are: a call for healing and help. The Atonement principle is then chosen, which can be restated as the denial of the reality of separation and guilt.**

Another term the Course uses over and over again is knowledge. As the Course uses it, it is synonymous with "Heaven." The opposite to knowledge is perception. Knowledge is of spirit, of God, and cannot be attained in this world. The Course very clearly states that knowledge is not the goal of this Course. Peace is.

38. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God's creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively.

What this is saying, is that the Holy Spirit is like a revolving door, sometime He is in world of God's creations and sometimes He is our world of illusions. Later in the Course, we will be told He is part of the Trinity that has a symbolic function. What this means is that He can function in a world of symbols, which is this world. There are no symbols in Heaven.

39. The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.

This is the same as saying that the Holy Sprit dissolves error, corrects errors, undoes errors or atones for errors. He realizes that all errors are unreal and as such do not exist. There is no grading in ERRORS; one is not greater than another.

40. The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God.

The error the miracles corrects is the error that we believe we are separated from God. It makes no difference if we believe we are separate bodies, or that we are separated from others because of the horrible things they do. The miracle only reflects on the fact that we are one, and that is what Jesus is constantly reminding us. We are all one with him. The universal mark of God is our sharing in the light of Christ.

41. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

The basic concept of the ego is the scarcity principle. We feel something is lacking in us because we have separated ourselves from God. This is exactly where guilt comes from. This makes the ego appear real to us and does the body. We not only see ourselves but others as lacking. This miracle reflects upon our wholeness that is our true identity. Wholeness can be equated with abundance which is the denial of the principle of the ego. Abundance as used by the Course does refer to anything material, anything on the outside of us. Abundance is, according to the Course, that the Son of God can never lack anything or ever be in need, since the gifts of God are always with him.

42. A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.

We feel we are separated from GOD; therefore we are separated from each other. Because we believe this, we project the blame for the separation onto others and truly believe they are the cause. This is where deprivation comes into being. We believe we are being deprived of something and someone else is responsible for that feeling. It is saying that something I want, or need or even am, I cannot have because you won't let me. This is a major denial on our part that we are responsible for our feelings. And of course, guilt comes in here because it also means lacking. We cannot believe or want to, that we did whatever we are experiencing to ourselves. It must be someone else's fault. The Course clearly states "The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself."

43. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness.

This is later referred to as "right-mindedness." We shift our mind from the ego's thinking (wrong-mindedness) to Spirit's way of thinking (right-mindedness). We release the ego's way of viewing and choose instead the view with Spirit. We see everything as an opportunity to learn and forgive.

44. The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement.

This miracle joins you with someone that you believe you are separated from. Again, this is a reflection that we are all one in Christ, thus correcting the error of separation. Accepting Christ's Atonement is accepting this principle of being one.

45. A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.

This is close to Number 35. The Course states: "When I am healed I am not healed alone." This can have effects on people who have died, as well as the people physically present. Time is not linear and we are joined in one mind, regardless of the time and space we may think we are in at present. Again, the Course only asks us to accept the Atonement for ourselves. The extension of the Atonement is not our concern because we have no idea what it means to be truly helpful.

46. The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication, because they are temporary communication devices. When you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for miracles is over.

This is telling us how the Holy Spirit communicates from God to us. He is the link between Heaven and hell, or reality and this dream. This is again, the distinction between the miracle and revelation. The Course tells us: "When you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for miracles is over." When we have forgiven everyone, completed our journey, then we will no longer need the Holy Spirit as a link to God because there will no longer be an ego. Thus are we restored to our original awareness of perfect oneness with Him. The goal of the miracle is not God but the shift in our perception that clears the way to God. That is the function of the Holy Spirit. The miracle only has meaning within this dream, within the separated feeling, this world.

47. The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

There is no time! Helen Shucman complained to Jesus about her life being so difficult. She was not complaining about her external existence but her internal conflict. In his response to her, he gave her an image of a mountain. He said: "You are walking through the mountain. It would be much easier, in terms of requiring less effort, if you walked up the mountain and then down the other side, but it would take you much, much longer. By walking through the mountain, which is more difficult, you will save a lot of time. Walking through the mountain is walking through very difficult and very painful situations, which in the usual course of events would have taken you many, many lifetimes, which is walking up the mountain and down the other side." The Course aims at saving time more quickly by having more people having their minds healed quickly so the Atonement can be speeded up. This is why for some people, that once they begin working the Course, things in their life appear to become worse. It is not because God is punishing them, but because the Holy Spirit has taken their request seriously. They are in effect saying to Spirit that they want to learn more quickly. The miracle undoes time. It still occurs within the dimension of time, but it abolishes also. The most important point in this miracle is that the miracle is the means by which the Holy Spirit uses to teach us that we are not victims of the world. Our problems are not what others have done to us, but rather what we believe we have done to ourselves.

48. The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.

Revelation is not the correction but it aids us in remembering that this is not a real world. The miracle which undoes the belief of separation in our MIND joins us with each other. This all reinforces what is true and acts as a reminder to us when we are tempted to believe in a reality which is false, which is but an illusion.

49. The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its true indiscriminateness.

This really states the first principle again – "there is no order of difficulty in miracles." It talks more of the same idea, that the miracle corrects the error, no matter what it looks like – love or fear – or anything else. It just doesn't make any difference, errors are all the same.

50. The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false.

Here is the distinction between "making" and "creating." This is almost the same as is found in Principle 38. God "creates" and ego "makes." Everything we do that unites us with each other as seen with Spirit is truth. It is not truth as known in Heaven, but it is truth because it REFLECTS the thoughts of Heaven. If it does fall into that description, then it is false.

And so we have the 50 principles of A Course in Miracles. These principles are brought out many times within the Course. These brief explanations are just that, brief. They are meant to give you a little understanding of the Course.

Chapter 1

II. Revelation, Time and Miracles

1. Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. It reflects the original form of communication between God and His creations, involving the extremely personal sense of creation sometimes sought in physical relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve it. Miracles, however, are genuinely interpersonal, and result in true closeness to others. Revelation unites you directly with God. Miracles unite you directly with your brother. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. Consciousness is the state that induces action, though it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.

Revelation is but a personal communication between God and God's creations – us. It links us direct to God. Revelation is truly without description because it is of God. We will not experience with the body, but within ourselves. And revelation which unites us with God, will unite us with our brother. And look at the last statement – we are free to believe what we choose, and what we demonstrate is what we believe.

2. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience. Miracles, on the other hand, induce action. They are more useful now because of their interpersonal nature. In this phase of learning, working miracles is important because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you. Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love.

Some of what is stated in the first paragraph is repeated again here, just a bit differently. Whenever anything is repeated in the Course, and most of the Course is repeated over and over again, but each different WORD are used, it is meant for us to pay close attention to. Remember this is a Course in training our mind – it is subtle at best but thorough to be sure. Revelation – Love – God – all not descriptive with the words we know or even could try to come up with. We cannot describe God – Love – Revelation – ourselves with words of an illusion. What is revealed to us by God is experienced within. Miracles are but a change of thought and the results are often projected before us in this world we make.

3. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful, implying that one of a lesser order stands before his Creator. You are a perfect creation, and should experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection. The miracle is therefore a sign of love among equals. Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you.

For me, awe implies a sense of adoration; a sense of being less than the person or object I am in awe of. Miracles do not demand awe because they are a natural experience, a sign of love. You – me – our brother – are all created by God as equal to each other – no one of us is greater than another. No awe is do one of us, but all of us. We are told here that awe is experience in the presence of God – awe is experience within us and when we see within our brother that which we have within us. And the author – Jesus – is stating that no awe is due him, for he is as we are. The state that Jesus is at is the state we shall also be. That state of being is a potential within us all. We shall realize that potential as we waken more and more to our own Truth; as we remember more and more of who we are in Truth.

4. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it. This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater.

This paragraph very simply states that Jesus is with us; we are with him; and we are with God. He explains in terms of vertical alignment with God because the logic of the ego we believe we are can grasp this meaning somewhat easier. Later in the Course we will be told this again but in a much different way. For now, for the beginner in all of us, this is can be grasped by us. He is telling us here that we are like him (Jesus) and he like us, and we are all as God is.

5. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus bring down to them more than they can draw down to themselves. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower communication, keeping the direct channel from God to you open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God.

Remember as you read this, which is early on in the dictation. The voice with the mind of Helen – Jesus – is gently telling her what he can do for her and others. He states that he is close to the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. This does not mean that we are NOT; he is simply telling her that he is. The Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – is our link to God in this dream we believe we are having. It is our channel to the Truth we are. Remember that revelation is communication with God – that God reveals to us what we can grasp in any given time. All of this flows through us via the Holy Spirit.

6. The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence.

Again he talks to us in terms of "planes" that is acceptable to the logic of ego. Remember it is the ego part of us that is also being affected by our reading the Course. We are in the process of changing our belief system – the system of ego – to the system of Truth hidden within us. A shift in our perception – a change of thought – takes no "time" as we know it. And the reason given to us behind this is that the giver and receiver are the same. No time exists in a miracle. When we more fully understand that time as we know does not exist, then we will be much more ready to comprehend what is being told us here. A miracle happens now, and as we already know, now has no past nor future, therefore now has no time associated with it. The miracle takes place with a holy instant – a term which will be discussed more in the Course as we move one.

Chapter 1

Section III - Atonement and Miracles

1. I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle to any of my brothers, you do it to yourself and me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. My part in the Atonement is the canceling out of all errors that you could not otherwise correct. When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability, because conviction comes through accomplishment. The ability is the potential, the achievement is its expression, and the Atonement, which is the natural profession of the children of God, is the purpose.

Early in the Course, Jesus is saying that he is charge of the Atonement – the correction of error. Had he told us we were, we would not be able to comprehend the meaning. He tells us very simply that when we can see our brother is the Light of Love he is, we also see Jesus and ourselves as well. The correction of error, the changing of a thought, can appear to be extremely difficult for us and so we have the assurance that he is close by for us just in case we waiver in our belief. And he also tells us that he is canceling out errors we cannot do right now. What a great thought this is. And now we become more aware that error can easily be corrected; that error is not sin and will forever be with us until we believe someone else can take it from us. The power to change our mind is already within us. All we need to have we are told is a little willingness to want to use that power – to want to change our thoughts of fear to thoughts of love. The Course will tell us many times that we need only show a little willingness and the rest is done for us. But we all know how difficult it is at times to show that little willingness. Doing miracles – changing our thoughts – is our potential, and through them we express our Truth, and the correction of error is complete.

2. "Heaven and earth shall pass away" means that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away because life is eternal. You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is.

This is how we must think of ourselves – we are eternal as is God. We are the 'work' of God, and what God creates is perfect. This is what we are – perfect as God created us.

3. The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations.

And who are the 'forgiven'? We are as we change our thoughts of fear to thoughts of love. We literally forgive ourselves for holding those thoughts, and in our forgiveness, we join with others in uniting of all. A change of thought – a miracle – is the way the Voice of God works through us.

4 I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am the Atonement. You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you needless effort, because you will be acting under direct communication. The impersonal nature of the miracle is an essential ingredient, because it enables me to direct its application, and under my guidance miracles lead to the highly personal experience of revelation. A guide does not control but he does direct, leaving it up to you to follow. "Lead us not into temptation" means "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance."

Here we are told to just follow Jesus in his guidance to us – and the guidance of the Holy Spirit as well. We do not yet know what needs correction, so we present our thoughts and are guided in changing them. After some time of training we will discover that we will recognize which thoughts require our attention. We will be always directed, but it will become much more subtle. We shall 'recognize our errors and choose to change them'.

5. Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember this:

Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

Your reality is only spirit.

Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.

Remember the Introduction to the Course – "Nothing real can be threatened."? Here is that statement once again, but in a different manner. Nothing can threaten Truth – we are Truth, so nothing can threaten us. We are free to choose as we believe we must, but we must remember to follow this concept: If Spirit is a state of forever grace, and our reality is Spirit, then we must forever be in the state of grace. In a state of grace, nothing can threaten us.

Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the source of fear. Whenever you experience God's reassurances as threat, it is always because you are defending misplaced or misdirected loyalty. When you project this to others you imprison them, but only to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others, since their own perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle worker can only bless them, and this undoes their distortions and frees them from prison.

The correction of error undoes all threats – all illusions. If I find myself defending anything, I know that I am not thinking thoughts of love. And I may even try to project my fear – my guilt – onto others in an attempt to imprison them, while I am only building my own prison for me. I become visibly vulnerable and am easily threatened by fear. As I ask for help from the Holy Spirit – as I show a little willingness to change my thoughts, my thoughts fade to nothing – my fears vanish.

6. You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate. The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both. You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.

I respond to what I believe I see, and what I believe I see, is real to me. What do I want others to do to me, that I also can do to them? What is it that I secretly yearn for, am constantly seeking out there? Could it be the Love I am – the Love you are? I want from you what you want from me – Love. As I give Love to you, I receive Love from you. And this shows that we are but One with each other. The Love in me sees the Love in you, and we are seen as that Love as One.

7. Miracles arise from a mind that is ready for them. By being united this mind goes out to everyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. The impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all creations with their Creator. As an expression of what you truly are, the miracle places the mind in a state of grace. The mind then naturally welcomes the Host within and the stranger without. When you bring in the stranger, he becomes your brother.

In reading this carefully and a couple of times, I see that my mind and your mind are but One Mind. How do I recognize that I want to change my thoughts? I do so because I am aware that I am in a state of fear – in a state of being unreal. By my changing my thoughts, I see you differently, and so you see me differently and we recognize our Oneness. As an expression of the Love we are, a change of thought from fear to love places our mind in the natural state of grace. And our mind 'welcomes' the Holy Spirit and the body we see before us. As I change my thoughts about the body, and see within it the Presence of Love, I literally become one with my brother.

8. That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. Miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by me because of my complete awareness of the whole plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only I am in a position to know where they can be bestowed.

So if my brother does not recognize me as I recognize him, that is not my concern. My concern is that I see my brother in the Truth he is, and as I see him, I see me. It is not so important that my brother know how I think of him, but what is important is how I feel thinking of him as Love.

9. Miracles are selective only in the sense that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded. However, this selectivity takes no account of the magnitude of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists on a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would not be useful if it were bound by laws that govern the error it aims to correct.

A change of my thought towards another is an extension of my Truth to them. And from them, that Truth – Love – shall be further extended to others they see as well. No miracle is less than or greater than another. The miracle – the change of thought – simply is aimed at restoring our awareness of Love. The miracle would be useless if it were bound by any laws trying to say what it can or cannot correct.

IV. The Escape from Darkness

1. The escape from darkness involves two stages: First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually entails fear. Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could. This step brings escape from fear. When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy.

Darkness has always been associated with the unknown, because we believe we cannot see in the darkness. But does darkness truly hide anything? Everything we believe is there, is still there in the darkness. Darkness is nothing but our fear attempting to hide what it is we do not wish to see. Once we let go of that thought, we can see beyond the darkness to the light within.

2. Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. This deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it is a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality. The miracle sets reality where it belongs. Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only truth. It thus dispels illusions about yourself, and puts you in communion with yourself and God. The miracle joins in the Atonement by placing the mind in the service of the Holy Spirit. This establishes the proper function of the mind and corrects its errors, which are merely lacks of love. Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within. But the Atonement restores spirit to its proper place. The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.

Each time I see the word "holiness" I instantly think of it as "wholeness". No matter how hard I try, my "wholeness" can never been hidden, denied yes, but never hidden. And reading this, Atonement is but the correction of the thoughts I hold in my mind that are not thoughts of Love. By seeking the Holy Spirit – The Voice of God – I can correct my thinking.

3. Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was.

A lot of emphasis place on the word "darkness". Darkness has normally been used in reference to fear – to being frightened of what you can't see but only imagine is there. The Atonement – the correction of our thinking – has us see light where darkness was and also see what is before us. And within us all is the Truth we seek, the Truth of who we are. And from that Truth within us is All That Is.

4. The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. That is what the Bible means by "There is no death," and why I could demonstrate that death does not exist. I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection. It is those who have not yet changed their minds who brought the "hell-fire" concept into it. I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief, and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them.

**We are here in the Course because we wish to become part of those the author mentions here – those who demonstrate their beliefs, and thus strengthen them, because we have changed our minds – we have changed our thoughts – our beliefs. As we forgive ourselves for the thoughts which were not of love we held, we replace the emptiness of darkness with the Light of Love. Death, we will remember, is but an experience of this dream.**

V. Wholeness and Spirit

1. The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids for facilitating a state in which they become unnecessary. When spirit's original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. While you believe you are in a body, however, you can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. You can make an empty shell, but you cannot express nothing at all. You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing. But you cannot abolish it. You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential. You did not create yourself.

In the previous section I said that I change the word "holiness" to "wholeness" – and here it is used as "wholeness". What does wholeness mean to you? Does it perhaps mean complete – nothing lacking – having All That Is? And did you ever think that a time would come when a "miracle" – a change of thought – would no longer be required? In the above paragraph, "spirit" is used with a small "s" indicating that which you are – opposite of body. When you are spirit, the body nor thoughts mean anything. When you believe you are this body, you can change your thoughts. And we are being told a major thought here – we cannot abolish our creativity – our potential to express that which we are.

2. The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are One. Equality does not imply equality now. When everyone recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary.

Remember that you are the "miracle-minded" referred to so often in the Course. So am I being told here not to wait? What could I possibly wait for? Another illusion? The time is now – and we will hear much more of this concept later in the Course – to change my thoughts.

3. When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His children have His total Love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike. "Except ye become as little children" means that unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father. The specialness of God's Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.

So when we all change our thoughts to thoughts of Love, we will all share in the Oneness we all are. We are the "children of God" and yet we are One with God. It is not so much that we feel we "depend" on God, but more that we know deep within us, that we have never left God. We have never done what cannot be done. And being of God, One with God, we have access to all powers – they are ours to use. That is the purpose they were given us. But we are also told here that even if just one of us does not think as One, none of us experience the Oneness.

4. Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him, even though he may be absent in spirit. "God is not mocked" is not a warning but a reassurance. God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.

Perhaps to some this paragraph could be misleading. As ego, we believe we are separated from God and from each other. Being separated, then there must be someplace to return to. In our Truth – in our reality – we have never left God. And by changing our thinking, we discover that point. And look at how the author again addresses the issue of "holiness" and "wholeness". We are whole, we are complete, we are One and shall forever be as we are.

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

Note the second line here. We can – the mind can – choose who it shall serve. But the mind cannot serve two masters. When we believe we can, we are simply placing ourselves in a self-made prison, locked away by the dictates of ego. We have but to change our mind to unlock all doors.

6. The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ's service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.

**So what does "Christ" as used here mean to you? Is the Spirit within each of us PERHAPS? Is it that eternal spark to forever burns within us? What if you were told that everything in your world is "upside-down"?**

VI. The Illusion of Needs

1. You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it. While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in. Until the "separation," which is the meaning of the "fall," nothing was lacking. There were no needs at all. Needs arise only when you deprive yourself. You act according to the particular order of needs you establish. This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are.

It doesn't get much simpler than this! If you want peace, forgive yourself! Peace cannot be taught, learned or in some other way, obtained. Peace is yours through forgiveness. As the body we believe we are we also believe we lack much at times. In Truth, we have All That Is, and cannot lack anything. So each time we believe we are lacking anything, we are not being our Truth. Can you remember the last time you believe you lacked something, then obtained it, only to realize that you lacked something else? Thus is the thinking of ego. It never satisfies because it never knows what it is looking for.

2. A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.

Here we are being told that the separation that we believe IN is the only lack we need correct. And it too, is like all other lacks – an illusion. And how do we correct our thinking on separation? So much more on this will be revealed as you continue on with your journey through the Course.

3. The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels. However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up. This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as "up" and "down" are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs.

Have we not all been here? Listing our needs in an order of importance? And important to whom? Only to us we think. Is one need greater than another? You may think you need more money so that you may get more things, and thus more things will insure your happiness, but will it? And look at how we believe in an order of importance; how we believe that some things are greater than others. But we learn from the first section of this chapter, that the only meaning things have are the meaning we gave them. Think about that for a bit.

4. The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief. You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them. Belief produces the acceptance of existence. That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true. It is true for you because it was made by you.

And here is a response many of us have asked many times – what is the purpose of this world? It is only to correct my beliefs in it. I make fear and I believe in fear; it appears real. But remember the Introduction: "Nothing unreal exists." What we believe we see, we have made and thus, at times, feel as we are like God. What God creates is eternal. What we make does not last very long.

5. All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

Perfect love casts out fear.

If fear exists,

Then there is not perfect love.

But:

Only perfect love exists.

If there is fear,

It produces a state that does not exist.

Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift.

This is very much like the Introduction. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. And this will not be the last time we read this concept. It is our belief in the unreal that appears to be holding us in this dream.

VII. Distortions of Miracle Impulses

1. Your distorted perceptions produce a dense cover over miracle impulses, making it hard for them to reach your own awareness. The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major perceptual distortion. Physical impulses are misdirected miracle impulses. All real pleasure comes from doing God's Will. This is because not doing it is a denial of Self. Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it. Do not deceive yourself into believing that you can relate in peace to God or to your brothers with anything external.

There is nothing "out there" than will have experience the peace of God, but what you seek is within you, and therein is the peace of God. Whatever is "out there" is a projection of a thought we hold in our mind. It is but an illusion. What we have within is our Truth.

2. Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not forget this. The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim. You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable. Learning to do this is the body's only true usefulness.

I like to be reminded that I am a child of GOD; it is very reassuring to me. So why were we created? So that we would create the good – the beautiful and the holy – as God does, we do. And how is this creation accomplished? By our extending the Love within us to all we believe we see. By asking for assistance to see from within us, and not with the physical eyes, We can see within others that which is within us.

3. Fantasy is a distorted form of vision. Fantasies of any kind are distortions, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality. Actions that stem from distortions are literally the reactions of those who know not what they do. Fantasy is an attempt to control reality according to false needs. Twist reality in any way and you are perceiving destructively. Fantasies are a means of making false associations and attempting to obtain pleasure from them. But although you can perceive false associations, you can never make them real except to yourself. You believe in what you make. If you offer miracles, you will be equally strong in your belief in them. The strength of your conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle receiver. Fantasies become totally unnecessary as the wholly satisfying nature of reality becomes apparent to both giver and receiver. Reality is "lost" through usurpation, which produces tyranny. As long as a single "slave" remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only goal of the miracle-minded.

Have you not, at one time or another, INDULGED yourself in believing in fantasies? Remember as a child how your mind would just take off and your imagination would run at full speed in the fantasy land. Look at the run of recent "fantasy" movies made today, and do you not enjoy being taken in by them for the short time they are shown? But another kind of fantasy is also present – that which we believe we live in; that which we call life. We have twisted reality until we no longer know what it is. But we can change our perception of life – we can change our thoughts of fantasy to thoughts of Truth. We have that power within us. And as we share our Truth with others, their Truth shall be known to them as well. And on it goes, until all find the Truth within themselves. But as long as there appears to be at least even one of us who has not discover his Truth, we must continue on until such time that we all believe we are the One we seek.

4. This is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention and study at some level. Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful study. You will also need them for preparation. Without this, you may become much too fearful of what is to come to make constructive use of it. However, as you study these earlier sections, you will begin to see some of the implications that will be amplified later on.

In the past, I have had students leave the Course at this time – fearful of the phrase "mind-training" – fearful that the Course is a cult. The Course is indeed a course in mind training – from thinking fear to thinking love – from thinking unreal to thinking real – to the correction of a belief system based on nothing. As you move through the Course, all that you read now will be presented to you many more times. It is done because your mind must be presented with these concepts in many different ways. There is absolutely nothing to fear within the Course, but there is everything to open yourself to.

5. A solid foundation is necessary because of the confusion between fear and awe to which I have already referred, and which is often made. I have said that awe is inappropriate in connection with the Sons of God, because you should not experience awe in the presence of your equals. However, it was also emphasized that awe is proper in the Presence of your Creator. I have been careful to clarify my role in the Atonement without either over- or understating it. I am also trying to do the same with yours. I have stressed that awe is not an appropriate reaction to me because of our inherent equality. Some of the later steps in this course, however, involve a more direct approach to God Himself. It would be unwise to start on these steps without careful preparation, or awe will be confused with fear, and the experience will be more traumatic than beatific. Healing is of God in the end. The means are being carefully explained to you. Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but to reach it the means are needed.

Some ground work is being laid here for us, and will again be repeated many times in the Course. When you think about being in "awe" of someone or something, what comes to your mind? That the someone is greater than you or the something is so great? The author here is telling us that we are children of God, and therefore are all equal. No child of God is greater than another, and therefore awe is inappropriate for them. And the author even states that awe of him is totally not necessary. Why would this be, unless he was no different from you and I? We are told that we may have awe for God and that subject will be elaborated on later in the Course as well. And you may just be somewhat surprised at that point. Awe should never be confused with fear, but often we associate the two as just that. Look carefully at the last couple of sentences here: "Healing is of God...the means are being carefully explained to you." Did you catch the word "are"? The means are being explained to you as we proceed through the Course. It is like being told that we best pay attention.

Chapter 2.

THE SEPARATION AND THE ATONEMENT

Section I - The Origins of Separation

1. To extend is a fundamental aspect of God which He gave to His Son. In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. You have not only been fully created, but have also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in you. Because of your likeness to your Creator you are creative. No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting. The inappropriate use of extension, or projection, occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you, and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth.

Before moving onto the process, let us attempt to grasp what is being told to us here: We are the "Son" that is so often referred to. We are an extension of God, and therefore, as God, we are. We have been fully created by God – we could not improve upon what God has already done – and what God does is perfect. Any emptiness we believe we feel within is but fear – we are as God is – Love. As ego we can project and project all that we care to, but no projections will ever be able to change That Which we are. When we believe we can project from the emptiness within us, we are believing that we can improve upon what God has created.

This process involves the following steps:

First, you believe that what God created can be changed by your own mind.

Second, you believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking.

Third, you believe that you can distort the creations of God, including yourself.

Fourth, you believe that you can create yourself, and that the direction of your own creation is up to you.

What God has created is eternally true forever. Nothing can change what God has created. When we see ourselves less than perfect, we are seeing ourselves in fear. If we say to ourselves that our bodies are not perfect, our minds are not perfect, our life is not perfect – we are thinking with ego – we are believing in the illusion we are projecting. The distorted view of others you believe you SEE can be changed by seeing them in the Love you are. You can change your view of them. And the last step, we believe we are in charge of ourselves – that what we create is as great as what God creates. What God creates is eternal. What we create has a very quick "shelf-life."

2. These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the separation, or the "detour into fear." None of this existed before the separation, nor does it actually exist now. Everything God created is like Him. Extension, as undertaken by God, is similar to the inner radiance that the children of the Father inherit from Him. Its real source is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father. In this sense the creation includes both the creation of the Son by God, and the Son's creations when his mind is healed. This requires God's endowment of the Son with free will, because all loving creation is freely given in one continuous line, in which all aspects are of the same order.

Although the first 5 or 6 Chapters of the Text appear at times quite "choppy" to read, they are some of the most important words for us. These ideas presented in the beginning chapters will be repeated for us again in the Text in many different ways. The "choppiness" occurs because of the deletion of personal comments to Helen and Bill that were later deleted for the publication of this version.

Here we are told that what we believe is our world never existed before we thought of the separation, and furthermore, does not exist even now. Now that by itself is a lot to grasp. What God created – us – is eternal and never changing. As God, we are. The extension of the Love of God within us is an inheritance from God that we are to share with all we see. And as we all extend this Love to each other, we experience the Oneness that we forever are. And God has also given us "free will." And much more will be told us about free will.

3. The Garden of Eden, or the pre-separation condition, was a state of mind in which nothing was needed. When Adam listened to the "lies of the serpent," all he heard was untruth. You do not have to continue to believe what is not true unless you choose to do so. All that can literally disappear in the twinkling of an eye because it is merely a misperception. What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate. It still remains within you, however, to extend as God extended His Spirit to you. In reality this is your only choice, because your free will was given you for your joy in creating the perfect.

If you believe in the Garden of Eden, then also believe that you have never left it. If you believe in Heaven, then believe also that you have never left it. Both are state of mind prior to the separation we believe happened. But look at what is being told you here: Even the Bible – a book of stories of the Jewish culture – tells us that although "Adam" – us – fell asleep, nowhere does it say that we ever woke up. This is a very subtle message in the Bible that is so easily overlooked. This separation is but a dream, an illusion that we have made within our minds. But even in this dream, we have not changed the Truth about us – nor can we. We are forever as God created us. And the Spirit of God that is extended to us in this dream is the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God.

4. All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course, you neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for your escape from fear. The escape is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonement, which enables you to realize that your errors never really occurred. Only after the deep sleep fell upon Adam could he experience nightmares. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming a fearful dream, he may initially interpret the light itself as part of his dream and be afraid of it. However, when he awakens, the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream, which is then no longer accorded reality. This release does not depend on illusions. The knowledge that illuminates not only sets you free, but also shows you clearly that you are free.

So it all comes down to this concept – we thought we could do better than God, and in that tiny instant, we made this dream. But we know deep within us that we cannot improve what God has created. So how do we change our thinking about this? By the process called the Atonement – not to be confused with "At-One-Ment". Atonement is the correction of error – the correction of our thinking. So as we continue with this dream in the darkness of fear, look for the light to shine from within you. In that light is your awareness of your truth, and your truth shall set you free, as the saying goes.

5. Whatever lies you may believe are of no concern to the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. It makes no distinctions among misperceptions. Its sole concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand, and error on the other. Some miracles may seem to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first principle in this course; there is no order of difficulty in miracles. In reality you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love. These can be from yourself and others, from yourself to others, or from others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. Illness is some form of external searching. Health is inner peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without and capable, through your acceptance of miracles, of correcting the conditions proceeding from lack of love in others.

The word "lies" mentioned here is important for us to grasp. Don Miguel Ruiz talks about all the "lies" we have been told all of our life – all the beliefs that have been given us as truth. Seeing these beliefs as lies helps us to understand somewhat understand their value. When we look at the old beliefs as lies, we open ourselves easier to their replacements – to the new beliefs, new thoughts. And note that the first principle of miracles is repeated here for us: "There is no order of difficulty in miracles." Only our thoughts prevent the smooth flow of miracles. Also note that we are being told early on in the Course that peace is an attribute of us – we have peace within us. Remember that as you continually look outside of you for what you have already within. Look at what he calls our searching – "illness."
Chapter 2.

THE SEPARATION AND THE ATONEMENT

Section II. - The Atonement as Defense

1. You can do anything I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing and universal. There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear. When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. You believe in what you value. If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly. Your understanding will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace. That is why the Bible speaks of "the peace of God which passeth understanding." This peace is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.

Read the first sentence many times – you can anything that is asked of by Jesus in the Course. Nothing that is asked of you is impossible! You can perform the "miracles" he has asked but cannot perform them in a state of fear – with thoughts of fear held in your mind. When you see fear, you see the value you have given it. If you wish to believe in what you value, then look at the value given and be sure it is correctly thought in love. We believe all too often that peace can be shaken by outside circumstances, and yet here we are told again – that peace which lies within us can never be changed – it will forever be peace. It is there because God placed it there. So we can deny fear – we can deny its existence –"Nothing unreal exists."

2. True denial is a powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction. Your right mind depends on it. Denial of error is a strong defense of truth, but denial of truth results in miscreation, the projections of the ego. In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth.

Many times we hear that we cannot live in denial – we cannot live in denial of who and what we are – our Truth – but we can live in the denial of illusions – of fears. When we deny our Truth, we are affirming ego – we are affirming fear – illusion – that which is unreal. The free will we have must be free of the illusions of fear.

3. You can defend truth as well as error. The means are easier to understand after the value of the goal is firmly established. It is a question of what it is for. Everyone defends his treasure, and will do so automatically. The real questions are: what do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? Once you have learned to consider these questions and to bring them into all your actions, you will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. The means are available whenever you ask. You can, however, save time if you do not protract this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably.

Most of our life, we have been defend our lies because we believe they were true. Now, as we read the Course, we will begin to change our thinking, and find ourselves defend the Truth of us. Recall above, how we were told of the "treasure within us"? That treasure is our Truth. Often times, we forget the Truth and treasure our lies. So the big question asked here of you is this: "What treasure do you defend?" Note that we are told clearly that the means for us to know the means are available to us just for the asking. Asking for guidance from Spirit appears at times very difficult for some of us. We have so long believe our own lies of how we can do it ourselves – we need help from no one, etc. Strictly ego speaking there.

4. The Atonement is the only defense that cannot be used destructively because it is not a device you made. The Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement began. The principle was love and the Atonement was an act of love. Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief in space and time did not exist. It was only after the separation that the Atonement and the conditions necessary for its fulfillment were planned. Then a defense so splendid was needed that it could not be misused, although it could be refused. Refusal could not, however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only defense that is not a two-edged sword. It can only heal.

The correction of error was there for us before we could even think of error. Its principle is Love and Love is what we forever have been and will be. This correction is only necessary since we believed in the separation – since we gave value to the dream. The ego will show us many defenses it has – but all are a two edge sword, but the Atonement is not – it only heals. It can do nothing else but heal.

5. The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement is the final lesson. Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. The ability to learn has no value when change is no longer necessary. The eternally creative have nothing to learn. You can learn to improve your perceptions, and can become a better and better learner. This will bring you into closer and closer accord with the Sonship; but the Sonship itself is a perfect creation and perfection is not a matter of degree. Only while there is a belief in differences is learning meaningful.

The "Sonship" is the Oneness we are. Even though we can correct our thinking as we proceed in this dream, the Atonement itself, we are told, is the final lesson we shall remember. Final in that when we correct the thought of separation, the dream is over. The Atonement is only needed in this dream; beyond the dream it has no importance. And the more we correct our thinking, the more we will begin to see and experience the Oneness that we are.

6. Evolution is a process in which you seem to proceed from one degree to the next. You correct your previous missteps by stepping forward. This process is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because you return as you go forward. The Atonement is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead. It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return. In this sense the Atonement saves time, but like the miracle it serves, does not abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. But the Atonement as a completed plan has a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonement is complete, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands at time's end. At that point the bridge of return has been built.

As you journey through this Course, you will read of much that may surprise you, such as here, evolution is mentioned. But here it is described as one step leading to the next, and then we are told that such thinking is "incomprehensible" because we as we "return we go forward." The correction of error is a way of us to release our past as we move on. The correction just correct our errors and as such we can stop living our past over and over again. So if we were to look at it as far as time goes, we would be saving time but not living the past again. The Atonement – the correction of error – is only required as long as time is required. Remember in the previous paragraph how we were told that the Atonement would correct the thought we hold of separation? Here we are told that the correction is at the end of time. Time will cease to be when we correct our thoughts of separation. And the mention of the "bridge of return" will be brought out more later in the Course as well. For now, know that at the end of time as we know it, we shall cross the bridge of return holding the hand of God – we shall awaken from where we never left.

7. The Atonement is a total commitment. You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another. It is hard to believe a defense that cannot attack is the best defense. This is what is meant by "the meek shall inherit the earth." They will literally take it over because of their strength. A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because it has two edges, and can be turned against you very unexpectedly. This possibility cannot be controlled except by miracles. The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to your real protection, and as you become more and more secure you assume your natural talent of protecting others, knowing yourself as both a brother and a Son.

Being a commitment, it is something that is asked of us to do. Correction of an error means no loss to us – an illusion can never be lost. And again he speaks of the "two-edge sword of defense" that we have come to believe in. While the run edge may be doing something, the other edge can just as easily be thrust in us. The Atonement CORRECTS this thinking for us. It is seen as a protection against the lies we have been told – a protection only needed within this dream. And in that "natural state" we see ourselves not only as the Son, but as the brother as well – we are that Oneness.

Chapter 2.

THE SEPARATION AND THE ATONEMENT

Section III - The Altar of God

1. The Atonement can only be accepted within you by releasing the inner light. Since the separation, defenses have been used almost entirely to defend against the Atonement, and thus maintain the separation. This is generally seen as a need to protect the body. The many body fantasies in which minds engage arise from the distorted belief that the body can be used as a means for attaining "atonement." Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in correcting this distortion, because it alters only part of it. It does recognize that Atonement in physical terms is impossible. The next step, however, is to realize that a temple is not a structure at all. Its true holiness lies at the inner altar around which the structure is built. The emphasis on beautiful structures is a sign of the fear of Atonement, and unwillingness to reach the altar itself. The real beauty of the temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. Spiritual sight, on the other hand, cannot see the structure at all because it is perfect vision. It can, however, see the altar with perfect clarity.

The correction of error is only accepted by you as within you. The body is often viewed as a temple and therein can be our atonement. Physically, a correction of anything is not possible. The correction of error only pertains to the mind and only to the thoughts held therein. The body is but an illusion we projected to strengthen our belief in separation. Within us – not within the body – is our "altar" where we go to be in the silence of our soul – the stillness of being. When we focus on the body, we are not seeing the effects of the Atonement. When we look upon another brother, do we see a body or do we see beyond the body to the altar within? This is where we use "Spiritual Sight" – seeing through the Holy Spirit. This sight never sees the body – the illusion – but sees beyond to the inner truth that lies within.

2. For perfect effectiveness the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the mind. Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist. Both the separation and the fear are miscreations that must be undone for the restoration of the temple, and for the opening of the altar to receive the Atonement. This heals the separation by placing within you the one effective defense against all separation thoughts and making you perfectly invulnerable.

Some very important points here: before the separation, fear did not exist. And both the separation and fear is mis-creation that we made. In our acceptance of the correction, we can undo what we believe we have done. And in that step we go from being very vulnerable to being invulnerable.

3. The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. This may appear to contradict free will because of the inevitability of the final decision, but this is not so. You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator, Who set the limits on your ability to miscreate. An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute. But the outcome is as certain as God.

We have all uttered those words that started this Course: "There must be a better way." Here we are told of how the illusion of time works for us in the illusion. We are told that everyone will accept the Atonement sooner or later – everyone. We are told that we can delay making a decision thinking we can gain some time, and we can also put it off, but regardless, we cannot leave God. And in this procrastination, we appear to imprison ourselves in a prison we make. And there we sit until we can no longer bear the pain of separation, and we decide to make a change – a correction of thought. With this correction of error returns our spiritual vision, and lessens our physical sight. And this process is not at times without pain, but the outcome is assured us by God.

4. Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonement. All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve. Spiritual vision looks within and recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly aware of the right defense it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the strength of its vision, it brings the mind into its service. This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain. As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.

The Vision of Spirit does not see error, only the correction of error. Whatever we thought we saw with our physical eyes fades away before us. The Vision of Spirit only sees Truth, and skips over anything else. And with what It sees, the mind also begins to see as Truth. And now we no longer will tolerate anything less than Truth.

5. The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means are already provided, and do not involve any effort at all on their part. The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered at the altar of God, because of the value of the altar itself. It was created perfect and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God and His creations are completely dependent on Each Other. He depends on them because He created them perfect. He gave them His peace so they could not be shaken and could not be deceived. Whenever you are afraid you are deceived, and your mind cannot serve the Holy Spirit. This starves you by denying you your daily bread. God is lonely without His Sons, and they are lonely without Him. They must learn to look upon the world as a means of healing the separation. The Atonement is the guarantee that they will ultimately succeed.

We, as children of God, created perfect by God, are therefore entitled to nothing but perfect comfort and perfect trust. When we forget this, which is all too often, we look for the comfort and trust from something or someone out there. We seek but we do not find. The act of Atonement – the correction of error – is perfect because of Its source. It is perfection meant for perfection to think perfection. And as we remember we are not alone in this world – but in Truth, are One – we see how we must depend on each other to awaken to the trust and comfort we seek. When we experience fear – any fear – we are deceiving ourselves into thinking we are not perfect children of God. Without fear, we can experience the Oneness we are. Without fear, we can experience the healing of the separation and the experience of the Oneness with God. And the Atonement guarantees that we will ultimately succeed.

Chapter 2.

THE SEPARATION AND THE ATONEMENT

Section IV - Healing as Release from Fear

1. Our emphasis is now on healing. The miracle is the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. To speak of "a miracle of healing" is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is not a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a remedy and any type of healing is a result. The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant. All healing is essentially the release from fear. To undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself. You do not understand healing because of your own fear.

We began the Course with a definition of a miracle being but a change of thought, not some magic. Now we are to learn that healing is simply a release from fear. It is important for us to understand these words and their meaning as define by the Course. All too often, in the world we make, we talk of "miraculous healing" but do not define it. Here, we do. Healing is the result of the correction of error – the Atonement. But even as we try to grasp this new meaning, we hold onto fear because we truly do not yet understand healing as described here.

2. A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. Sickness or "not-right-mindedness" is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another. We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion that made magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. This error can take two forms; it can be believed that the mind can miscreate in the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.

Some students of the Course get very involved in "levels" – levels of learning for example. But it is enough to just believe that Atonement corrects error at its source and that source is the mind. Only the mind holds a thought, only the mind requires correction. The mind can tell the body it is sick, and the body will react accordingly to the thought the mind holds. But the body itself cannot make itself sick on its own. Physical illness then is a result of a thought held in the mind telling the body that sickness has entered it. And we have taught, trained to believe this. But the Course now tells us that the mind cannot create beyond the mind, beyond itself.

3. Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device for the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are over evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. The term "unworthy" here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind's power, one is also denying the power itself.

When we are told that only the mind can create, it does not imply that the mind creates as God creates. What God creates is eternal. What the mind creates – makes – is an illusion at best and last very little of our time. The body, we are told, is just a learning device for the mind and its purpose is to facilitate learning. The worse that we can do is fail to facilitate learning. The body has no power to make learning errors. The body is simply a part of our experience in this dream, and at best is most often overstated. But we have a hard time denying its existence in the world we make.

4. All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatements of magic principles. This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness. It is a second misstep to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for corrective purposes is evil. Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonement. In this case it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.

There are a multitude of healing remedies, practices and other forms of the so-called magic out there to be used on our bodies. Using them is but an affirmation that the body is real and makes its own sickness. But this does not mean that we should not try the use of these remedies to heal the body, for in doing so, we are also holding a thought that the body will get better. To take medicine is FINE; if you believe that what you are taking will improve your health. But know that it is the thought you hold that will make you appear better. We should do deny the use of the many forms to individuals as they might make additional fears for themselves.

5. The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable now. The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear.

This is very important to grasp as well: the value of the correction is not in the manner that it is expressed, but in any way it can be of some help to receiver. So if, for example, the receiver believed deeply in Reiki, this should not be denied him. Allowing it will ease his fear. This does mean that the receiver is where he should be in his THINKING; it only means that this is where he is now.
Chapter 2

Section V - The Function of the Miracle Worker

1. Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world, it is essential that they fully understand the fear of release. Otherwise they may unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a belief that is already very prevalent. This misperception arises in turn from the belief that harm can be limited to the body. That is because of the underlying fear that the mind can hurt itself. None of these errors is meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist. This recognition is a far better protective device than any form of level confusion, because it introduces correction at the level of the error. It is essential to remember that only the mind can create, and that correction belongs at the thought level. To amplify an earlier statement, spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction. The body does not exist except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it cannot create. It is obvious, then, that inducing the mind to give up its miscreations is the only application of creative ability that is truly meaningful.

Most of the above has already been stated but once again, the point is driven deeper into us. The projections of our thoughts – the miscreations of our mind – are not real – they do not exist. And again, he talks about the "level" of correction – correction only required to the thought we are holding. We are, in Truth, perfect as God is perfect. We, in Truth, need no correction nor is any correction possible. And note that the body is a "learning device for the mind." The body cannot create – of its own, it can do nothing. These concepts will continue to be presented to us throughout the Course.

2. Magic is the mindless or the miscreative use of mind. Physical medications are forms of "spells," but if you are afraid to use the mind to heal, you should not attempt to do so. The very fact that you are afraid makes your mind vulnerable to miscreation. You are therefore likely to misunderstand any healing that might occur, and because egocentricity and fear usually occur together, you may be unable to accept the real Source of the healing. Under these conditions, it is safer for you to rely temporarily on physical healing devices, because you cannot misperceive them as your own creations. As long as your sense of vulnerability persists, you should not attempt to perform miracles.

Here we are being told that if we feel we must take medicines, we should certainly do so. If we are not at a point where we believe the mind can heal what the mind appears to have caused, then the "magic" of medicine is most appropriate. Until we reach a state of "invulnerability" – until we believe we can alter what appears as a sickness by changing our thoughts, medicine is fine alternative.

3. I have already said that miracles are expressions of miracle-mindedness, and miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness. The right-minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle receiver. However, as a correction, the miracle need not await the right-mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him to his right mind. It is essential, however, that the miracle worker be in his right mind, however briefly, or he will be unable to re-establish right-mindedness in someone else.

Basically, for me, what this is saying is this: I must first believe I have before I believe I can give.

4. The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding. You are perfectly safe as long as you are completely unconcerned about your readiness, but maintain a consistent trust in mine. If your miracle working inclinations are not functioning properly, it is always because fear has intruded on your right-mindedness and has turned it upside down. All forms of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement for yourself. If you do accept it, you are in a position to recognize that those who need healing are simply those who have not realized that right-mindedness is healing.

There is a difference between "feeling" our readiness and "knowing" our readiness. It is the knowing within that we are to pay attention to. In this knowing we are also guided. Simply feeling will put us in a position where we recognize that those before us are not in the right-mindedness yet, and so we see ourselves as well.

5. The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only heal. By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others. The message you then give to them is the truth that their minds are similarly constructive, and their miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this you release the mind from over evaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner.

I enjoy putting the Course into "first-person" text every now and then. Try this on:

" **My sole responsibility is to accept the Atonement for myself. This means I recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed (corrected) by the Atonement. When I accept this, my mind can only heal. If I deny my mind any destructive potential and reinstate its pure constructive power, I place myself in a position to undo the level of confusion of others. The message I give to them is the truth that their minds are just as constructive, and that their miscreations cannot harm them. As I affirm this, I release the mind for over-evaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner."**

6. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.

The body cannot learn and the body cannot create – cannot make anything. As the learning device it is, it simply follows the mind – the learner. However, if it is filled WITH SELF-initiative, it becomes a major obstacle to the learning it is to facilitate. And note that we are being told that we already are "illuminated" – we are the Light; only the mind can become illuminated. And the body, being the illusion it is, cannot.

7. Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit, and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. This often entails fear, because you are afraid of what your spiritual sight will show you. I said before that the Holy Spirit cannot see error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement. There is no doubt that this may produce discomfort, yet the discomfort is not the final outcome of the perception. When the Holy Spirit is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, He also looks immediately toward the Atonement. Nothing He perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from spiritual awareness is merely channelized toward correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction into awareness.

Read and grasp the first sentence: "corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit," – as we awaken, we remember more of our truth. Awakening means that we move through the fears before us and see beyond them. Asking to see with Spirit allows us to see in Truth, and seeing in Truth is never seeing fear.

8. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequivocally that healing is necessary. What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can error be corrected by any device that can be seen physically. As long as you believe in what your physical sight tells you, your attempts at correction will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured, because you cannot endure to see your own defiled altar. But since the altar has been defiled, your state becomes doubly dangerous unless it is perceived.

Do you fear "healing"? Are you unwilling to accept "unequivocally" the healing necessary? Do you believe what your physical eyes see? Or are you open to the sight of Spirit that will show all you look upon as love?

9. Healing is an ability that developed after the separation, before which it was unnecessary. Like all aspects of the belief in space and time, it is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing is needed as a means of protection. This is because healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if you cannot perceive it in yourself. Most of the loftier concepts of which you are capable now are time-dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more powerful love-encompassment that is far beyond any form of charity you can conceive of as yet. Charity is essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which it can now be attained.

Healing is only required within this dream. Upon awakening, healing will cease to exist, as it has forever been. And here we are told of "charity" – not love – but charity as a way of seeing the perfection in another even though we cannot see that perfection in ourselves. Charity, we are told, is a "weaker" form of Love, which is beyond our comprehension at this point.

10. Charity is a way of looking at another as if he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishments in time. Since his own thinking is faulty he cannot see the Atonement for himself, or he would have no need of charity. The charity that is accorded him is both an acknowledgment that he needs help, and recognition that he will accept it. Both of these perceptions clearly imply their dependence on time, making it apparent that charity still lies within the limitations of this world. I said before that only revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an expression of charity, can only shorten it. It must be understood, however, that whenever you offer a miracle to another, you are shortening the suffering of both of you. This corrects retroactively as well as progressively.

Charity is then seen as being dependent on time, and as such it has its limitations in our world. Charity shortens time but does not obliterate it, only revelation can do that. But a key point here is that whenever I offer a miracle to another, I am offering it to myself as well, thus shortening time for both of us.

A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers

(1) The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns. Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.

I have but to change my thought, and time and space are adjusted for me.

(2) A clear distinction between what is created and what is made is essential. All forms of healing rest on this fundamental correction in level perception.

What is created is of God, is eternal. What is made is an illusion, a projection of a thought I hold within my mind.

(3) Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion.

Seeing any thought as but an error, will prevent us from healing.

(4) The miracle is always a denial of this error and an affirmation of the truth. Only right-mindedness can correct in a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what has no real effect has no real existence. Its effect, then, is emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to projection.

" **Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."**

(5) The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the right perception for healing. Until this has occurred healing cannot be understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails correction. Without this it is essentially judgmental, rather than healing.

This one I think we can easily grasp – have you ever stated that you forgive someone for something, while still holding onto the thought of anger or hurt? No healing – no correction – is made here as long as we hold the thought of fear.

(6) Miracle-minded forgiveness is only correction. It has no element of judgment at all. The statement "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" in no way evaluates what they do. It is an appeal to God to heal their minds. There is no reference to the outcome of the error. That does not matter.

I think this is the first time we are being told that something does not matter. We will be told this many more times as well. If something does not matter, then we can easily let go of it. Forgiveness then is only of ourselves – only for the thoughts we hold within our own mind. We release the judgment we had of other, and the judgment we had of ourselves, and gladly accept the correction of our error.

(7) The injunction "Be of one mind" is the statement for revelation-readiness. My request "Do this in remembrance of me" is the appeal for cooperation from miracle workers. The two statements are not in the same order of reality. Only the latter involves an awareness of time, since to remember is to recall the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but timelessness belongs to God. In time we exist for and with each other. In timelessness we coexist with God.

Do you notice here that we are being told that the Oneness we seek is in a state of "no-time" – in the state of the present moment – the now? And when we read "remembering" we are drawn to the past to bring something forward.

(8) You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of others if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:

I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

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

By saying "I am here" I am affirming I am present – now. By affirming "I am content" I am also stating that I am in the now. I have no worries if I but follow His guidance. I am never alone for He is forever there with me.

Chapter 2

Section VI - Fear and Conflict

1. Being afraid seems to be involuntary; something beyond your own control. Yet I have said already that only constructive acts should be involuntary. My control can take over everything that does not matter, while my guidance can direct everything that does, if you so choose. Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents me from giving you my control. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind. This removes them from my control, and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels.

And so it appears that fear is an involuntary thought, while it is just the opposite. The guidance that we seek is ours for the choosing. And look again at the point he makes about fear being self-controlled – no one else is responsible for the fears we believe in except us.

2. I do not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it. You would not excuse insane behavior on your part by saying you could not help it. Why should you condone insane thinking? There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly. You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate yourself from the truth by "giving" autonomy to behavior. This is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under my guidance. Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it.

Note that early on in the Course, the author is having Helen trust in him to help her place her guidance in him. Later in the Course, we are encouraged to ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. It is somewhat amusing to see that we often talk about and condemn, insane behavior – ours or someone's else's. And yet, behavior is a projection of the thoughts we hold in our mind. The thoughts come first and then the behavior is seen. Like so much in our ego world, we look at results and not the cause. Anytime we feel the presence of fear, we can know instantly that we are focusing on ego and not our Truth.

3. It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.

Look how simple he talks to us: whenever we are afraid, we have chosen wrongly. And he has also told us that we can choose again – change our thoughts – but it requires that we just show a little willingness – a phrase that is repeated many time in the Course. This short paragraph tells us something that we need to remember: change is only possible at the place where the thought is held – in our mind. This is where healing will take place – this is where the correction to error is made.

4. The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. At that level you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the same. Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.

A couple of important items here: first of all, the correction of fear is our responsibility – fear is a thought we hold and so the correction of that error is up to us. There is no need for us to ask, plead, and pray for the release of fear – the choice for its release is always ours. But we can and should ask for guidance, assistance, and any help needed in the process of changing our mind. And early on in the Course we are told to ask first, and then act; not to act and then to ask for help.

5. Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do. This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged. Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so. This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain. In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow. Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind. Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic. Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate the fear.

Could we draw the conclusion that depression is the result of fear? Fear is a sign to us of strain – of strain that we are causing ourselves by being in conflict with anything or anyone. And the conflict is a result of part of us knowing that we do not want to do the insanity we see ourselves performing. And how do you think of yourself as doing what you do not want to do, but doing it anyway? Do you get angry over this? Angry at others and with ourselves? Bottom line is this: fear is not real and does not exist other than as a thought within our mind. By changing our mind, we eliminate fear – and only by changing our mind do eliminate fear.

6. It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God's Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain because wanting and doing are discordant. This can be corrected only by accepting a unified goal.

And here he opens the door to the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. We need the Holy Spirit until such time as we have that willingness he speaks of. And the good news is this: never are we asked to do more than we are shown to do. Instead of closing our eyes to fear, we keep them open and see through fear, beyond fear. In this seeing, we change the thoughts of fear we hold.

7. The first corrective step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an expression of fear. Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy.

So the first thing we do is to acknowledge the fear – see the fear as nothing more than a thought we hold, knowing that we chose fear over love.

These steps may be summarized in this way:

Know first that this is fear.

Fear arises from lack of love.

The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

Perfect love is the Atonement.

What I believe I see is fear, and fear is my lack of loving thought. The remedy for this lack of love is my Truth. My Truth – Love – is my correction of unloving thought.

8. I have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonement, is always a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy. The recognition of this worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement. You have done something loveless, having chosen without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its establishment. As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you accept the remedy, you have abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs.

It is one thing for us to see that correction is needed, but it is entirely different to make the correction – accept the Atonement. Once accepted, fear vanishes – the darkness turns to light – the fear is change to love.

9. Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right thinking to realize why fear occurs. Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.

**A truly powerful paragraph: each of us experience fear – no exceptions, it is the nature of who we believe we are in these bodies we value. We are being introduced here to the concept that is somewhat difficult for us to accept about ourselves – the power of the mind we have. The mind never sleeps we are told – thus dreaming occurs or so it appears. Each and every instant the mind is creating. And try to grasp what you are seeing right now is the result of the power of your mind creating it before you. And ego will tell us just as instantly that such thinking on our part is arrogance to be sure, and we have been taught to believe that arrogance of this magnitude is not tolerable. Your thoughts are making what you see now! Such is the power you have. Such is the very memories we have forgotten, but will slowly remember. From arrogance we move into guilt, and then to a place where we feel hopeless, helpless and totally useless. Look carefully at the last two sentences. There are no idle thoughts – a thought is never idle – never. And all thoughts produce something somewhere before us.**

Chapter 2

Section VII - The Meaning of the Last Judgment

1. One of the ways in which you can correct the magic-miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. You are apt to forget this when you become egocentric, and this puts you in a position where a belief in magic is virtually inevitable. Your will to create was given you by your Creator, Who was expressing the same Will in His creation. Since creative ability rests in the mind, everything you create is necessarily a matter of will. It also follows that whatever you alone make is real in your own sight, though not in the Mind of God. This basic distinction leads directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment.

Remember your first encounter with the term "Last Judgment"? More of that to come. Note the use of the word "create" here as referring to the fact that we did not "create" ourselves. Create is a word used in reference to that of God. What we believe we do in this world is make – a very big difference. So I did not create who I am in Truth – Love – but I did make what I believe to be this body in this world I also make. And furthermore, I believe all too often in what I have made. And as I am a Thought within the Mind of God, so are the things I make in my world – thoughts held within my mind. But the things in my world are not held in the Mind of God.

2. The Last Judgment is one of the most threatening ideas in your thinking. This is because you do not understand it. Judgment is not an attribute of God. It was brought into being only after the separation, when it became one of the many learning devices to be built into the overall plan. Just as the separation occurred over millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend over a similarly long period, and perhaps an even longer one. Its length can, however, be greatly shortened by miracles, the device for shortening but not abolishing time. If a sufficient number become truly miracle-minded, this shortening process can be virtually immeasurable. It is essential, however, that you free yourself from fear quickly, because you must emerge from the conflict if you are to bring peace to other minds.

Repeat – judgment is not an attribute of God! If it is not, then where did it come from and why? It came into being with the thought we held of separation. And this may be reaching ahead a bit, but if God does not judge us, who does? The last judgment could very well be the last judgment we make of ourselves.

3. The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by God. Actually it will be undertaken by my brothers with my help. It is a final healing rather than a meting out of punishment, however much you may think that punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept totally opposed to right-mindedness, and the aim of the Last Judgment is to restore right-mindedness to you. The Last Judgment might be called a process of right evaluation. It simply means that everyone will finally come to understand what is worthy and what is not. After this, the ability to choose can be directed rationally. Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue.

Another phrase ego uses is punishment. How can I punish myself or you, if we have done nothing more than make an error – an error that is correctible by changing our thoughts? Here we are told that the Last Judgment is something that all of us will come to understand – to fully and totally grasp what is worthy and what is not. Until we all get to this place, the conflict within our mind will rage on. We will experience moments of freedom and moments of self-imprisonment.

4. The first step toward freedom involves a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of separation in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. Everyone will ultimately look upon his own creations and choose to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself looked upon what He had created and knew that it was good. At this point, the mind can begin to look with love on its own creations because of their worthiness. At the same time the mind will inevitably disown its miscreations which, without belief, will no longer exist.

The first step of freedom is our sorting through all that we believe, all that we see and have given value to, to sort them as being true or being false. So that which I see as Love, I know to be true; that which I see as fear, I know that to be illusion. And illusions will cease to exist.

5. The term "Last Judgment" is frightening not only because it has been projected onto God, but also because of the association of "last" with death. This is an outstanding example of upside-down perception. If the meaning of the Last Judgment is objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really the doorway to life. No one who lives in fear is really alive. Your own last judgment cannot be directed toward yourself, because you are not your own creation. You can, however, apply it meaningfully and at any time to everything you have made, and retain in your memory only what is creative and good. This is what your right-mindedness cannot but dictate. The purpose of time is solely to "give you time" to achieve this judgment. It is your own perfect judgment of your own perfect creations. When everything you retain is lovable, there is no reason for fear to remain with you. This is your part in the Atonement.

And death, for me, is but an experience of this dream – albeit the last experience. But the judgment is not from God, but from me. I will see that which is made is love is real, and all else will disappear. And fear will no longer be with me.

Chapter 3

THE INNOCENT PERCEPTION

I. Atonement without Sacrifice

1. A further point must be perfectly clear before any residual fear still associated with miracles can disappear. The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did. Many sincere Christians have misunderstood this. No one who is free of the belief in scarcity could possibly make this mistake. If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged one of His Sons to suffer because he was good. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of projection, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. Such anti-religious concepts enter into many religions. Yet the real Christian should pause and ask, "How could this be?" Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His Own words have clearly stated is unworthy of His Son?

The point being is that the crucifixion did establish the correction of error, the resurrection did. It is amazing that so much negativity surrounds the crucifixion, so much emphasis on the Passion and yet it is was the resurrection that was almost overlooked. Who wouldn't fear a God that would allow one of us to suffer like the man Jesus must have suffered going through his ordeal prior to death? And for so many of us, for so many years, we accepted that point as truth, until somewhere along our path, we questioned our thoughts, and discover an answer waiting within us.

2. The best defense, as always, is not to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is unwise to accept any concept if you have to invert a whole frame of reference in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a wider scale. Persecution frequently results in an attempt to "justify" the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His Own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless. It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to correct than any other, many have been unwilling to give it up in view of its prominent value as a defense. In milder forms a parent says, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe our Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind. I was not "punished" because you were bad. The wholly benign lesson the Atonement teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in any form.

It really doesn't get much plainer than this – Jesus died on a cross because of who he was thought to be – not for what we might do in our lives. His crucifixion has little bearing on us – it was the resurrection that showed us what eternal life is about. When I viewed the movie "The Passion" I saw it as a movie about a man named Jesus who was feared by many – Jews and Romans. Their fear caused him to be treated like a criminal, which allowed him to die. He was hung on a cross which was the "chair" of the time. His followers were supposed to get a message of fear from the those in power. Jesus was a human like we are – and as such, he experienced death as we all shall experience when this journey comes to an end. But death is seen as but an experience, not an ending.

3. The statement "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" is a misperception by which one assigns his own "evil" past to God. The "evil" past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it and He does not maintain it. God does not believe in retribution. His Mind does not create that way. He does not hold your "evil" deeds against you. Is it likely that He would hold them against me? Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption is, and how entirely it arises from projection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors, including the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden. It is also why you may believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish.

If God is Love, and only Love exists, then could God have a thought of vengeance, or of evil? We don't understand the meaning of Love, if such a meaning could exist – it is beyond our comprehension we have been told and so we believe. We know deep within us that only Love is real, all else is an illusion. God is real. Everything else is illusion. Are we real? Our bodies are an illusion, but our Truth is real – our Truth is God. Anything which is not Love, is fear and is made by ego. God sees us as the perfect Though we are, not as we see ourselves.

4. Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious. Sacrificing in any way is a violation of my injunction that you should be merciful even as your Father in Heaven is merciful. It has been hard for many Christians to realize that this applies to themselves. Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. The result is learning failure.

What is known to God is Love, for only Love exists. Sacrifice, the act of our giving up something we value, for the prospect of receiving some favor in return is an ego ploy that is played on us many time, many ways. We do this to ourselves constantly – I will give this up if I can have that. We can only give Love for that is what we are. We can only receive Love for only Love exists. Anything which is not Love is illusion, and if we see an illusion with value, it is only because we have given it the value we see.

5. I have been correctly referred to as "the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world," but those who represent the lamb as blood-stained do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood, it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolize that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. A pure mind knows the truth and this is its strength. It does not confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence with strength, not with weakness.

When I first was reading the Course, I was always surprised when I read his corrections to the Bible and its interpretation. Recall all of the "sacrifices" made in the name of God throughout our history, where bloodshed was the effect of a "righteous" cause? And think about a "pure mind" for a bit – can you attain a "pure mind"? Is it the moment when you are in a holy instant – the present moment – when you have left go of past and future thoughts and simply are just being?

6. Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect its wholeness. It cannot project. It can only honor other minds, because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved to others who are like them. The lamb "taketh away the sins of the world" in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The Atonement is entirely unambiguous. It is perfectly clear because it exists in light. Only the attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to those who do not choose to see.

In our true perfection as we have been created by God, we are the innocence of the innocence. In Truth, we do not judge, we do see separation, we do not error. In Truth, the Atonement is not needed. However, because we believe in the body we see, and we believe in the world before us, we error in our thinking and the Atonement is most needed and openly accepted. What was darkness is now light.

7. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true. The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can withstand any form of evil, as light abolishes forms of darkness. The Atonement is therefore the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all the other lessons I taught are true. If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons. You are released from all errors if you believe this.

Be sure to read the last two sentences a few times here. If you accept what is presented here, you can literally close the book because there is nothing more for you to learn. But that is not the case, is it? We are here because we cannot totally grasp what is being presented. We cannot fully grasp that we are indeed the perfect innocence God created. And in our innocence we do not harbor thoughts which are of fear. The resurrection showed us that death is but an experience, we are eternal, everlasting innocent perfections God created. We read this; we say this; but here we are – we are holding onto some part of this illusion yet.

8. The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state your mind knows God, for God is not symbolic; He is Fact. Knowing His Son as he is, you realize that the Atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift for God's altar, where nothing except perfection belongs. The understanding of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly radiant.

Can you comprehend that the innocence of God is your innocence as well? Can you even slightly grasp what it means to know God – to know our Truth? There is no symbol for God, unless you care to say we are it! Each time we believe we have "tarnished the altar within" we have but to correct our thinking – accept the Atonement – and our perfection is again shown to us. And from that perfection within is the Light that shines upon our world.

Chapter 3

THE INNOCENT PERCEPTION

II. Miracles as True Perception

1. I have stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot be understood in terms of opposites. It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness or everything and nothing as joint possibilities. They are all true or all false. It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made. A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness, however, is impossible. No one has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some thing. No one, therefore, is able to deny truth totally, even if he thinks he can.

Take notes on this paragraph – it is as if I am reading it for the first time. The first line states an important point to remember – no degrees of the concepts we have – one is not greater than nor less than. One is either love or fear. And there is no such thing as "joint possibilities" for us to contemplate – we cannot have it both ways. And our thinking will be chaotic until we commit ourselves to one of them, and yet we are also reminded that a firm commitment to fear is not possible, we can only believe it to be so. Within each of us is the truth that is eternal, the spark that is forever glowing.

2. Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not real until it is total. The partly innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times. It is not until their innocence becomes a viewpoint with universal application that it becomes wisdom. Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does.

And again we are reminded of no "partial attributes". What so many of us have difficulty with in the Course is the concept of "either/or" – either we believe in Love or we believe in fear, but we cannot believe in both at the same time. Think of the innocence of a child – you are that child of God – and in you is that innocence that we can call upon to see truly – to see only love is real, and fear is illusion.

3. When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his right mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying the power of the miracle. The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. I have said that only what God creates or what you create with the same Will has any real existence. This, then, is all the innocent can see. They do not suffer from distorted perception.

What happens when we lack confidence in another? We are judging them and not accepting them as they are. In our acceptance of them is the miracle we wish to perform. If we are in our right-mindedness, we will see only truth, only Love. If we are not seeing Love, we are not seeing at all.

4. You are afraid of God's Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to miscreate. The mind can miscreate only when it believes it is not free. An "imprisoned" mind is not free because it is possessed, or held back, by itself. It is therefore limited, and the will is not free to assert itself. To be one is to be of one mind or will. When the Will of the Sonship and the Father are One, their perfect accord is Heaven.

Could this be a hint to us of what our 'biggest' fear is? Are we afraid of the Will of God because we have USED our mind to 'miscreate"? In this world of illusion that we make as ego, we are indeed imprisoned within our own mind by the fears we have made. We also make 'walls' which we believe will keep others from getting too close to us. We also believe we can shut out the words we hear that tell us that we are dreaming. This is just some of the things we believe we do with our mind and our free will. In Truth we are free, but in our dream we believe we are prisoners. In Truth we can co-create with God, but fear we are not worthy because we have misused our mind in other ways. But what cannot be change is that we are of One Mind with God – the Mind of God and our mind are but One and the same.

5. Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his spirit into the Hands of his Father. By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears. The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will. This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God. Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says, "When he shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

Read the first line several times: nothing can happen to a Son of God – to you and me – if we lay ourselves in the Hands of God – if we surrender our dream to the Holy Spirit so that we may see it differently. In this surrender is our wake-up call heard. In our awakening we see within us the Truth of who and what we are, and we then look out upon others and see the same in them also. The 'Trinity' is mentioned here, and yet we are told immediately that none really exists – only the Oneness we are. They are no levels to contend with, we are of One Mind with God. And in that innocence that was talked about in a previous paragraph, we shall see not only ourselves but other as the Truth we are. When my brother is perceived by me, I shall be also like him.

6. The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true. You cannot make untruth true. If you are willing to accept what is true in everything you perceive, you let it be true for you. Truth overcomes all error, and those who live in error and emptiness can never find lasting solace. If you perceive truly you are canceling out misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneously. Because you see them as they are, you offer them your acceptance of their truth so they can accept it for themselves. This is the healing that the miracle induces.

The way 'to correct distortions' is to change the thought we hold. We can change fear to be seen as love, but we cannot change fear to love. Fear, remember, is an illusion, while love is real. With the Truth within us, peace and joy is an everyday experience for us. If we are not having that experience, we are not in joy and peace. And if you are not in joy and peace, you will not see your brother as being in his.

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III. Perception versus Knowledge

1. We have been emphasizing perception, and have said very little about knowledge as yet. This is because perception must be straightened out before you can know anything. To know is to be certain. Uncertainty means that you do not know. Knowledge is power because it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. As an attribute of the belief in space and time, it is subject to either fear or love. Misperceptions produce fear and true perceptions foster love, but neither brings certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is not knowledge. True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing is the affirmation of truth and beyond all perceptions.

Two words here that get battered around a lot by us – perception and knowledge. For me, perception is what I think I see and is subject to change with each thought; knowledge is what I have within me that is there for me as I need it. Perception is temporary at best, while knowledge is eternal as is All That Is within me. Perception, however, is explained as being true or false – false being the misperceptions, and true meaning I am seeing in Love. And look again at the last line: True perception – seeing in Love – is the basis for knowledge – but not knowledge – but knowing (from knowledge) affirms Truth and all that is beyond our perception.

2. All your difficulties stem from the fact that you do not recognize yourself, your brother or God. To recognize means to "know again," implying that you knew before. You can see in many ways because perception involves interpretation, and this means that it is not whole or consistent. The miracle, being a way of perceiving, is not knowledge. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not question when you know. Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them. The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them. Since perceptions change, their dependence on time is obvious. How you perceive at any given time determines what you do, and actions must occur in time. Knowledge is timeless, because certainty is not questionable. You know when you have ceased to ask questions.

So all my problems, my difficulties, are caused from the fact that I do not recognize myself, you or God in Truth. And I like to be told that 'recognize' implies that I once was able to do just that – is that not the knowing that sometimes gnaws at us from within – that what who we are looking at is not really that image but something greater? Perception – an interpretation of my thought – is always subject change – it is never complete and whole. Knowing this I can then proceed to question what I believe I perceive and ask for help in seeing in love. And all of this happens in time and that is one of the purposes of time. Knowledge knows nothing of time. And have you ever been in a situation where you cease to see something differently – because you know what you are seeing is Love?

3. The questioning mind perceives itself in time, and therefore looks for future answers. The closed mind believes the future and the present will be the same. This establishes a seemingly stable state that is usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the future will be worse than the present. This fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.

I want neither a questioning mind nor a closed mind. What then do I want? One mind sees all in time, which does not exist, while the other mind believes in a past that never was and a future that never will be. And either mind here is drenched in fear.

4. True vision is the natural perception of spiritual sight, but it is still a correction rather than a fact. Spiritual sight is symbolic, and therefore not a device for knowing. It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle. A "vision of God" would be a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge. That is why visions, however holy, do not last.

Now here is another word we use a lot and probably incorrectly as well – 'true vision'. The fact that it is a 'perception' makes it temporary at best. But it is a correction to wrong perception – the perception of ego – that we use so often. In that way, it is a miracle – it changes what we believe we see. But visions – any sort of vision – is not knowledge and as such, are not eternal. Only that which God creates is eternal.

5. The Bible tells you to know yourself, or to be certain. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone you have perceived him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to know him. Until you first perceive him as he is you cannot know him. While you ask questions about him you are clearly implying that you do not know God. Certainty does not require action. When you say you are acting on the basis of knowledge, you are really confusing knowledge with perception. Knowledge provides the strength for creative thinking, but not for right doing. Perception, miracles and doing are closely related. Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only thought. Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body. Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as to know it.

Have you ever stop and reflect as to whether you truly know yourself – certain of who you are in Truth, not as the body you believe in? When I love myself I have perceived myself as I am, and this makes it possible for me to know me. And as I see me in Truth, I then can see others. And as I see me in Truth, I see God. If I question myself as to who I am, I am also implying that I do not know God. Knowledge, we read above, is the result of something being revealed to us – something we have long ago forgotten perhaps. And in this remembering, we are able to choose our thoughts. Perception – how everything is seen by me – is of this world – that which I make as ego. Knowledge comes from within me and is forever there. Seeing the truth is one thing; but to know the Truth is quite another.

6. Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons. There He can communicate His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question. God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will ultimately replace them. That is the real meaning of "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," and "Before Abraham was I am. "Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is stable. "Fear God and keep His commandments" becomes "Know God and accept His certainty."

To re-word this: Right perception is necessary before God can communicate with me, through the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. Within me God tells me of His certainty and knowledge which will provide peace to me – His certainty and His knowledge being a part of me. God is no stranger to me, and I am not a stranger to God. The Knowledge of God – the Knowledge within me – was forever present before the thought of time and perception. There is no beginning to God, and there is no beginning to me. As God, I AM. To know God is to accept my Truth.

7. If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your brother when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. Perceive him correctly so that you can know him. There are no strangers in God's creation. To create as He created you can create only what you know, and therefore accept as yours. God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly. When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him.

Here is another point that is repeated many times in the Course. Attack is only of the mind – attack is only a thought I hold of my brother as I am misperceiving him. I see him as a body. If I dip into the knowledge within me, if I see myself in Truth, I will see the Truth reflecting back from my brother, and in that Truth is the Oneness I seek. As I recognize my brother, I recognize God.
Chapter 3

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IV. Error and the Ego

1. The abilities you now possess are only shadows of your real strength. All of your present functions are divided and open to question and doubt. This is because you are not certain how you will use them, and are therefore incapable of knowledge. You are also incapable of knowledge because you can still perceive lovelessly. Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. Spirit has no levels, and all conflict arises from the concept of levels. Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of unity. The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict. This is because they are meaningless to each other.

No matter how great you think you are right now, you are only in the "shadows of your real strength". Everything you believe in is open to 'question and doubt" – open for discussion as we say. This is because what we do we do without knowledge and we do everything without knowledge because we continue to see without Love. The separation is responsible for us seeing levels, degrees, aspects and intervals – time. Before separation, none of this was even a thought. That Which We Are in Truth has no levels – God is complete. Levels conflict with one another and are as such meaningless to us. But, oh how we insist on seeing them.

2. Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego. The ego is a wrong-minded attempt to perceive yourself as you wish to be, rather than as you are. Yet you can know yourself only as you are, because that is all you can be sure of. Everything else is open to question.

So consciousness, another word we use so often, is the 'home' of the ego. And then we even subdivide it by using words such as 'sub-consciousness'. Before the separation, we were as we are now in Truth, One with God. We are the Mind of God and created accordingly. Now in this dream, we perceive everything – we make it all up – everything is an illusion – a dream. Even to the point of seeing ourselves, and believing in ourselves, as the body we see in the mirror. In our consciousness we try to hide from the Truth of who we are, and yet, try as we may, we are not successful in that attempt for too long. Within us is the knowledge of Truth and nothing will ever change that. We will continue to question the world we see, but we will never question our Truth.

3. The ego is the questioning aspect of the post-separation self, which was made rather than created. It is capable of asking questions but not of perceiving meaningful answers, because these would involve knowledge and cannot be perceived. The mind is therefore confused, because only One-mindedness can be without confusion. A separated or divided mind must be confused. It is necessarily uncertain about what it is. It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. This makes its aspects strangers to each other, and this is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is always possible. You have every reason to feel afraid as you perceive yourself. This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself. You can never make your misperceptions true, and your creation is beyond your own error. That is why you must eventually choose to heal the separation.

This paragraph is the opening to a whole new way of looking at ourselves. Ego will question and question us, but never once will it have an answer. When we turn to ego for an answer, we only receive another question – we are forever chasing our own tail. To put it in its most simplistic form: the ego never has an answer because the ego is nothing and knows nothing. This is why we feel this inner struggle forever in our mind – the Yin/Yang within us – the conflict that never is settled. This is all the result of believing in a separated mind. The One-mindedness we are in Truth is one of peace and joy – no conflicts, no questions, no fears – just knowledge of Love. There is no confusion in One-mindedness.

Look closely at the last couple of lines: I cannot escape from fear until I acknowledge that I did and could not create myself as I see me – this body. I can never make my misperceptions real. Stating this, I choose the heal the separation I believe I see.

4. Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the knowing mind, because it is applicable only to right perception. You can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and even this is subject to degrees, clearly demonstrating that knowledge is not involved. The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for "wrong-mindedness," and applies to the state of mind that induces accurate perception. It is miracle-minded because it heals misperception, and this is indeed a miracle in view of how you perceive yourself.

This paragraph is simply stating that the term 'right-mindedness" does not have anything to do with knowledge, but only to 'right-perception'. The term, as like other terms, is only required in this dream to help grasp the separation we believe in. If 'wrong-mindedness' exists, then 'right-mindedness' also exists. They are both terms about our state of mind in this separation.

5. Perception always involves some misuse of mind, because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active. When it chooses to be separated it chooses to perceive. Until then it wills only to know. Afterwards it can only choose ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity is clear perception. The mind returns to its proper function only when it wills to know. This places it in the service of spirit, where perception is changed. The mind chooses to divide itself when it chooses to make its own levels. But it could not entirely separate itself from spirit, because it is from spirit that it derives its whole power to make or create. Even in miscreation the mind is affirming its Source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because the mind belongs to spirit which God created and which is therefore eternal.

In this dream, we can say that we are forever misusing the mind – we are always perceiving a thought we are holding. And we know that the mind is very active – just try to slow it down – to halt the chatter. When our mind sees separation, it is perceiving. The proper function the mind is then to have 'clear perception' – where the mind wills to know. Here it is in the hands of Spirit, where all perception will change to Love. And our mind tries hard to divide and divide itself – by making levels and degrees of what it perceives. But for all its trying, it can never succeed because the mind is forever One with God and therefore eternal and not able to be changed.

6. The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something. That is why perception involves an exchange or translation, which knowledge does not need. The interpretative function of perception, a distorted form of creation, then permits you to interpret the body as yourself in an attempt to escape from the conflict you have induced. Spirit, which knows, could not be reconciled with this loss of power, because it is incapable of darkness. This makes spirit almost inaccessible to the mind and entirely inaccessible to the body. Thereafter, spirit is perceived as a threat, because light abolishes darkness merely by showing you it is not there. Truth will always overcome error in this way. This cannot be an active process of correction because, as I have already emphasized, knowledge does not do anything. It can be perceived as an attacker, but it cannot attack. What you perceive as its attack is your own vague recognition that knowledge can always be remembered, never having been destroyed.

We see our body because we perceive our projection of a thought we hold. And with this body, we try to run and hide from the Truth within us, but all the time having it present. Such is the insanity of our world. And in insanity is darkness. But the Holy Spirit sees no darkness, only the Light within us. So ego perceives Spirit as an 'enemy' – as a threat to its existence. But regardless of how ego perceives, our Truth – the Holy Spirit – never changes. Knowledge does nothing, it simply is.

7. God and His creations remain in surety, and therefore know that no miscorrelation exists. Truth cannot deal with errors that you want. I was a man who remembered spirit and its knowledge. As a man I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, but to correct error from the bottom up. I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body and the power of the mind. By uniting my will with that of my Creator, I naturally remembered spirit and its real purpose. I cannot unite your will with God's for you, but I can erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it under my guidance. Only your misperceptions stand in your way. Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception induces sane choosing. I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice. "Many are called but few are chosen" should be, "All are called but few choose to listen." Therefore, they do not choose right. The "chosen ones" are merely those who choose right sooner. Right minds can do this now, and they will find rest unto their souls. God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.

We know with God that no fear exists. We cannot hold onto fear and be in our Truth. And look at how Jesus describes his experience. He was a man (human) who did not forget the Spirit within him nor the knowledge contained there. As a man (human) he corrected error at its source – thought. He showed all of the powerlessness of the body – that the illusion held nothing – and showed the power of our mind. By seeing the Oneness of God is all he looked upon, he united his will with that of God. Now he cannot unite our will with God's for us, but he will and does show us to follow him in changing our perceptions that stand in our way. He tells us a second time that he cannot change my the choice for us, but will help us in making our right choice. He will show us – have us remember – how to listen to the still small voice within us – the Voice of God. God knows us only in peace – sees us only in peace – and this is our reality – our Truth.

Chapter 3

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V. Beyond Perception

1. I have said that the abilities you possess are only shadows of your real strength, and that perception, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the separation. No one has been sure of anything since. I have also made it clear that the resurrection was the means for the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's. We can now establish a distinction that will clarify some of our subsequent statements.

Once again he is using the term "shadows" of our real strength. What does 'shadows' mean to you? Is it just the darkness that you see or the light that is close at hand? Did you catch the remark about since perception was a result and introduced after separation, no one has been sure of anything since? Think about that for a bit? And remember what ever Jesus has done, we also can do. We can unite our will with the Will of God and see beyond this body. And so he will clarify some terms for us – this is a point that best pay close attention.

2. Since the separation, the words "create" and "make" have become confused. When you make something, you do so out of a specific sense of lack or need. Anything made for a specific purpose has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation. The ego has invented many ingenious thought systems for this purpose. None of them is creative. Inventiveness is wasted effort even in its most ingenious form. The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract creativity of God's creations.

Here we are told about "make" and "create" – two words we use often in the wrong context. We – ego – make from what we believe is lack or need. What we make is not a creation of God. A creation of God is eternal; what we make is short-lived at best. We – ego – make; God creates – Truth creates.

3. Knowing, as we have already observed, does not lead to doing. The confusion between your real creation and what you have made of yourself is so profound that it has become literally impossible for you to know anything. Knowledge is always stable, and it is quite evident that you are not. Nevertheless, you are perfectly stable as God created you. In this sense, when your behavior is unstable, you are disagreeing with God's idea of your creation. You can do this if you choose, but you would hardly want to do it if you were in your right mind.

Here we are told two important items: 1) that we know nothing, and 2) that we are not stable. And your ego like MINE will defend that we know plenty and that we are certainly stable in this insane world. In Truth we are stable; in the illusion we are insane. Knowing this, which would you choose each and every moment of your day?

4. The fundamental question you continually ask yourself cannot properly be directed to yourself at all. You keep asking what it is you are. This implies that the answer is not only one you know, but is also one that is up to you to supply. Yet you cannot perceive yourself correctly. You have no image to be perceived. The word "image" is always perception-related, and not a part of knowledge. Images are symbolic and stand for something else. The idea of "changing your image" recognizes the power of perception, but also implies that there is nothing stable to know.

By asking ourselves what we are, we are also implying we know – but what is an illusion but an illusion, and being an illusion, are we ready to call ourselves an illusion? And the word 'image" is one that catches us also – if we are created in the image and likeness of God, and we know deeply that we are, then what is that image? Here we are told that 'image' implies a perception related thought – that images stand for something and are but symbols. And so the image of our body is seen as a symbol of what we believe we are in this dream. But what about the image and likeness of God? From the knowledge within us – the knowledge that is God placed and never changes – we know that no image or likeness of God can be perceived by us – for God has neither as we know them. God simply is and we are as God is. We simply are.

5. Knowing is not open to interpretation. You may try to "interpret" meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning. Such incongruities are the result of attempts to regard yourself as separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to make so fundamental a confusion without increasing your overall confusion still further. Your mind may have become very ingenious, but as always happens when method and content are separated, it is utilized in a futile attempt to escape from an inescapable impasse. Ingenuity is totally divorced from knowledge, because knowledge does not require ingenuity. Ingenious thinking is not the truth that shall set you free, but you are free of the need to engage in it when you are willing to let it go.

Knowing is just knowing, as Truth is just Truth. Interpretation is nothing more than one opinion as to the meaning of something against another opinion of the very same thing. We all interpret our projections – we all give them meaning and value. None of that makes them real. And look at why we feel so confused so much of the time – we believe we see ourselves as separated and joined with God at the same time. We cannot be both; we must choose between the two – love and fear.

6. Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly meaningless. The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already have. In electing perception instead of knowledge, you placed yourself in a position where you could resemble your Father only by perceiving miraculously. You have lost the knowledge that you yourself are a miracle of God. Creation is your Source and your only real function.

Here is a concept that we all have a difficult time letting go of – prayer. We are told that the only meaningful prayer is that of forgiveness, and that forgiveness is for ourselves, and once we forgive ourselves, we have no further wants, needs or desires. In that state of being, prayer is then no longer required. But how long do stay in that state of having no needs, desires or wants? And look closely at what a prayer of forgiveness is: merely a request that we may be able to see what we already have – that we may see the Truth within us. We lack nothing in Truth. When we choose perception over knowledge – ego over God – we are but trying to play God. But we are the Creation of God.

7. The statement "God created man in his own image and likeness" needs reinterpretation. "Image" can be understood as "thought," and "likeness" as "of a like quality." God did create spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own. There is nothing else. Perception, on the other hand, is impossible without a belief in "more" and "less." At every level it involves selectivity. Perception is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, organizing and reorganizing, shifting and changing. Evaluation is an essential part of perception, because judgments are necessary in order to select.

And some more on the 'image and likeness of God' statement we say so often. Here it is explained to us that we are the Thought of God and as God, we are. Nothing else exists. This is one point that will be repeated many times as well. The repetition of certain points is done so that we can read them from every conceivable way known to us – so that we can grasp the meaning somehow through this chaos we make.

8. What happens to perceptions if there are no judgments and nothing but perfect equality? Perception becomes impossible. Truth can only be known. All of it is equally true, and knowing any part of it is to know all of it. Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends the laws governing perception, because partial knowledge is impossible. It is all one and has no separate parts. You who are really one with it need but know yourself and your knowledge is complete. To know God's miracle is to know Him.

Perceptions without judgment are impossible. Perceptions being equal are impossible. Perception is only part awareness, knowing is all. But partial knowledge is also not possible, as is everything related to our Truth. There is no partial to the Truth we are. To know yourself in Truth is to know God.

9. Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of your brother is necessary, because minds have chosen to see themselves as separate. Spirit knows God completely. That is its miraculous power. The fact that each one has this power completely is a condition entirely alien to the world's thinking. The world believes that if anyone has everything, there is nothing left. But God's miracles are as total as His Thoughts because they are His Thoughts.

Forgiveness that was spoken of ABOVE is the healing of our perception of separation. With that healing, comes our brother is Truth as well. We see us all as the One we are. Ego cannot comprehend that we are one and the same. Ego wants one of us at least to be better than, smarter than, more knowledgeable than another. Otherwise, ego believes what is the sense to our world? And is there sense to our world?

10. As long as perception lasts prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and His miracle are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in His light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear.

Again prayer is mentioned because as long as perception is something we believe we do, AND THEN prayer is something that we must also do. We know at a deep level that the Atonement is a correction of our error – a correction of a thought we are holding. But as long as we continue to perceive our thoughts, we have not accepted the Atonement. A communion with God – a commingling with God – is our natural state of being – we are One with God forever. We cannot be separated from All That Is. Think about the line that tells us that our worth – something the ego can grasp – is beyond all doubt – beyond improvement. Forget all the many ways ego will present to you for improvement upon your perception of yourself – you are perfect in the image and likeness of God.

Chapter 3

THE INNOCENT PERCEPTION

VI. Judgment and the Authority Problem

1. We have already discussed the Last Judgment, but in insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment there will be no more. Judgment is symbolic because beyond perception there is no judgment. When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged," it means that if you judge the reality of others you will be unable to avoid judging your own.

Short and quick to the point – if we don't want to be judged, then we must not judge as well. And a review that judgment is only required for perception – when we stop perceiving the thoughts we hold, we will no longer judge.

2. The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not knowledge rests. I have discussed this before in terms of the selectivity of perception, pointing out that evaluation is its obvious prerequisite. Judgment always involves rejection. It never emphasizes only the positive aspects of what is judged, whether in you or in others. What has been perceived and rejected, or judged and found wanting, remains in your mind because it has been perceived. One of the illusions from which you suffer is the belief that what you judged against has no effect. This cannot be true unless you also believe that what you judged against does not exist. You evidently do not believe this, or you would not have judged against it. In the end it does not matter whether your judgment is right or wrong. Either way you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it implies the belief that reality is yours to select from.

Look closely at the first sentence: we use judgment when we fail to use knowledge. Judgment is only for this dream, while knowledge is eternal. In judgment, we choose one item over another – thereby rejecting one item. It is just another part of the world of duality we have made. If I did not believe in what I judge, I would not judge. So that as I continue to judge in this world of illusions, I must also being believing in this world of illusion.

3. You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment. When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them. All uncertainty comes from the belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need judgment to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself. In the presence of knowledge all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception.

Ever been to where he is talking about – about the moment frozen in time when you saw others from the light within you, and that light reflected back to you from them. And in that light, you melted into the Oneness we are? So instead of perception – instead of perceiving a brother, we can simply recognize a brother in truth.

4. You are very fearful of everything you have perceived but have refused to accept. You believe that, because you have refused to accept it, you have lost control over it. This is why you see it in nightmares, or in pleasant disguises in what seem to be your happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought into awareness. It is not dangerous in itself, but you have made it seem dangerous to you.

So where does the fear come from in everything we perceive? Only from ourselves – only from the value we give our perception. Nothing out there can harm us – nothing, in fact, we cannot be harmed.

5. When you feel tired, it is because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone, it is because you have judged him as unworthy. When you laugh at yourself you must laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more unworthy than they are. All this makes you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening. You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourself. The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished. Yet if you wish to be the author of reality, you will insist on holding on to judgment. You will also regard judgment with fear, believing that it will someday be used against you. This belief can exist only to the extent that you believe in the efficacy of judgment as a weapon of defense for your own authority.

So are you feeling tired right now? Could any of the above be the cause? Or even all of the above? Can you imagine one hour in your dream where you did not judge anything? Can you possibly go five minutes without judging? And yet we 'cherish' this 'ability' so much – judging is what we do and all that we do. Imagine yourself going through a day saying this is good – this is bad – for every single item and person you look upon. This is what we do without even thinking about it. When we take time out – when we visit within – we pause our thoughts – our judgment and experience our truth and we are at peace. No judgment, simply being.

6. God offers only mercy. Your words should reflect only mercy, because that is what you have received and that is what you should give. Justice is a temporary expedient, or an attempt to teach you the meaning of mercy. It is judgmental only because you are capable of injustice.

Could I possibly offer you that which God does not offer you? Would I not be trying to be different from God, from my Truth?

7. I have spoken of different symptoms, and at that level there is almost endless variation. There is, however, only one cause for all of them: the authority problem. This is "the root of all evil." Every symptom the ego makes involves a contradiction in terms, because the mind is split between the ego and the Holy Spirit, so that whatever the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory. This untenable position is the result of the authority problem which, because it accepts the one inconceivable thought as its premise, can produce only ideas that are inconceivable.

The 'root of all evil' is authority – ego vs. Spirit; me vs. Truth. This, for me, goes back to the meaning of 'make' and 'create.' What ego makes is incomplete – what God creates is whole and complete.

8. The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When you have an authority problem, it is always because you believe you are the author of yourself and project your delusion onto others. You then perceive the situation as one in which others are literally fighting you for your authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those who believe they have usurped the power of God. This belief is very frightening to them, but hardly troubles God. He is, however, eager to undo it, not to punish His children, but only because He knows that it makes them unhappy. God's creations are given their true Authorship, but you prefer to be anonymous when you choose to separate yourself from your Author. Being uncertain of your true Authorship, you believe that your creation was anonymous. This leaves you in a position where it sounds meaningful to believe that you created yourself. The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in your mind that it may even doubt whether you really exist at all.

Ever been to that place where you fell victim to another – where you allowed another to try to take from you your 'authorship'? You gave them your power, so it appeared? The good news is that you can't give this power away. The problem is that we are forgetting our Source – we are forgetting who we are in truth. And so we believe that we are alone in this crazy world and that everyone is 'out to get us.' And we even get to the point now and then, where we question just what this body really is, and are we anything but this body.

9. Only those who give over all desire to reject can know that their own rejection is impossible. You have not usurped the power of God, but you have lost it. Fortunately, to lose something does not mean that it has gone. It merely means that you do not remember where it is. Its existence does not depend on your ability to identify it, or even to place it. It is possible to look on reality without judgment and merely know that it is there.

And this is more good news! We have and cannot usurped the power of God, but we can lose it – we can forget where it is and this we often do. With this Course as a tool on our path, we begin to remember where this power lies within us – we begin to remember how to access this power – we begin to remember our truth.

10. Peace is a natural heritage of spirit. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is. The problem everyone must decide is the fundamental question of authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship. The offense is never to God, but only to those who deny Him. To deny His Authorship is to deny yourself the reason for your peace, so that you see yourself only in segments. This strange perception is the authority problem.

I can refuse my Truth, but I can never change my Truth. Ego fears my Truth because of Its Source – It's Author. In fearing my Truth, I am denying my Truth – I am denying God. But in my denial, the Truth remains the Truth.

11. There is no one who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this is the result of his own free will he must regard his will as not free, or the circular reasoning in this position would be quite apparent. Free will must lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire. Wishes are not facts. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. Yet no one in his right mind believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven" say, "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said, "I know what I am and I accept my own inheritance."

This is one powerful paragraph – read it once more. When we 'wish' we are stating the our ability to will is not adequate – our will and God's Will being one and the same Will. And that last line is one to go on the 'fridge – "I know what I am and I accept what I am. I know Who I am and I accept Who I am."

Chapter 3

THE INNOCENT PERCEPTION

VII. Creating versus the Self-Image

1. Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed. Their resemblance lies in their power as foundations. Their difference lies in what rests upon them. Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which one lives. It is a mistake to believe that a thought system based on lies is weak. Nothing made by a child of God is without power. It is essential to realize this, because otherwise you will be unable to escape from the prison you have made.

And we are again confronted with 'make' and 'create.' Must be an important point for us to remember, right? We have two systems of beliefs – ego and Spirit – make and create – fear and love – illusion and truth. Both systems appear very strong to us.

2. You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating the power of your mind. To do so is to deceive yourself, and this will hurt you because you really understand the strength of the mind. You also realize that you cannot weaken it, any more than you can weaken God. The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creations. The devil deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return for gifts of no real worth. This makes absolutely no sense.

Don Miguel Ruiz uses the term 'lies' in his books when he talks about all the teaching we get from children on up to adults. He calls them lies because they are basically that. Seeing those 'truths' as lies helps us to understand what they are and give them no value. The mind is our most powerful tool – it is our only tool. And the term 'devil' that was and perhaps still is, thought to be so powerful a term, is nothing more than a concept – a thought we hold. That should tell us something about how to deal with the 'devil.' But he is talking about ego here – not the 'devil' although many of us give it that name. We can only listen to ego or Spirit – there is no other voice.

3. We have discussed the fall or separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood. The separation is a system of thought real enough in time, though not in eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer. The fruit of only one tree was "forbidden" in the symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it, or it could not have been eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you that He does, would He have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible? The "forbidden tree" was named the "tree of knowledge." Yet God created knowledge and gave it freely to His creations. The symbolism here has been given many interpretations, but you may be sure that any interpretation that sees either God or His creations as capable of destroying Their Own purpose is in error.

The separation we believe so strongly in, appears very real to us in the time we make, but in our reality, in our truth, the separation never occurred and time does not exist. Think for a moment about the 'tree of knowledge' created by God and yet forbidden to Adam and Eve – that makes no sense to me. God does limit us in any way nor does God limit the gifts given to us. The 'tree of knowledge' is within each of us and we have but to be still and go there and partake of Its fruits.

4. Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for usurping the ability for self-creating. This is the only sense in which God and His creations are not co-creators. The belief that they are is implicit in the "self-concept," or the tendency of the self to make an image of itself. Images are perceived, not known. Knowledge cannot deceive, but perception can. You can perceive yourself as self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it. You cannot make it true. And, as I said before, when you finally perceive correctly you can only be glad that you cannot. Until then, however, the belief that you can is the foundation stone in your thought system, and all your defenses are used to attack ideas that might bring it to light. You still believe you are an image of your own making. Your mind is split with the Holy Spirit on this point, and there is no resolution while you believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. That is why you cannot create and are filled with fear about what you make.

So in the story, eating the fruit was our usurping the Will of God, or so we believed. We believe we might be able to do it better than God, and so we gave it a try. A hilarious joke but one we failed to laugh at. We actually took ourselves seriously. In the making of ourselves, we forgot the knowledge which was ours, and we focused instead on projection and perception. In the projection and perception of our thoughts are a myriad of fears which make those thoughts appear real. Look at how humorous we truly are – we make our own world but we make it a world of chaos and fears, and then frighten ourselves into believing it is real.

5. The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil." It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Look at your life and see what the devil has made. But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie. Your creation by God is the only Foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it. Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death.

Note the high-lighted phrases: I am a creation of God and that Mind is my mind and can never be split, separated or taken from me. I began in Truth, I am in Truth and I will forever be in Truth. I have never left my Source and there is no place I must return, for I have never been away. And everything that I believe has happened since that thought of separation, never was.

6. The branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and will wither away. Be glad! The light will shine from the true Foundation of life, and your own thought system will stand corrected. It cannot stand otherwise. You who fear salvation are choosing death. Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and perception, are irreconcilable. To believe that they can be reconciled is to believe that God and His Son can not. Only the oneness of knowledge is free of conflict. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world. Only in this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits.

My Kingdom is not within my world – my Truth is not here in my projections of thought. I have never left where I have forever been. Death is but an experience of this life but it is not an ending for me. I am as I will forever be – Truth.

Chapter 4.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

Introduction

1. The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. Devotion to a brother cannot set you back either. It can lead only to mutual progress. The result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is the opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to be dis-spirited, but to be inspired is to be in the spirit. To be egocentric is to be dis-spirited, but to be Self-centered in the right sense is to be inspired or in spirit. The truly inspired are enlightened and cannot abide in darkness.

The first couple of lines here is telling me that there is no going back – with myself or my brother. I can only be with my brother in the here and now – this moment. And as I help my brother, so also am I helped. Each time I read that inspiration is the opposite of fatigue, I catch myself thinking about the times I was inspire to do some thing and yet felt this feeling of tiredness come over me. Those times I gave into this feeling, I discovered later that I missed a great opportunity to help another. Each time that this happens, I question myself as to what is really happening.

2. You can speak from the spirit or from the ego, as you choose. If you speak from spirit you have chosen to "Be still and know that I am God." These words are inspired because they reflect knowledge. If you speak from the ego you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming it, and are thus dis-spiriting yourself. Do not embark on useless journeys, because they are indeed in vain. The ego may desire them, but spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its Foundation.

In line with the teachings of the Course, we are told again that we choose who to speak from – ego or Spirit. I often think of Wayne Dyer who says that he seldom knows what his talk will be about – he just asks for the presence of the Holy Spirit and the words flow from his mouth. That, for me, is truly, being still and allowing God to work through you. So it is either that we acknowledge our truth or continue to believe in this illusion. And the term 'useless journey' is a good one for those excursions ego has led us on in the past. Have you ever received what you had hoped for on a 'journey' with ego?

3. The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey." Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it.

So here we are in the season of Lent, where all too often we have focused on the 'useless journey of the cross.' We are being told here that the journey is over – completed so we must move on from it, not stay in it. We see that journey as our last useless journey and affirm that from here on we will see ourselves wakening to our Truth, resurrecting in our own light. Death is but an illusion of this dream, nothing more. It is also the end of ego, but not of our Truth.

Remember your younger years where you became so absorbed in the Lenten traditions, that you 'sacrificed' candy and movies as penance? And do you remember the sadness that was laid upon those 40 days of lamenting – those 40 days of services after services, dwelling on the torture and eventual death of the man called Jesus? We all have many tales to tell from that era of our life – but now look at that era as the useless journey – the last useless journey we took. It was useless because it took us nowhere. In fact, it kept us prisoner.

And the last line above tells us that we have 'another journey' to take, not one of uselessness, but one with a purpose. And this Course – this Text and these Lessons – is the preparation required for the trek. Are you up to it? Do you care to be led where you have never remembered before?
Chapter 4.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

I. Right Teaching and Right Learning

1. A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them. Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and unless they share their lessons conviction will be lacking. A good teacher must believe in the ideas he teaches, but he must meet another condition; he must believe in the students to whom he offers the ideas.

This is from my interpretation from The Manual of Teachers, with reference to a Teacher of God: A teacher of God, Jesus tells us, is anyone of us who choose to be a teacher of God. The qualifications to be a teacher consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere we have made a deliberate choice where we did not see our interests separate from our brother. Once we have done that, our road is clearly established and our direction is surely set. A light has entered our darkness. This light may be only a single light, but it is more than adequate. We have entered an agreement with God even though we may not yet believe in God. We have become a bringer of salvation; we have become a teacher of God.

So the first paragraph is saying that as I teach, I also learn; and as I learn, I teach. Furthermore, the role of teacher and pupil is never really that evident, for we are both at any given time. But a key here is that a teacher must believe in what he is teaching and must believe in those he is teaching.

2. Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change. Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation. They always perceive it as a move toward further separation, because the separation was their first experience of change. You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego you will find peace. This profound confusion is possible only if you maintain that the same thought system can stand on two foundations. Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God's Self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker can be misguided. He cannot, however, make the totally lifeless out of the life-given.

Here is that word that many of us fear: 'change.' Think about change for a moment and you will see it as an ego thing – keep everything as it is – in fear – that way we never go beyond where we are at. Spirit, on the other hand, always presents change to us as we request – we ask to see this differently and it is presented to us differently – it is offered to us as a change. Perhaps the next time a 'change' is before you, you will not hesitate before it, but gladly embrace it – it is being presented at your request.

3. Spirit need not be taught, but the ego must be. Learning is ultimately perceived as frightening because it leads to the relinquishment, not the destruction, of the ego to the light of spirit. This is the change the ego must fear, because it does not share my charity. My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. I will never attack your ego, but I am trying to teach you how its thought system arose. When I remind you of your true creation, your ego cannot but respond with fear.

And here is the reason that ego fears change. As we change our thinking from darkness to light – from fear to love – all of us changes, even our perception of the ego part. We begin to see that the ego side of us is not real – not true and so we begin to remember all that we have forgotten. As more light is remembered, more darkness must be allowed to leave.

4. Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. Refusing to change your mind will not prove that the separation has not occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind. You dream of a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it. If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God.

Teaching and learning; learning and teaching – this is what this is all about. As we do one, we do the other. In doing either, we change our mind of the thoughts we held. And look at the 'guarantee' we have here – 'to correct it gently" and 'be lead back' to where we actually are – to awake.

5. Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own learning that they will one day no longer need him. This is the one true goal of the teacher. It is impossible to convince the ego of this, because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the lawmaker believes. It is natural for the ego to try to protect itself once you have made it, but it is not natural for you to want to obey its laws unless you believe them. The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin. You can, because of the nature of yours.

Read the first line once more – this is the purpose of relationships and why they appear to be no longer needed – we have learned from the teacher or taught the student – and it is the moment to move on. Of course ego does not understand this. Ego wants to hold onto anything and everything, but we have remembered that holding onto anything prevents us from moving forward.

6. Egos can clash in any situation, but spirit cannot clash at all. If you perceive a teacher as merely "a larger ego" you will be afraid, because to enlarge an ego would be to increase anxiety about separation. I will teach with you and live with you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need for a teacher. This is the opposite of the ego-oriented teacher's goal. He is concerned with the effect of his ego on other egos, and therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego preservation. I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as you believe it. I am constantly being perceived as a teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself.

How many times have you seen your 'teacher' as nothing more than one large ego in your face? Rather than listening, you wanted to run away from it, only to discover that teacher waiting for you as someone else in your life. Everyone is a teacher for us. It is up to us to learn from then so that we can move on. And sometimes we have placed teachers on a few steps above us, but we now know that the placement was ego driven – all teachers are but there to teach – not one is greater than another.

7. Your worth is not established by teaching or learning. Your worth is established by God. As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority. Teachers must be patient and repeat their lessons until they are learned. I am willing to do this, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you. Again, nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point is not debatable except in delusions. Your ego is never at stake because God did not create it. Your spirit is never at stake because He did. Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.

When we talk of 'worth' or 'value' we know instantly that we are thinking with ego. Who we are and what we are is as God created – the image and likeness of God. What we teach to another gives us no more meaning than any other teacher. What we teach is beyond an ego value system – beyond any 'worth' it could dream up. We can never be greater than that which is as we are created.

8. The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will remain doubtful as long as you believe in its existence. You who made it cannot trust it, because in your right mind you realize it is not real. The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is. You are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of spirit. When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are.

We have all come upon 'teachers' who imply that what they are saying is the only way – the only truth. They wish to have us believe that unless we follow what they are proclaiming, we will forever be miserable, unhappy and lost. And yet as we listen to these 'teachers' we notice a 'gut' reaction that what we are hearing is not truth. These teachers instill fear and guilt and shame – all the chosen curriculum of the ego. If you were ever there, remember how you were led away from force within you, how you walked through the fear, guilt and shame and came out in your own light? Read again the line that tells us to 'be still and know that God is real and you are His beloved Son is whom He is well pleased.'

9. God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen to create unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting. Your ego has chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it. When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible. Do not believe the incredible now. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable. The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you.

Throughout life we have encountered the term 'inevitable' many times – meaning that sooner or later what we are trying to avoid, will happen. Our Truth is just such an item – it is inevitable that we shall see our Truth – recognize our Truth – be our Truth. But we don't need to constantly postpone this joy – we can drop the fears we hold about our Truth and let is be know to us once again. Ego will have believing that we can avoid God. God has made it known that He is with us.

10. The ego is afraid of the spirit's joy, because once you have experienced it you will withdraw all protection from the ego, and become totally without investment in fear. Your investment is great now because fear is a witness to the separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it. Leave it behind! Do not listen to it and do not preserve it. Listen only to God, Who is as incapable of deception as is the spirit He created. Release yourself and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourself to others, and do not accept such a picture of them yourself.

What happens to us if we no longer have an investment in fear? If we no longer give fear any value? If we simply de-value the illusion? What happens to us? Could it be that we simply drop the illusion we hold so dear to us, and just be the Truth we have forever been? Could it be that we fail to see the body in the mirror but instead see a reflection of God? And where we once saw others, we see also the 'face' of God? Could it be that wherever darkness once was, light is now present?

11. The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you, because it cannot build otherwise. Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. Its weakness is your strength. Only God could make a home that is worthy of His creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession. Yet His home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter it. Of this you can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of making the eternal.

This body that we believe in, that we even cherish at times, is not our 'home' within the world we also call 'home'. This body is but an illusion within an illusion within an illusion, etc. We have never left our Source regardless of what we believe at times. We have never done what can never be done.

12. Of your ego you can do nothing to save yourself or others, but of your spirit you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. Spirit is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance and gladly sheds its light everywhere. The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them truer perception. The Kingdom of Heaven is the spirit's right, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the Love of God for His creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and only of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.

As an ego, we can do absolutely nothing to ourselves or another ego, but as the Spirit we are, we can accomplish anything. In Spirit is the knowing; in ego is the arrogance. Humility is of Spirit as we are told, and pride is of the ego. And this 'Kingdom of Heaven' that we speak of is not some far off place – not somewhere out there – but it is within each of us – now and forever.

13. I will substitute for your ego if you wish, but never for your spirit. A father can safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves no confusion about the child's origin. The brother can protect the child's body and his ego, but he does not confuse himself with the father because he does this. I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together so we can be free of them together. I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. Spirit is far beyond the need of your protection or mine. Remember this:

In this world you need not have tribulation because I have overcome the world. That is why you should be of good cheer.

Are you at a point on your path where you wish to step forward and be one of the 'devoted teachers" requested here? Are you ready to accept that within your mind is all the power that is? Are you ready to accept that you are the Spirit spoken of here? We need not continue to look for and experience sorrow in this world, because the world has been shown to be nothing more than an illusion. We should rather celebrate this knowledge than to hide it in fear.

Chapter 4.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

II. The Ego and False Autonomy

1. It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding. Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.

We are told here that to question how the mind made the ego is good to ask, but any answer that we might think of would pertain to a past that matters not; history is but a repeat of the past in the present.

2. Everyone makes an ego or a self for himself, which is subject to enormous variation because of its instability. He also makes an ego for everyone else he perceives, which is equally variable. Their interaction is a process that alters both, because they were not made by or with the Unalterable. It is important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place in the mind as when it involves physical proximity. Thinking about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is physical interaction. There could be no better example that the ego is only an idea and not a fact.

Let this one stay with you a bit today. Everyone of us makes an ego for ourselves and for everyone we believe we see. And each ego is perceived differently by us, therefore we believe that not only are we separate, but all different. And there are times when we see one ego in a loving way, and yet, we can quickly change our mind and see the same ego from the state of fear. Our own ego is just like that as well. We are constantly in a state of change with ego, as opposed to being unchangeable in Truth. What God has created does not change, does not alter, does not differ. Because the ego is forever changing, we can begin to see that it is but a thought we hold in our minds.

3. Your own state of mind is a good example of how the ego was made. When you threw knowledge away it is as if you never had it. This is so apparent that one need only recognize it to see that it does happen. If this occurs in the present, why is it surprising that it occurred in the past? Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, though hardly to something that occurs with such persistence. But do not forget that the mind need not work that way, even though it does work that way now.

The good news here is that just because we are the way we see ourselves now, it does not mean that we will forever be like this. We can change how we see ourselves with a change of thought within our mind. There is no reason that we repeat a history of a past in our present.

4. Think of the love of animals for their offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. That is because they regard them as part of themselves. No one dismisses something he considers part of himself. You react to your ego much as God does to His creations,–with love, protection and charity. Your reactions to the self you made are not surprising. In fact, they resemble in many ways how you will one day react to your real creations, which are as timeless as you are. The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. When teaching is no longer necessary you will merely know God. Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self.

Did you skip over this: "The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are." Our believing in this body, for example, is an ego function that causes us to be very focused while we ignore our Truth. Belief is of the ego, knowing is of God. We know deep within us what our Truth is, but we also believe we are this body – and here is a struggle that we appear to endure.

5. Undermining the ego's thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors, although they may well harm themselves if you do not. In this sense you are still a baby. You have no sense of real self-preservation, and are likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that must go together. Your attitudes even toward this are necessarily conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. This will not last. Be patient a while and remember that the outcome is as certain as God.

If we truly understood what self-preservation was, would we have the addictions we have – alcohol, food, drugs, etc.? We do not know what is best for us as a body. Note that we are told that attitudes are ego-based and will not last. What a great thought! And this is not the first time, nor the last time, we are told to be patient. Can you ever remember a patient ego?

6. Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is obvious when you consider what is involved. To the ego, to give anything implies that you will have to do without it. When you associate giving with sacrifice, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give. "Giving to get" is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in relation to other egos. It is therefore continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity that gave rise to it. Its whole perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real. "Self-esteem" in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This "self-esteem" is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego's existence.

Here is that big test for ego: if we give, we will no longer have it, therefore if we give, we have less. Giving from our heart cause ego to draw a battle line with us. The ego always wants more, but never give so that it would have less. And look at the term 'self-esteem' – a term that is bantered about quite a lot in many self-help books. And the term 'stress' meaning anything that refers as a threat to ego's existence.

7. The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible. The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it. That is why the concept of "getting" arose in the ego's thought system. Appetites are "getting" mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself. This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called "higher ego needs." Body appetites are not physical in origin. The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is really possible.

There is a whole lot of 'food for thought' here – we live by comparison – comparing ourselves to each other. Equality is not something we see, but only inequality – they have something I don't have. I never see what I have already, but I continue to see what I believe I still need. This is true of my material wants as it is true of my body appetites – food, drugs, alcohol, etc. My body appetites are not physical – they are nothing more than a thought within my mind. Ego sees my body as its home and wants to increase its holdings  Could it be that dieting begins and ends with a thought we hold and not what we consume?

8. The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own. The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit's acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional. The creations of God do not create myths, although creative effort can be turned to mythology. It can do so, however, only under one condition; what it makes is then no longer creative. Myths are entirely perceptual, and so ambiguous in form and characteristically good-and-evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful connotations.

Ever have the thought that you are alone in this world? That it is you against them? And this state of separation is nothing more than a state of fear, a state where all ego's fear each other, fear that they will or are being attacked by another. Just writing this or reading this, we have to stop and realize there must be a better way to go through this dream. Spirit does not recognize ego for it is an illusion. Ego does not recognize Spirit for it does not know Love. Ego has this feeling that it is always in threat of ending its existence by some 'force' somewhere. Self-esteem is but a reaction from ego that something or someone is constantly finding fault with it – is forever rejecting it.

9. Myths and magic are closely associated, since myths are usually related to ego origins, and magic to the powers the ego ascribes to itself. Mythological systems generally include some account of "the creation," and associate this with its particular form of magic. The so-called "battle for survival" is only the ego's struggle to preserve itself, and its interpretation of its own beginning. This beginning is usually associated with physical birth, because it is hard to maintain that the ego existed before that point in time. The more "religiously" ego-oriented may believe that the soul existed before, and will continue to exist after a temporary lapse into ego life. Some even believe that the soul will be punished for this lapse. However, salvation does not apply to spirit, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged.

I know I have read this paragraph many, many times before. Each time it simply stops me and I must read it carefully more times. When it talks of 'mythological systems' I immediately go the Bible – the story of 'creation' – the 'the story of survival' – the beginning of the ego. This paragraph touches not only on those items, but also hits upon 'reincarnation' – 'sin' – 'last judgment' – etc.

10. Salvation is nothing more than "right-mindedness," which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One-mindedness is restored. Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, and therefore wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move. Its direction is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which it adheres.

Although we are told that salvation is not required for spirit – for our true nature – we read that salvation is simply right-mindedness which will lead us to One-mindedness of our Truth. It is necessary in this dream we have because we will then erase 'wrong-mindedness' of ego.

11. It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary only because misperception is a block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a steppingstone towards it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable realization that all perception is unnecessary. This removes the block entirely. You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the "you" who are living in this world? Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it implies no change at all. It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. That is its main difference from everything else the mind can grasp.

Correcting perceptions is temporary at best, but necessary for us to remove our block to knowledge that is within us. We will come to the conclusion that perception is not necessary at all. And when we ask how this is possible, we must ask who is asking – ego or Spirit? Who do you think you are living in this dream, ego or Spirit? Are you in a constant state of immortality or in a constant state of fearing death? One is but a thought, the other knowledge.

Chapter 4.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

III. Love without Conflict

1. It is hard to understand what "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word "within" is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement; a message which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts. You, too, have a Kingdom that your spirit created. It has not ceased to create because of the ego's illusions. Your creations are no more fatherless than you are. Your ego and your spirit will never be co-creators, but your spirit and your Creator will always be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are.

This has been very often a stumbling block for students of the Course. We have been told as children that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' was up there and we had to very good in order to go there. But we never knew what 'there' was. Now as adults on known spiritual paths, we have remembered that the 'Kingdom' we still seek is not 'out there' but within. Ever notice how ego simply ignores this word 'within' because it does not relate to it. Everything of the ego is out there – everything we are in Truth is within. God created you – you are His Creation – the Kingdom of Heaven is His Creation – you are the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.

2. This is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temptation. It is a declaration of independence. You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully. The reason you need my help is because you have denied your own Guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from the false, so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and can shine into your mind. Against our united strength the ego cannot prevail.

Try just saying the first part of the prayer: 'The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected.' Very adequate and is acceptable to those who do like to use a negative word in prayer. Again we come to remember that the 'Kingdom' is us – we are perfectly united – we are One, and because we are, nothing and no one can cause us harm. Sound familiar? We have denied God since this dream began and we are now in the process of remembering all that we have denied and forgotten. And we shall remember it all.

3. It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards spirit as its "enemy." The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you this life is your existence because it is its own. Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?

So read this carefully and see clearly what ego is offering you to believe in it. A 'sense of temporary existence' as opposed to eternal being. It offers you a 'beginning and an ending' instead of eternal existence. It offers you a 'knowledge of permanence and unshakable being.' Why are we always stressed out and fearful of everything, especially dieing – where is the permanence in death. This it offers as opposed to the knowledge that has been ours forever – no beginning and no ending. Look over the offerings closely and see if this is what you what to believe in as opposed to your Truth.

4. You who identify with your ego cannot believe God loves you. You do not love what you made, and what you made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His creations because of your hatred for the self you made. You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. No love in this world is without this ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence the concept is beyond its understanding. Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego's "drive to get."

And here is the subject of love – a word we banter around so much in this illusion. Ego knows nothing of love – this we have been told many times already in many different ways, and I think we have not heard the last of this comment. If the ego knows nothing of love then how could it possibly love? We know that God loves us – we feel that love within us – it is our very essence. Do we feel that from what the ego proclaims to be love? Perhaps you might ask if the Love of God can be in this illusion? And the answer is obvious – you are the Love of God and you are in this illusion, or so you believe. The second to last line is, for me, one of the most penetrating lines in the Course: "Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly." Now take that line and just change some words: "God will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants God, but the mind must want God truly."

5. There is a kind of experience so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never want to cover or hide it again. It is necessary to repeat that your belief in darkness and hiding is why the light cannot enter. The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for you, but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are.

We 'ask' for what we already have been given and have forgotten. In our asking, we show gratitude, not need.

6. No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever. Let us ask the Father in my name to keep you mindful of His Love for you and yours for Him. He has never failed to answer this request, because it asks only for what He has already willed. Those who call truly are always answered. Thou shalt have no other gods before Him because there are none.

Note that the word 'truly' is used again here – a word used to emphasize something that often fail to do – we want to believe in our Truth we say, but do we TRULY want to believe in our Truth? And the first line tells us that there is no force but ourselves that is strong enough to make our choices and strong enough and worthy enough to guide us. Remember how we spoke once of the Holy Spirit being a Voice of God within each of us – a Voice we are aware of only in this illusion? Could it be that that 'Voice' is our Voice in Truth?

7. It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that opposes knowledge. You retain thousands of little scraps of fear that prevent the Holy One from entering. Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make to block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made. No one can see through a wall, but I can step around it. Watch your mind for the scraps of fear, or you will be unable to ask me to do so. I can help you only as our Father created us. I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true. I will never forsake you any more than God will, but I must wait as long as you choose to forsake yourself. Because I wait in love and not in impatience, you will surely ask me truly. I will come in response to a single unequivocal call.

And 'truly' is mentioned again. What does this paragraph say to you – what message do you get from it? Are you seeing that you must acknowledge the illusion before the illusion will change? Are you aware that any obstacles you perceive on your path, you have made and only you can tear down? Do you get the impression that you must be ever on the alert for the many faces of fear that show up in this illusion – they will not be pointed out to you – you must see them for yourself. And when you have seen the fears, torn down the walls and 'truly' ask for help, you shall have immediately.

8. Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. Be very honest with yourself in this, for we must hide nothing from each other. If you will really try to do this, you have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for the Holy One to enter. We will prepare for this together, for once He has come, you will be ready to help me make other minds ready for Him. How long will you deny Him His Kingdom?

Have you ever caught yourself asking for another illusion in place of the illusion you believe you see now? The illusions are your making from your mind. What we 'truly' want is a different perception of the projection we believe we see. Once we acknowledge the presence of The Holy Spirit, others may see the glow from within as well. Once the glow is seen, others may be made aware of their own light within.

9. In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. God has given you everything. This one fact means the ego does not exist, and this makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego's language, "to have" and "to be" are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows that you both have everything and are everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of "getting," which implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we make no distinction between having the Kingdom of God and being the Kingdom of God.

A most powerful paragraph for me – in my mind is the declaration of my release from this illusion. Why would I even doubt that I have everything, believing in who I am in Truth? Having and being are but the same to me – I want for nothing and have everything. I have the Kingdom of God because I am the Kingdom of God.

10. The calm being of God's Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind the ego rules. The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?

When is it that you experience the calm you seek? In meditation perhaps? In the silence you seek? Do you ever experience 'calm' as an offering of ego? Note that the ego continues while we sleep or as we are awake. It perpetually does nothing but make chaos because it knows nothing of order – of calmness. What fear holds us back from believing truly in our Truth?

Chapter 4.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

IV. This Need Not Be

1. If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you.

This is one of those paragraphs that take on a meaning of it's own when placed in the first person: If I cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because I do not choose to listen. That I do listen to my ego is demonstrated by my attitudes, my feelings and my behavior. Yet this is what I want. This is what I am fighting to keep, and what I am vigilant to save. My mind is filled with schemes to save the face of my ego, and I do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which I see the face of ego is dark indeed. How can I maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where I look to find myself is up to me.

2. I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and then change your mind to think with God's. This may seem hard to do, but it is much easier than trying to think against it. Your mind is one with God's. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.

I think it is important for us to grasp the message in the first sentence – we can change our mind but not by changing our behavior. Which comes first? If we are not happy, content and at peace, we know that we can obtain all that. Look again at the brother you condemn with your thoughts – judge before you had the opportunity to know him. Does God judge? Then why do we? Remember who we are in Truth, and we will think like our Source. Denying our Truth will have us thinking in fear.

3. When you are sad, know this need not be. Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise.

We have all had periods of depression – of a time when sadness drenches us and washes us into a river of darkness. We believe we are depressed because of something we want, or need, or desperately search for. All we are doing is forgetting our Truth. In Truth, we have All That Is. Be in fear and be depressed, or be in Truth and know your power.

4. When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know this need not be. You can be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them.

Anxiety seems often to go along with depression. Ever notice when you are anxious, you are always in fear of something. Just another example that only love and fear exist.

5. When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but you have not. Leave the "sins" of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for. But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you. While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt. This need not be.

And here is one more fear we so often choose to embrace – guilt. When we feel guilt, we believe we have gone against God some how, we have committed unpardonable sins. Ego 'sins' but we are perfect as is our Source. The Atonement – the correction of error – corrects our thinking for us, but only we let go of this illusion of sin and ego.

6. Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. It offers you nothing. When you have given up this voluntary dis-spiriting, you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. Yet you are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself. This need not be.

We have previously been told that the ego is nothing – made of nothing and offering nothing. Knowing this, we still forget it so easily and believe that the ego has power – that it can indeed offer us what we believe we need for happiness and peace. As many times as we have followed ego down this road, have you ever found and held onto what you believed you were seeking?

7. The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort. Side with me consistently against this deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back. The disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can be disheartened.

Note the word 'actively' used here – a major key for us to remember. We can 'engage' with God and our brother when we simply stop the chatter of the mind and allow ourselves to slip into the silence of simply being instead of always doing. And note another key here is that this is not a problem of concentration on our part, as we often think it is, but it is just that we believe we are not worthy of 'talking' and 'listening' to God. Ego has us believing that God has forsaken us, when it is we who have appeared to forsaken God.

8. Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you have refused? There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal. Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them. Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment. Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack or protect; to hurt or to heal. The ego should be brought to judgment and found wanting there. Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist. Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it.

Recall those times when you asked for happiness and then you believe God did not respond to you, only to discover later that happiness was presented to you but in a different container than what you expected? The Power we have as the Being we are is without limitation as is It's Source. But yet, we somehow have convinced ourselves that we are indeed powerless at times – think of the many ways we say this exact phrase "I am powerless" and believe in it. If peace and joy and happiness are not where you are in this moment, then look at what is preventing you from experiencing what is yours in Truth. Ego cannot give you what you already have – and what you have the ego does not know anything about – Love.

9. You are a mirror of truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect light. To the ego's dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there because I know these images are not true." Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing that this and only this must be. His Mind shone on you in your creation and brought your mind into being. His Mind still shines on you and must shine through you. Your ego cannot prevent Him from shining on you, but it can prevent you from letting Him shine through you.

First person again: I am a mirror of Truth, in which God shines in perfect Light. To the ego's dark glass I have only to say: 'I will not look because the images are not true.' Then I allow God to shine on me in peace, knowing that this and only this must be. The Mind of God shone on me in my creation and the Mind of God brought my mind into being. The Mind of God still shines on me and must shine through me. Ego cannot prevent God from shining on me, but ego can prevent me from letting God shine through me.

10. The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God. The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego's rule and the healing of the mind. I was created like you in the First, and I have called you to join with me in the Second. I am in charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks. Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your ego. Do not mistake it for humility. Your ego is trying to convince you that it is real and I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real than you are. That knowledge, and I assure you that it is knowledge, means that Christ has come into your mind and healed it.

Here is a phrase that all too often catches many of us – 'The Second Coming of Christ." The First Coming was our creation, and the Second Coming the end of ego. Not only was Jesus created in the First, but we also were. He has moved to the Second and is now showing us how to be there as well. Read this paragraph a few times so that you grasp that ego is indeed wrong and your thinking from within is correct.

11. I do not attack your ego. I do work with your higher mind, the home of the Holy Spirit, whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind, which is its home. I am your vigilance in this, because you are too confused to recognize your own hope. I am not mistaken. Your mind will elect to join with mine, and together we are invincible. You and your brother will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored. I raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God created. Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles; you do. I have called and you will answer. I understand that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer, and as inevitable.

**Why is the ego never attacked? Because it is nothing and how can we attack nothing? The source of our illusion is within our mind, and the healing we seek will take place there. Once we see the ego as nothing, then we no longer see our mind as split. When we see our mind as whole and healed, we wake to our Truth. The difficulty we see in miracles – in a change of thought – is nothing more than a thought we hold. How many times we have been told already that no order of difficulty in miracles exists, and yet we hold onto the belief that there are. And we will be told this fact many more times in the Course, because it is difficult for us to let go of. We are reading this Course because we are responding to some calling within us – we are being drawn to something which does not frighten us. It is our natural path back to our Truth.**

Chapter 4

V. The Ego-Body Illusion

1. All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment. The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together. The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominance. The ego has every reason to do this, according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation.

Basically, what this is saying to me is that ego is insane, and in my Truth, I am sane and see ego with judgment as what it is – nothing. Have you ever known an ego motive? It not only keeps them from us, but it truly has none. Therefore we see it as constantly chasing its own tail, and should it catch, wonder why it was chasing it.

2. A major source of the ego's off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God. Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself. The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. It cannot, however, make them cease to be. It therefore tries to conceal not only "unacceptable" body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to it. Being concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.

And we, knowing our Truth, do just the opposite of ego – thoughts of God are acceptable to us and thoughts of ego are not. Ego – we – can refuse to accept the thoughts of God but that does not make them go away – or to change in any way. They are always there waiting for us to step into the silence and out of the noise. The ego continually attempts to save itself and yet offers death to us – true insanity.

3. Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane. Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego's fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, makes no sense at all.

Any thought system that confuses love and fear must be insane. But confusion is ego's masterpiece. In the confusion shown us, we confuse love for Love. In the confusion we believe in this body while we know within ourselves that this body is not our Truth – it is not who we are.

4. The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body, because it cannot accept it as good enough to be its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is its protector, the mind is also told that the body cannot protect it. Therefore, the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?" to which the ego replies, "Turn to me." The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind's awareness. Once out of awareness the question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked.

This shows clearly – if that is a good word – the ego's thinking, if we can call it that. The body is home to the ego because it chooses the body and even feels 'safe' with the body. But the ego also hates the body, because it is not good enough for its home. This shows that ego is never satisfied even with its own makings. Now if we become as confused as what he is writing about here – and many of us have – remember the confusion that took place when we asked ego for help with a sick body, and getting no answer about the problem. Of course, like always, ego has no response – it has no answer but only has questions.

5. This is the question that must be asked: "Where can I go for protection?" "Seek and ye shall find" does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize. Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized and consciously directed. The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind. Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you. However, not everything you may want to learn has lasting value. Indeed, many of the things you want to learn may be chosen because their value will not last.

So where can I turn to for help – for healing? What I seek will not be found out there, but is waiting within to be found. In finding, we remember more of what we have forgotten, more of what we are learning in this dream. And the more we remember, the more we learn, the more we want to learn and remember.

6. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is eternal, because the eternal must come from God. Eternalness is the one function the ego has tried to develop, but has systematically failed to achieve. The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues touching on the real question in any way. By becoming involved with tangential issues, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. The ego's characteristic busyness with nonessentials is for precisely that purpose. Preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding learning progress. In all these diversionary tactics, however, the one question that is never asked by those who pursue them is, "What for?" This is the question that you must learn to ask in connection with everything. What is the purpose? Whatever it is, it will direct your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort; a decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind.

Ego cannot make eternity – it tries but never succeeds. Could it be because eternity is Love and ego knows nothing of Love? So if it can't make the eternity we know we are, it will offer us what it makes best – busyness – keep us moving – keep us in fear and all of its variety, so that we have no moment to experience a moment of silence. But that moment can come quickly once we start questioning everything as to its purpose. What is it for? What is its purpose to me? Is the purpose for my highest good? Is the purpose of Love?

Chapter 4

VI. The Rewards of God

1. The ego does not recognize the real source of "threat," and if you associate yourself with the ego, you do not understand the situation as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you. I have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. We cannot safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard yourself as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or as long as you believe that you are here. The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate it.

Although we also speak of the ego as being a separate thing, we know it is but a part of our belief system of who we think we are – here and in Truth. The 'who we are" in Truth continues eternally – no beginning and no ending. As God is, so our Truth shall be.

2. In learning to escape from illusions, your debt to your brother is something you must never forget. It is the same debt that you owe to me. Whenever you act egotistically towards another, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. The term "holy" can be used here because, as you learn how much you are indebted to the whole Sonship, which includes me, you come as close to knowledge as perception can. The gap is then so small that knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it forever.

Immediately upon reading the word 'debt' the ego part rises up and questions what it is I owe my brother, and furthermore what is it that I owe this person 'Jesus'. Jesus and my brother and I are One – we are the Sonship. Within that Sonship we are whole or 'holy' as some may see it.

3. You have very little trust in me as yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your ego for guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that this choice is the only sane one you can make. No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing. Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain, because pain is an ego illusion, and can never induce more than a temporary effect. The rewards of God, however, are immediately recognized as eternal. Since this recognition is made by you and not the ego, the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical. You may believe that you have already accepted this difference, but you are by no means convinced as yet. The fact that you believe you must escape from the ego shows this; but you cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it.

Ever notice that as you read the Course more and more, year after year, that the trust you begin to feel is your Truth within you. In the beginning as you read the Course for the first time, you had to place trust in Jesus, but then as you progressed, you noticed that you were placing that trust within yourself – within your Truth of who you are. And the more you trusted within, the more peace you experienced. And the more peace you felt, the more chaos ego laid before you, but you began to see it as illusion. And in doing all this you discovered something about yourself – you are not the ego you believe in. You are far beyond that conception. And remember the times you tried so desperately to humble the ego, to control the ego, or even to punish the ego. Now you can left about those times.

4. The ego and the spirit do not know each other. The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this, it denies all truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that you are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your decision to use the device that enables it to endure.

Read this short paragraph again – the ego is but a device for us to maintain the belief of who we think we are in this body. And the 'biggie' here is the fact that believing in ego is a choice we make – a decision we choose to hold onto. But why?

5. How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This teaches him to associate his misery with its absence, and the opposite of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth. I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. You have taught yourself the opposite. You are still free to choose, but can you really want the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?

This is telling us more than we are reading here – for me, it is telling me that the value I give to anything is just as quickly taken back, if I so choose. Remember the items you gathered along the way, and the importance (value) you gave to them, only to give them away or throw them away at a later date? We have been confused in the past about happiness as offered by the ego – it always seem to come with a price. Now we are learning – remembering – that happiness is not an ego gift – fear is in all its forms. Although we have chosen to believe that way in the past, we also can choose to believe differently right now. This holy instant – stop believing in what you are not, and begin believing in who you are in Truth.

6. My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way. Your mission is very simple. You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego, and I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust, and accepts my Atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His. I have said before that I am in charge of the Atonement. This is only because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through others. My chosen channels cannot fail, because I will lend them my strength as long as theirs is wanting.

So when will our trust in each other be as great? Perhaps we drop our fears, drop our beliefs in who we think we are as these bodies? Note that we are being asked to 'live so as to demonstrate' your Truth. Remember that a Teacher of God does not teach, but demonstrates Love? Be careful with the word 'channel' as used here – ego would like to run with this one. Here we are simply the 'channels' we have forever been – the extension of God.

7. I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception He can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God. If you are grateful to your brother, you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude you come to know your brother, and one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father. Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right. Because you are the Kingdom of God I can lead you back to your own creations. You do not recognize them now, but what has been dissociated is still there.

So we are led to God – but did you read it correctly that our brother is the God we are led to? This is talking about the Oneness of us all, about seeing the God in each other – the meaning of Namaste. We are that which we seek and we are being led back to the memory we have never lost.

8. As you come closer to a brother you approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you. Salvation is a collaborative venture. It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you only as you will give Him to your brothers. Learn first of them and you will be ready to hear God. That is because the function of love is one.

If I fear a brother, I fear God. If I love a brother, I love God. In order to love another, I must first love myself – accept myself as the Truth I AM – and then I can see within each brother, the reflection from within me.

Chapter 4

VII. Creation and Communication

1. It is clear that while the content of any particular ego illusion does not matter, its correction is more helpful in a specific context. Ego illusions are quite specific, although the mind is naturally abstract. Part of the mind becomes concrete, however, when it splits. The concrete part believes in the ego, because the ego depends on the concrete. The ego is the part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation.

Even though the content of an illusion really doesn't matter, a correction is still helpful to us – it changes the way we see our projection. Illusions of ego appear very specific, very real to us. A part of us wants to believe in what we are seeing, another part of us wants to see differently. The part that wants to see differently is our Truth.

2. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply being. The ego is thus against communication, except insofar as it is utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything else it dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself, and it will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. This disruption is a reaction to a specific person or persons. The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in spurious generalization which is really not abstract at all. It merely responds in certain specific ways to everything it perceives as related.

' **Separate whole' is a catchy phrase – means that nothing is needed; it has all that is necessary to exist. And so the illusion begins. Ego has us believe that we are separate – we need nothing more to make us complete, although we need everything to make us happy. Ego will have us see all we look upon as being separate from us, different from us, and also persons we fear.**

3. In contrast, spirit reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator. This communication is the Will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His creations naturally communicate with Him and like Him. This communication is perfectly abstract, since its quality is universal in application and not subject to any judgment, any exception or any alteration. God created you by this and for this. The mind can distort its function, but it cannot endow itself with functions it was not given. That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being.

Now Spirit, for me, keeps it extremely simple – it sees in Truth – no judgment, no separation, only equality and no fear, only love. And does communication mean the extension of Love? "Creation and communication are synonymous." Love and Love.

4. Existence as well as being rest on communication. Existence, however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real. To whatever extent you permit this state to be curtailed you are limiting your sense of your own reality, which becomes total only by recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you. This is your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple and your real Self.

Read this one carefully again. Our existence rests on our communication – our Truth, our Love. We are not 'doing' but rather we are 'being' – a state in which our reality – our Truth is experienced. We can deny our Truth, but that will not change it, alter it, and make it go away. Why do you suppose ego fights so hard to keep us from our Truth?

5. God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. That is what creation means. "How," "what" and "to whom" are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always.

After reading the above, you will know why ego is never connected with the Kingdom of God. How, what and to whom are ego traps – being is an unknown to ego. Giving is seen as losing to ego, while giving is receiving in Truth.

6. The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows it in His Own Being and its experience of His Son's experience. The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him.

And so where do we place the praise we feel? How about on ourselves? This will totally drive ego into a fearful reaction. We so often focus on this illusion that we forget constantly where we truly are at all times. We are with the Source of All and as such create as the Source creates.

7. God has kept your Kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Revelation is not enough, because it is only communication from God. God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He does want it brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation; its content cannot be expressed, because it is intensely personal to the mind that receives it. It can, however, be returned by that mind to other minds, through the attitudes the knowledge from the revelation brings.

Now the Kingdom remember is always within you, and within that Kingdom is the Joy of God given to us. It is there for us whenever we pause and become still. That Joy that is within us can be extended to others and they also will then find it within themselves.

8. God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist. The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them. Their helpfulness is their praise of God, and He will return their praise of Him because they are like Him, and they can rejoice together. God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its individual willingness to share in it. The truly helpful are God's miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you.

One key word here is "wholly" – complete – a mind that is completely helpful, one that is completely harmless. Why do you suppose such a strong term as 'wholly' is used? Could it be to get the point across to us that we cannot be in an either/or spot – we cannot believe we a little helpful and still hold onto some fear. Ego has believe we can do this constantly, but it is just a farce. We cannot be love and also be in fear. So basically, what is our part here? Perhaps to become aware when we feel ourselves being directed – being guided – to be 'wholly' helpful and harmless. We simply allow the guidance we feel to flow through us.

Chapter 5.

HEALING AND WHOLENESS

Introduction

1. To heal is to make happy. I have told you to think how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many you have refused. This is the same as telling you that you have refused to heal yourself. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share it, and promotes the mind's natural impulse to respond as one. Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same time, and thus deprive others of the joy of responding wholeheartedly.

You will remember how you were once told that 'laughter is the best medicine'? There is truth in that, right? Look again at the first line above 'to heal is to make happy.' Have we grabbed onto every opportunity that has been presented for our happiness, or have we declined many of them because we felt 'obligated' to stay where we were – or continue to do what we are doing – or because someone needed us more than we need ourselves? The Course is about changing our belief system – the system of ego thinking that we have been using. Have you been ill because you refused happiness? Think about your response on that.

2. To be wholehearted you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous. To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is offered. Every part benefits, and benefits equally.

We can 'play' with the words presented here and still come up with the same message: to be holy-hearted we must be happy. The only possible holy state is the holy joyous. Some may prefer the word 'holy' but for me, I do prefer "wholly' which implies a completeness. Remember the times when you felt an unhappy heart – a sad heart – even a broken heart? Of course, all those times, you were not happy. But now you know that happiness was just a thought away from the fear you were experiencing. In this paragraph we are reminded again that only love and fear exist, and they cannot coexist – it is either love or fear. There is no such thing as a 'half-state' of fear or love – it is either wholly or not. Have you ever been with a person in the process of experiencing death and suddenly see a smile appear on their face just before their last breath? This is the sign of healing – of the wholeness – of choosing the wholeness of love.

3. You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude. You need not know them individually, or they you. The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only God's holy children are worthy channels of His beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is:

Let me know this brother as I know myself.

Let's put some of this in the first person for emphasis: I am being blessed by every beneficent thought of any one or all of my brothers anywhere and everywhere. I want only to bless them in return for their love. I need not know their names or even where they are. The light within me and within them, is so strong that it radiates throughout all of God's Creation. As a child of God, I am a worthy channel of the joy of God, and my brother is a channel as well, and the Joy of God is given and received by us. It is not possible for me to love my brother any more or any less than I love myself. As I love me, I love you. And I affirm:

I will let my brother know of my love as I know my love.

Chapter 5.

HEALING AND WHOLENESS

I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit

1. Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.

Question: Whose two minds are referred to in the first sentence? All of the above is once again repeated for us because we have not yet accepted it as Truth. Note the last line here – if we accept the concept that giving and receiving are but one, then our entire belief system of the ego is gone.

2. Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:

Thoughts increase by being given away.

And yet have you not experienced those moments when you did not want to share your thoughts with another because either you felt embarrassed at the thought, or you did not want someone to take credit for your thought? All ego ploys because to give is to lose according to ego.

The more who believe in them the stronger they become.

Just look at the world you believe you see and you will grasp the meaning of this statement.

Everything is an idea.

This is not the first, nor the last time we will be reminded of this – but try to accept it as it is presented. Everything you believe you see – believe you feel – believe you experience – is just an idea within your mind.

How, then, can giving and losing be associated?

A thought never leaves its source – a thought never leaves our mind even though we appear to share it with another. We can never lose by giving, only receive. The thoughts that were in the mind of Jesus are in our mind as well.

3. This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I have said already that I can reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is in your right mind, as He was in mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ thinking.

Sometimes asking for help goes against the ego thought system – if we ask for help, we are weak, we are incompetent, we are helpless, and our thoughts from ego even take us lower. To ask the Holy Spirit for help and assistance means that we are beginning our wakening and see that where we are is not where we wish to be – what we see is not what we want to be looking at. But the key is that we must ask first and then the assistance is immediately given. But many times we do not recognize the help we asked for and so it appears that either the help never came or we had to wait for it to be presented in a way more acceptable to us.

4. The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity that has a symbolic function. He is referred to as the Healer, the Comforter and the Guide. He is also described as something "separate," apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "If I go I will send you another Comforter and he will abide with you." His symbolic function makes the Holy Spirit difficult to understand, because symbolism is open to different interpretations. As a man and also one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Holy Spirit or the Universal Inspiration, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for all. I could not have It myself without knowing this. The word "know" is proper in this context, because the Holy Spirit is so close to knowledge that He calls it forth; or better, allows it to come. I have spoken before of the higher or "true" perception, which is so near to truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap. Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot oppose. Therefore you can obstruct it, although you can never lose it.

Using the word 'symbolic' here implies to me that the Holy Spirit is only required in this dream, which we are told that He is. The Holy Spirit, the Voice of God within each of us, is our link to the Truth that lies within us as well. We may ask the question that why is It called the Voice of God instead just God? God does not recognize illusions, and that is where believe we are in this world we make. With the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God, we tap into that knowledge of Truth within us – it is our key to opening the gate of Love – of our Essence. The Truth is forever a part of us for that is never changing. We can deny our Truth but the Truth is still there.

5. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception. He came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the Atonement principle at the same time. Before that there was no need for healing, for no one was comfortless. 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.

Just look at the many descriptions offered here of the Holy Spirit – 'the Christ Mind' – the 'call to Atonement' – the 'restoration of the mind.' I like the term 'restoration of mind' because that is what we appear to be doing in changing our entire belief system back to our Truth – back to all that we have long ago forgotten. And the Voice of God shall be with us throughout this illusion.

6. God honored even the miscreations of His children because they had made them. But He also blessed His children with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions so high they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. He represents a state of mind close enough to One-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge, or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of transferred or "carried over," since the last step is taken by God.

And here is a part we have forgotten – that we have the ability – the power within us – to raise our perceptions so high that we can begin to see the Light before us – that we can glimpse God beyond the light – and the 'last step' as it is so often called in the Course, is not taken by God but taken as God.

7. The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself:

First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who attains it could believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.

With the perception of Truth, we see beyond all appearances before us. We see only Love where we look and we see that sharing – giving – is receiving as well. The Love of God just continues to flow throughout.

Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.

The Voice of God is Love and as Love knows no fear. The Holy Spirit sees no obstructions on our path to the knowledge that is within. And obstructions are placed there by our thoughts and remove by changing our thoughts.

Finally, it points the way beyond the healing that it brings, and leads the mind beyond its own integration toward the paths of creation. It is at this point that sufficient quantitative change occurs to produce a real qualitative shift.

The Holy Spirit directs us on a path of enlightenment – it leads us back to all that we have forgotten – it leads us to our Truth. But even though it leads us and points us in the right direction, the choice to follow it is always ours to make. Once we follow as we are led, we waken more to the Truth within and begin to see our world as never before seen.

Chapter 5.

HEALING AND WHOLENESS

II. The Voice for God

1. Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar, because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of Will between Father and Son.

Did you know that 'reparation' means making amends? So then healing is making amends, making right what we think is wrong. This section by it's title will be about what we refer to as the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. In healing, we look beyond what we are thinking, to the Truth we are, and then seeing ourselves as whole and perfect, we change our mind about the thoughts of illness we hold – the thoughts of fear.

2. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the Call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God's Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.

The Holy Spirit, the Voice of God, calls us to awaken from this dream we are believing in. The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us in this illusion. It is our tie to our Truth. Before we believed in the separation, the Holy Spirit was not – there was no reason for its existence.

3. The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the Call to joy. This Call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at Its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. 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 Sons.

Ego always wants to know what came first as if it is important. Here we are told, and believe, that the Atonement – the correction of our thinking – and the separation began together. Without the separation, Atonement is not required for there is nothing to correct. Note the difference in the voices we hear: the voice of ego we made ourselves and so is totally confused in the direction it gives us – we are led nowhere. The Voice of God is quietly leading us back to the Truth we seek. We can only listen to one voice at a time – remember it is either love or fear in our world. And the 'good news" as the expression goes, is that it is possible for us in our world, to only hear the Voice of God. We are told it takes effort from us and a willingness to learn, but then again, we are told so many times that we have to just show a little willingness for many things to be shown us. I don't believe it is even a question whether one wants to take this effort or not – I believe it is an urging from the Truth within us to bring us back into the Light we are. We may certainly disclaim it. We may even deny its existence, but like anything of Truth, it is forever there.

4. You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. Before the separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now.

I like being told that I am the Kingdom of Heaven. I am that which I seek so what is preventing me from finding it? In the separation we made, darkness exists and the light within shines so low that most of the time, it is not visible to anyone except the Holy Spirit. At our request, the Holy Spirit turns up our light and the darkness begin to fall away – it is seen for what it is – nothing.

5. God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose 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.

We talk a lot about our taking full responsibility for the life we lead, and here we are being told just that – we made another voice so that our connection with God was no longer working. As a result of that, God gave us the Holy Spirit – His Voice in another mode – so that we could choose to listen to It. God does not recognize this illusion we believe in. Why? Because there is nothing here to see, only what we believe.

6. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make. In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.

The Voice of God has us remembering our Truth and forgetting and forgiving our lies – our false beliefs. This world we make is one of duality and because of that, we must always choose between two items – love or fear. To choose is our freedom.

7. 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 may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace. Peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife. What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you listen to the wrong voice you have lost sight of your soul. You cannot lose it, but you can not know it. It is therefore "lost" to you until you choose right.

Think about this for a moment: words such as arrogance, demanding, controlling, attack, etc., are all words of the ego describing the ego. In our Truth is the Peace of God, the Joy of God, the Love of God. We do not put labels to what is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in It's communication with us. Most of the time, we wouldn't even begin to know how to choose the proper words to describe what we experience. There is the difference between ego and Spirit – between love and fear. And then, once again, we are reminded so softly, that what we choose is our decision to make alone always.

8. The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is in the part of your mind that 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 is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and earth are in you, because the call of both is in your mind. The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to serve. The call you answer now is an evaluation because it is a decision. The decision is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.

Did you catch in the first line here, that the Holy Spirit is our Guide in choosing? This does not mean that It will choose for us. It means that when we ask for guidance, it is there for us to use in making our choice. We have free will so our choice is never made for us, although is that not an expression we often use in our world? And then be sure to read the last two lines as well. The decision we make is simple to do. The decision we make is based on which voice is more valuable to us – which voice do we have faith and trust in.

9. 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. This decision is the choice to share it, because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving, and is therefore the one choice that resembles true creation. 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.

With the split mind Jesus had, as we do, he made the decision with the Holy Spirit guidance and the power within him, as we also have, was his to express. He did this so that we may see that it is possible for us to do as well. Here he is telling us what we must do and which decision we must consider making.

10. I have assured you that the Mind that decided for me is also in you, and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This Mind is unequivocal, because it hears only one Voice and answers in only one way. You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the Call to awaken 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.

And again we are told that the Holy Spirit guided Jesus and the Holy Spirit can guide us as well. Some of us still place Jesus on a pedestal, even though it may be just a small one, but Jesus continues to tell us that as he was, so are we. There is but one Mind in Truth. And do you want to know what your calling is? Read the last line several times.

11. 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 restate "My yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way; "Let us join together, for my message is light."

Are we not tempted by the 'wrong voice' constantly? Is that voice not the loudest and fastest talking voice we hear? Is it not also the most annoying? When we listen to that voice, do we ever experience true happiness or joy or peace or Love? Listen to the Holy Spirit, choose from the knowledge presented you, and you will be joined together and speaking the 'message."

12. 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. He teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and to 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.

Now I do not believe that to behave as Jesus behaved is to be taken literally, although ego will certainly be there directing you, if you so choose. To behave as Jesus is to first believe that you are the Love you seek, and then proceed to teach only love by your actions – by your extension of Love to all you look upon.
Chapter 5.

HEALING AND WHOLENESS

III. The Guide to Salvation

1. The way to recognize your brother is by recognizing the Holy Spirit in him. I have already said that the Holy Spirit is the Bridge for the transfer of perception to knowledge, so we can use the terms as if they were related, because in His Mind they are. This relationship must be in His Mind because, unless it were, the separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to healing. He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly yours and also partly God's. This needs clarification, not in statement but in experience.

From the title of this section, who do you think your guide to salvation is? To truly recognize your brother, you must see within him what you are within you. Once seen in this manner, you become One with your brother and others. You are truly of one mind with him.

2. The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea gains as it is shared. Being the Call for God, it is also the idea of God. Since you are part of God it is also the idea of yourself, as well as of all His creations. The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. It is strengthened by being given away. It increases in you as you give it to your brother. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you have. This dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call for God in him, and thus acknowledge Its being.

We could change a word or two here and perhaps make this easier to understand: The Holy Spirit is the thought of healing, and as a thought within our mind, we share that thought with others. As we give, we also receive. As we heal, others heal. Just the fact that I can see within my brother that which is within me, does not mean that my brother also sees the same. But that matters none, for the miracle is seeing the Holy Spirit within him.

3. There are two diametrically opposed ways of seeing your brother. They must both be in your mind, because you are the perceiver. They must also be in his, because you are perceiving him. See him through the Holy Spirit in his mind, and you will recognize Him in yours. What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen.

Remember that this world we make is one of duality – always two opposing views. And both views are in our mind. Which view we choose at any one moment determines how we see our world – how we see our brother. And we also remember that as we see others, we see ourselves as well – they are but a mirror of us.

4. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must share It. It must be increased in strength before you can hear It. It is impossible to hear It in yourself while It is so weak in your mind. It is not weak in Itself, but It is limited by your unwillingness to hear It. If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone your thoughts will frighten you because, by adopting the ego's viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide. This is bound to produce fear.

If you ever took voice lessons, you know that the purpose was to strengthen your voice. If you are a hunter, you learn to tune in to the sounds of nature that are barely audible to you. And so it is with the Holy Spirit within us – unless we call upon it – use it as we have been told – it is weak within us. By using Spirit, we strengthen ourselves in our 'spiritual muscles' – we strengthen ourselves in hearing the Voice within us. It is not so much that the Voice is loud, clear or quiet – it is the fact that we are listening for it and to it. The more we hear the Voice, the more we want to share what we hear and the more we share, the less fear is present.

5. Delay is of the ego, because time is its concept. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity. I have said before that the Holy Spirit is God's Answer to the ego. Everything of which the Holy Spirit reminds you is in direct opposition to the ego's notions, because true and false perceptions are themselves opposed. The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what the ego has made. He undoes it at the same level on which the ego operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change.

Ever think that the Holy Spirit is undoing what the ego does – that being time? Ego has lost in the concept of time, while Spirit takes us to the Holy Instant – the moment – the now. Where would you rather be, trapped in time or at peace in the moment?

6. I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God, so the Holy Spirit understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is the ego's domain, accepts it without question. The only aspect of time that is eternal is now.

Notice when you are thinking about this paragraph, that ego never offers you now – only then and later. Now does contain then and later. Now contains – is – eternity – the absence of time.

7. The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the spirit. His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to work with the ego's beliefs in its own language. His ability to look beyond symbols into eternity enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which He speaks. He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding. Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge. The Holy Spirit is in light because He is in you who are light, but you yourself do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to reinterpret you on behalf of God.

We are forever grateful that the Holy Spirit is present with us in this dream. Without It, we would be lost in the abyss of ego – in the place of darkness – the place of no light. But Spirit does for us what we cannot do – understand our Truth – understand that we are the very Light we seek. Because it is beyond our understanding, our comprehension, Spirit simply interprets that knowledge for us in a way we can accept.

8. You cannot understand yourself alone. This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place of the Sonship is God. This is your life, your eternity and your Self. It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. This vision frightens the ego because it is so calm. Peace is the ego's greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in strife. If you believe there is strife you will react viciously, because the idea of danger has entered your mind. The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego welcomes it. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war.

Let's try this one in the first person: I cannot understand myself alone. This is because I have no meaning apart from my rightful place in the Sonship, in God. This is my life, my eternity and my Self. It is this that the Holy Spirit constantly reminds me. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees in me. The Vision of the Holy Spirit is frightening to me because it is so calm. Peace is my greatest enemy as ego which has a different view of reality and proclaims war as a guarantee of my survival. I believe I become strong in strife. If I believe I see strife, I will react viscously, because the thought of danger is held in my mind. And that idea is very appealing to the ego. The Holy Spirit is also as vigilant as ego to the thought of danger, and opposes such thought as ego welcomes the thought. The Holy Spirit offers me peace in place of danger. Ego offers me time and war; Spirit offers me Truth – peace and eternity.

9. Perception derives meaning from relationships. Those you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions.

Look closely at your relationships – all of them. As you see them, so are your beliefs. Do you see some of them in love, and others in anger? What then are your beliefs? Can you have love and hate at the same time? Ego – that which we believe we are in this dream – is the symbol of separation which this dream is about. In this separation we also dream that we have mind that is split. Can you see that the split is possible to repair? Can you see that Love will heal the split and make the mind whole again? If you can see this, then as you look upon others, you will also see them in love. How do you see others?

10. The Holy Spirit is the perfect Teacher. He uses only what your mind already understands to teach you that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit can deal with a reluctant learner without going counter to his mind, because part of it is still for God. Despite the ego's attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego, although the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His Own dwelling place; the place in the mind where He is at home. You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of God. You who are part of God are not at home except in His peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity.

The Voice of God is our Teacher, and we, It's pupil. And what It offers in not only acceptable to the mind but is understood by the mind. Spirit has all the patience required even for the most reluctant of us to accept It's lessons. If we 'skip' classes now, the lessons will appear for us later. Within our mind Spirit dwells. Within our mind is our Truth known to us as well. Within us is the peace we seek and are beginning to understand that we have had forever. The peace is eternal as we are. We have All That Is and we are just beginning to remember all that we have forgotten.

11. The ego made the world as it perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must perceive time, and reinterpret it into the timeless. He must work through opposites, because He must work with and for a mind that is in opposition. Correct and learn, and be open to learning. You have not made truth, but truth can still set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as He understands. His understanding looks back to God in remembrance of me. He is in communion with God always, and He is part of you. He is your Guide to salvation, because He holds the remembrance of things past and to come, and brings them to the present. He holds this gladness gently in your mind, asking only that you increase it in His Name by sharing it to increase His joy in you.

As ego, I make the world I think I see, but Spirit interprets my projections for me at my request, and I see a world different from what I had been looking upon. Through the interpretations of Spirit, I am being led back to the knowledge I have forever had – I am being led 'home'. Spirit will always show me the opposite of what I see because that it the type of world I have made. The Holy Spirit allows me to remember to see as It sees, to understand as It understand, and reminds me of my Source and who I am in Truth. Being the Voice of God tells me where It is coming from. It guides me back on a journey that never began will bring to where I have forever been. And I am asked but for one small favor in return – to see in my brother that which is alive and forever with me.

Chapter 5

Healing and Wholeness

IV. Teaching and Healing

1. What fear has hidden still is part of you. Joining the Atonement is the way out of fear. The Holy Spirit will help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful, and teach you that only what is loving is true. Truth is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your ability to accept. It belongs to you because, as an extension of God, you created it with Him. It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you. Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore cannot be protected. The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom, and the union of the Sonship is its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom because the Sonship is united. In the presence of those who hear the Holy Spirit's Call to be as one, the ego fades away and is undone.

Try this: Whatever fear is hidden is still a part of me. The correction of error is my way out of fear. Spirit will help me reinterpret everything I see as fear, and teach me only what is love to me. My truth is beyond my ability to destroy and completely within my ability to accept. Truth belongs to me because I am an extension of God and I created Truth with God. Truth is mine because it is me, just as I am God because God created me. Nothing good can ever be lost or taken from me, because it comes from God. Nothing which is not good was ever created by God. The correction is my guarantee of my safety in the Kingdom, and the union – the Oneness – of us all is its protection. Ego is helpless against the Kingdom of God because we are as One. In the presence of Love, ego vanishes.

2. What the ego makes it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. Its existence is unshared. It does not die; it was merely never born. Physical birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing. Everything that continues has already been born. It will increase as you are willing to return the unhealed part of your mind to the higher part, returning it undivided to creation. I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free. You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase, but having made them you did not realize how to undo them. You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not disappear from your mind without the Atonement, a remedy not of your making. The Atonement must be understood as a pure act of sharing. That is what I meant when I said it is possible even in this world to listen to one Voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship is One, you cannot be limited to the self the ego sees.

What I make as ego I keep and these things neither born nor die, they simply never were. Birth that ego sees as a beginning is but an experience in this dream. We have forever been and will forever be. Remembering this will strengthen the weak part of our mind and return it to its function of Oneness. We are told here that we have long enough carried those ego thoughts with us – that it is now time to lay them down and see them for what they are and were – nothing. In releasing those thoughts we are lifted up to see that our past errors – those thoughts we had called sin – can be corrected thoughts within our mind by our acceptance of the Atonement that is offered us. The really good news is that it is possible to hear but the Voice of God and believe to be in this world.

3. Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs to every part. It is shared because it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also yours. The ego can keep you in exile from the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom itself it has no power. Ideas of the spirit do not leave the mind that thinks them, nor can they conflict with each other. However, ideas of the ego can conflict because they occur at different levels and also include opposite thoughts at the same level. It is impossible to share opposing thoughts. You can share only the thoughts that are of God and that He keeps for you. And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest remains with you until the Holy Spirit has reinterpreted them in the light of the Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. When they have been sufficiently purified He lets you give them away. The decision to share them is their purification.

Look at what is being told us here – every loving thought – every thought of love – that we hold in our mind is instantly shared with all others. But every thought we hold in our mind which is not a loving thought, remains in our mind and is not shared. Ego can hold us in this world we make, but it cannot hold us from the Truth we are.

4. I heard one Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek."

Read this carefully – Jesus is telling us that he also heard but One Voice as we can because even he could not atone – correct his own thoughts. By listening to that One Voice we decide that we shall share that Voice with others as well. We do this by seeing in others what we first see within ourselves – Truth. No one can harm us and we will show our brother nothing but our wholeness – our completeness. We shall look upon our brother and see the Love in him – we shall love him as God loves us – without condition.

5. Teaching is done in many ways, above all by example. Teaching should be healing, because it is the sharing of ideas and the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them. I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing you can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name because my name is the Name of God's Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the Mind that was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it.

The best teaching is done by demonstration – by example. This is not the first time we have been told this, nor will it be the last. Why should teaching be healing? Perhaps it is because as we heal, others heal? Perhaps it is because as we teach, we learn as well? What we have learned – what we have remembered on this journey – cannot be held by us alone – it is to be shared with all others. What we have learned – what we have remembered – is our Truth – the Love we are.

6. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing, and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him you are led back to God where you belong, and how can you find the way except by taking your brother with you? My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away. As you teach so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God Who created me. You forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers. You must learn to see them as they are, and understand they belong to God as you do. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things that are God's?

Once again we are told that Spirit lifts the burden we have placed in our mind, by correcting our thoughts. Could that burden be guilt – shame – fear – hate, etc.? By listening to the Voice within us, we are being 'led' back to where we never left. And look again at the reminder that as we teach we learn. The balance of the paragraph is to be read again – as you treat a brother – all brothers – you also treat God. And unless we treat all brothers as God, the Atonement of all will not be complete.

7. The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to create is of God. Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing because, having received the idea of healing, they must give it to hold it. The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas is withheld from the Kingdom. The joint will of the Sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father, because only the complete can think completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything you think that is not through the Holy Spirit is lacking.

The correction of error gives me the power of a healed mind and a healed mind is to be shared with all others. Once I forgive myself for the thoughts I held, I have healed my mind and can assist others in the healing of theirs. And I continue to have my thoughts go through Spirit so that I know they are of love. And as I express them – as I extend them – I know that the Sonship I look upon will not be complete until we all think as One.

8. How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.

It is amazing that we who are so holy – so whole and complete – believe also that we can suffer. All the thoughts we once held which were not loving thoughts have been changed for us – the heaviness of fear has been lifted and only the peace remains. Within us is the knowledge that we are eternal as God is eternal – that we are Love as God is Love – that we are peace as God is peace. And we also know – we feel the presence of – being in the Heart of God and yet having our hand held by God as well. We are never alone – the Thoughts of God are with us.

Chapter 5

Healing and Wholeness

V. The Ego's Use of Guilt

1. Perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more personally meaningful if the ego's use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is fear, because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again, remember that both are in you.

So simply stated, ego has but only fear to offer us; Spirit offers us that which we are and have forgotten – Love – Truth. Both of these offerings are us, but we can take of only one at a time. The taking is a choice we make.

2. In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create. The word "create" is appropriate here because, once what you have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in creation. What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to disruption because it is whole. Guilt is always disruptive. Anything that engenders fear is divisive because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of attack on God. This is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the belief from which all guilt really stems.

How often have you 'found' yourself in a state of guilt, and did not know why? Where is it coming from? What have I done to make me feel guilty? Actually, we have done nothing and the guilt is but one of the many faces of fear given us to wear by ego. If we experience guilt, we know instantly that we are not in Love. Guilt always makes us feel more separated from others – more alone – more divided as the Course says above. Have you ever thought of guilt as your attack on God? Think about it the next guilt trip you take.

3. The ego is the part of the mind that believes in division. How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as based on the concept of usurping God's power. The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes that it is you. If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system, and speaks for it. Listening to the ego's voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you. Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected.

Do you want to laugh at yourself today? Just think how ridiculous it is to think that we can 'usurp' God – that we can be more than – better than – greater than That Which is All. And the ego is itself nothing more than a fear – an illusion we believe in. It has no power and yet we appear to give it power over us. What it has do is nothing, and yet we believe we are doing something. Spirit will have us remember that we are simply 'being' – existing in the essence of our Truth.

4. Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in your mind, your allowing it to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions. I said before that you must learn to think with God. To think with Him is to think like Him. This engenders joy, not guilt, because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is unnatural. Unnatural thinking will always be attended with guilt, because it is the belief in sin. The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love, but as a positive act of assault. This is necessary to the ego's survival because, as soon as you regard sin as a lack, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but you must learn to regard it as freedom.

Look again at those first two lines: it is always your choice – your choosing – your decision – that what you accept into your mind is given reality by you. No one else can do this for you – there is no one else to blame. As we remember the Truth of who we are, we will once again think as that Truth – we shall think like God. And then our thoughts will be Love – unconditional love – love without judgment. This thinking like God is natural to us – anything else is unnatural and is ego driven. If you see sin as a lack in you, then you will also see your old beliefs as lies told to you in the past you also believe in. And look at the assurance offered you here – you will succeed in your remedy – in the correction of error.

5. The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything. I said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say that it is a form of magical solution. The ego believes that by punishing itself it will mitigate the punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to God a punishing intent, and then takes this intent as its own prerogative. It tries to usurp all the functions of God as it perceives them, because it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted.

If I believe I am suffering, then I know that I am also in guilt. Suffering is but yet another fear offered us by ego. Nothing 'heals' the body because the body of itself does not suffer – the thought of suffering is within the mind. Once the mind is healed of fearful thoughts, the body appears 'healed' as well. In Truth, we cannot conceive nor perceive illness – nor can we conceive of attacking another. Ego has us believing that we become sick in body – that we can and do attack others – and ego has us believing that these illusions are actually 'punishments' of God. Could a God of unconditional Love offer us anything other than That Which Is?

6. The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can. That is why the question, "What do you want?" must be answered. You are answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey. The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. You made the other, and so you can. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What you made can always be changed because, when you do not think like God, you are not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can believe in them. But you are wrong. The function of thought comes from God and is in God. As part of His Thought, you cannot think apart from Him.

Let's put this one in the first person so that the message becomes clearer, perhaps: I (ego) cannot oppose the laws of God but I (ego) can interpret them according to what I believe I (ego) want, need, or desire. Each time the question "What do I (ego) want?" an answer must be given. And I (ego) am answering that very question each and every minute with a decision which is based on judgment. And this continues until the decision is changed. And what truly are the choice I have to make – what are my decisions? There are but ego or Spirit and they are the only choices available to me. I need look nowhere else for others for none shall be found. One of those choices I made and the other is a creation of God. What God created is eternal, what I have made, I can make over. When I choose the Holy Spirit I (spirit) am thinking like God. What I (spirit) choose with God is not delusional – it is my Reality. The function of thinking is from God and is God. I cannot think apart from God, for God is my Truth.

7. Irrational thought is disordered thought. God Himself orders your thought because your thought was created by Him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They also show that you believe you can think apart from God, and want to. Every disordered thought is attended by guilt at its inception, and maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable by those who believe they order their own thoughts, and must therefore obey their dictates. This makes them feel responsible for their errors without recognizing that, by accepting this responsibility, they are reacting irresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned for cannot be yours. The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. You would be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking if it could not be undone. The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified form only. If you accept the remedy for disordered thought, a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain?

We might say that 'guilt' is a signal from God in a way that we have strayed in our thinking. It is a 'wake-up' call to become aware of what we are thinking, and to change our thoughts. It comes down to the question of what you believe you are: Love or an illusion? Which do you choose?

8. The continuing decision to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. What you want you expect. This is not delusional. Your mind does make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. It will also return to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its disordered thought, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.

As long as we believe we are separate from God, we will continue to experience the many fears of ego, including guilt. That one belief continually prevents us from accepting the Atonement – the correction of our thoughts. Lay down the thought of separation, and the Truth is ever present for us.

Chapter 5

Healing and Wholeness

VI. Time and Eternity

1. God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you are in time. Yet your election is both free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.

So what are you being told here? That you are in 'time' because you chose to be in 'time' and because you chose, you can choose again. Time is not Truth and we belong in Truth – we are eternity – we are as God is. So we get to choose again. And what do you choose this moment – time or eternity?

2. Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. This is the ego's continuity. It gives the ego a false sense of security by believing that you cannot escape from it. But you can and must. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. My role is only to unchain your will and set it free. Your ego cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose it at every possible moment and in every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it.

Try for just a moment to picture your life – this world you believe in – without the presence of time. Without time, you would experience no guilt – no fear of any sort. Without time there would be no stress – no urgency – no hurry up and wait. Without time there would be no aging – there would be no sickness – there would be no death, perhaps. Without time, you would simply be experiencing joy, happiness, and love. How important is time to you? We have a free will – we have the power to choose what we wish to see – to experience – to live and that power is free of ego – it is ours in Truth to use. The power may be forgotten, but it is still present within.

3. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of the Kingdom cannot be lost. The Mind that was in me is in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you? The two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously; or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made.

And now we begin remembering what we long ago forgot – that the Kingdom we seek is always within us – that we are and forever shall be a part and whole of that Kingdom. We have listen to ego enough, now let us listen to the second voice – the Voice of God. Does it sound familiar? Have you heard It before? It alone brings back many memories. Allow the first voice to be heard, then listen closely to the second voice.

4. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decision, much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court's decisions in this world. The ego's decisions are always wrong, because they are based on the error they were made to uphold. Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does the ego cite Scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing in the ego's judgment. Perceiving it as frightening, it interprets it fearfully. Being afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would also be against you.

As we continue to move through this life judging everything and everyone – it is what we do as ego's – we realize that we are listening but the first voice within our mind. With each thought we have – with each judgment we make – we seek the advice of the Holy Spirit to have us see them differently, and in that instant they are seen in love. Fear is an illusion of ego – of your self – and as such has no power other than what you alone give it. When listening to Spirit, we see the fears for what they are – nothing – and we move through them to the eternal Light that is ever before us.

5. There are many examples of how the ego's interpretations are misleading, but a few will suffice to show how the Holy Spirit can reinterpret them in His Own light.

6. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" He interprets to mean what you consider worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy makes it worthy for you.

As you see your brother, you see yourself!

7. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" is easily reinterpreted if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. The statement emphasizes that vengeance cannot be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, Who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind, which is part of God.

And what is 'vengeance' but a fear – a hate – a judgment of ego – a thought we hold within our mind. Spirit will clear that thought for us upon our asking.

8. "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It becomes merely an attempt to guarantee the ego's own survival. To the Holy Spirit, the statement means that in later generations He can still reinterpret what former generations had misunderstood, and thus release the thoughts from the ability to produce fear.

If you can let go of 'time' – you can also let go all of its trappings, including 'generations'. How insane it is for us to move through this life believing that we are 'carrying' some awful sin from a previous generation. How absurd to continue to believe in the lies we have been told when we know within what the Truth is. When is the last time you simply observed yourself and had a great laugh watching this character go through the script of life?

9. "The wicked shall perish" becomes a statement of Atonement, if the word "perish" is understood as "be undone." Every loveless thought must be undone, a word the ego cannot even understand. To the ego, to be undone means to be destroyed. The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your thought, but because it is uncreative and therefore unsharing, it will be reinterpreted to release you from fear. The part of your mind that you have given to the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind belongs. You can delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you cannot introduce the concept of fear into it.

In Truth, we have no beginning – we have forever been – therefore without a beginning, there can be no ending. There are no 'wicked' in our world, only a though we hold in our minds. There is no 'hell' besides the one we create in this world from the fear we choose to live in. The ego is this body – a communication tool at best. When the body ceases to be of value, it simply ceases to be of value. We call that death – the end of ego. But that is not an ending for us.

10. You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's Own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof. The Holy Spirit will not hear it, because He can only witness truly. His verdict will always be "thine is the Kingdom," because He was given to you to remind you of what you are.

We have been reading a lot lately about the 'higher courts' and their purposes. When we are in fear, we 'appeal' to the Holy Spirit and the ruling is always the same – we are forever in the image and likeness of God – nothing and no one can harm us. What's not to like about that ruling? It can't get any better than that. Amazingly we continue to forget that almost as quickly as we remember.

11. When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I meant that I came to share the light with you. Remember my reference to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that I said, "Do not look there." It is still true that where you look to find yourself is up to you. Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself. Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience because my will is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His Voice was in me as It is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the Name of its Creator.

Patience was a very hard subject for me in this classroom – I took the course on patience many times – and continue to take refresher courses as they are offered me. As I show myself patience, I also am patient with others. And as for the comment on the 'light of the world' – as I look at others with the knowledge within me, and I see reflected back to me that same knowledge – I know what the light is.

12. Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results now it renders time unnecessary. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device to be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, Who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return you to eternity and remain to bless your creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is truly blessed. Because He has been given you freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.

Wonder why the subject of 'time' comes up so often? Here we are told: we are reminded of time by Spirit Who has us focusing on the now – the place of no time. Spirit tells us repeatedly that time is meaningless – it is nothing. Spirit leads us back to the thought we hold of eternity that is our reality – our Truth. Dropping time and learning patience go together for me – as I do one, I learn the other.

Chapter 5

Healing and Wholeness

VII. The Decision for God

1. Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God's? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from Him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you. You are His care because He loves you. His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of His care. You cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His Will, but you can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created by it.

No matter where we think we have gone, where we believe we are or who we believe we are, we can never change our Truth. We can believe we come from God – but better than that – we are with God – we never left God, nor could we. Yes, the voice of ego is loud, but the Voice of God is pleasing to our soul. Yes, ego constantly shows us that we believe we are indeed separate from God, but yet, why do we have this feeling within us that what we think we are and see and do – is not true?

2. There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals himself, he cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed because God created it whole. You are merely asked to return to God the mind as He created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal you. Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers is yours.

And who is the healer and who is to be healed – we are both. How many times have you tried to think affirmative thoughts about a condition of your body you believed in, and still felt the effects of the condition? Many times, probably. Why have we not healed our minds? Because we never left go of the fear. Healing ourselves is simple but it requires that we let go of the thoughts of fear (sickness). Was ego asking us in its arrogance, what we were trying to accomplish. And if you can heal you, then you can go to your brother and see him healed as well. In the healing is the wholeness (holiness) that we are.

3. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace, because you are of one mind and spirit with Him. Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed.

How do you answer the first question here? Why do you listen to those endless insane chatter within your mind when the peace you seek is a thought away?

4. But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the remedy could not be of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect Correction for everything you made that is not in accord with His holy Will. I am making His plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfill it. God weeps at the "sacrifice" of His children who believe they are lost to Him.

So for those of us who might have ask the question, 'When do we do this?' the reply is here – now! We have not been asked to do something we are not capable of doing, for we are always given whatever we need to accomplish anything. And we are being told here that God's plan will made 'perfectly explicit' to us, as will the part we have in it. And the term 'God weeps' is an expression of our dream – not reality.

5. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God's creations. Perceiving this as "sin" you become defensive because you expect attack. The decision to react in this way is yours, and can therefore be undone. It cannot be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you.

Okay, so if I am not in the waves of happiness, it is because I have not extended love to one of God's creation – to one of my brothers. We all have one of them, do we not, that we do not love like we love others? One that we judge not worthy of love. God does not judge us; how then do we conjure up the arrogance to think we can do what God does not? And then the old memories of a past come in to play here – and that fantastic word 'sin' appears and with it, comes the guilt that we have carried with us. But now we know that this reaction is just that – a reaction. We can choose again. We can love all brothers without judgment. There is no sin – there is no guilt – only perhaps an error that is to be corrected.

6. Decision cannot be difficult. This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace.

Decision anytime is as difficult as we make it. If we are not happy, we have decided at some point not to be happy. So the first step we are told, is to acknowledge that we simply chose the wrong decision. And then we 'willingly' ask Spirit to take this from us and replace the thought with happiness. What we are really asking for is that we wish to return to our original mind.

Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:

I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.

Chapter 6.

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

Introduction

1. The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe.

What can one expect to experience in a state of insanity, except insanity? Because we are in a dualistic world we make, there is an opposite to insanity as well – to be sane. We may not always see anger as fear, but we have to remember only love and fear exist for us in this dream. Anger could never be take as love, so it must be fear. And when we experience anger, we do experience a deeper separation than we had. We are 'angry' at another for the thoughts we hold in our mind. Now is that not insanity? We are angry perhaps because we are trying to blame our entire life – our circumstances – our world we see – on someone else. We think we are being attacked by someone because we experience fear. Most animals can sense fear in us, and yet we can not. Note the phrase above 'one's own responsibility" – that leaves no room for us to continue searching for someone else to blame. The finger we are pointing is easily bent backwards toward the responsible person. So I grab the concept that I am responsible, and no one else is, then I can grab the concept that I am responsible totally for what I believe.

2. You have been asked to take me as your model for learning, since an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all, and no one can organize his life without some thought system. Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it. Your capacity for allegiance to a thought system may be misplaced, but it is still a form of faith and can be redirected.

What does 'model' mean to you? Must you be as the 'model' was? Or could you take what the model showed you and put it into your life? What have we learned from Jesus, from his teachings? We learned what Love looks like in our daily practices – we see our brother with the eyes of love – we see no separation – no division – only equality. We see each as being One with the All That Is. We teach and we learn, learn and teach constantly. We teach best by our actions – by our demonstrations of love. And we have also learned from the model that two thought systems are available to us, and we learn how to choose our Truth.

Chapter 6

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

I. The Message of the Crucifixion

1. For learning purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. I did not dwell on it before because of the fearful connotations you may associate with it. The only emphasis laid upon it so far has been that it was not a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be explained in negative terms only. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood.

Rather timely for discussion, do you think? And have we not in our past, see the crucifixion from the negative side of our thinking? Are you ready for the 'positive' side?

2. The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher.

The first that catches my attention here is 'the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.' Just stop for a moment and think on that phrase. This is exactly how and why we see our world the way we do. We are told here also that the crucifixion represents our release from our fear if we first understand the crucifixion. I am reading to get my understanding! So before I move on the next paragraphs, I will be open to seeing the crucifixion without any fear, as I am a teacher of God and I want to demonstrate and share the knowledge.

3. You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as impossible. Otherwise, I cannot serve as a model for learning.

We have all heard and perhaps said the very phrase referred to here – I feel like I am being crucified over 'whatever'. And the feeling comes from a guilt carried around about something that should have long ago been dropped along the path. Everyday in the news media we view and read about the 'apparent intensity of the assault' of one brother against another. We call this was – we call this crime – we call this many things. But what we have to believe deep within us is that such an assault is impossible. Another brother cannot harm me and I cannot harm another brother. I can hold such a thought within my mind however.

4. Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that one body can assault another, and can even destroy it. Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premises and teaching them to others. The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.

Quickly take the first sentence: 'Assault can ultimately be made only on the body' and ask yourself what is your next thought. How about "I am not this body" – the body is an illusion we believe in – we believe we see one body assault another, even destroy it – but only the illusion is destroyed – but it never was to begin with. And the fear held within the minds of those who are assaulting are seen as rage, hate, and anger. And this is the difficult part for most of us – if someone comes to us in a fit of anger, rage, etc – how do we respond? Many times, we react like they are, and then we are believing in the illusion as they are. We are not the body we see – we are as God created us – the image and likeness of God. As we stay focused on that, we will forget the illusion of the body, and we will feel no attack.

5. I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me, but our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision. You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if you choose. When you do choose to react that way, however, you might remember that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did not share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did not strengthen it. I therefore offered a different interpretation of attack, and one which I want to share with you. If you will believe it, you will help me teach it.

Has it been made clear to you that you and the teacher Jesus are one and the same – that we are all one and the same? Even though it has been clearly stated, can your mind grasp it enough to let go of the old beliefs you have? And if we feel like a victim – that we are persecuted by the world we see – that although Jesus appeared to experience a horrendous persecution, he did not share in that perception. He saw something else and it is that perception that he wants to share with all of us.

6. As I have said before, "As you teach so shall you learn." If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. This is not a lesson a Son of God should want to teach if he is to realize his own salvation. Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and realize that it cannot be assailed. Do not try to protect it yourself, or you are believing that it is assailable. You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers.

If we teach that illusion is real, we shall believe that illusion is real. If we teach that which we are – Love – we will believe we are that which we teach – Love. We do not have to go through what Jesus appeared to have gone through; we only have to follow the example he showed us and the teachings he gave us. Teach only Love for that is what you are.

7. Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore accepted it as true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God, but first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss. My brothers slept during the so-called "agony in the garden," but I could not be angry with them because I knew I could not be abandoned.

I am asleep. My resurrection from my tomb of darkness is my re-awakening in this dream. I am remembering – I am seeing – I am believing in that which is already and forever present within me. This is what it is that I must teach others – and the best teaching method is my demonstration of my beliefs in the Truths within me. I slept many times when I should have been awake to help my brother. Now I am forever awake – to sleep and dream no more.

8. I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear only one Voice, because it weakens them as teachers and as learners. Yet I know they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I must build my church. There is no choice in this, because only you can be the foundation of God's church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes the church holy. A church that does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, and if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are unwise not to follow him.

As we have been given a model to follow, so Jesus was given a 'model' to follow as well. He followed the Voice within him, as we also follow the same Voice within us. It is this Voice that guides us and yet allows us to make decisions. It is this Voice that allows us to change our thoughts without feeling guilt and shame. It is this Voice that has helped us get to this place on our path where we are remembering all that we have forgotten. We are the 'foundation' upon which the most holy of holies can be found. The altar within us is constantly in preparation for our coming within and being in communion with our Truth. If we are to follow the 'model' shown us, then we best follow in the foot-steps before us.

9. I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. It was clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, since I had not harmed anyone and had healed many.

And this view is one I also saw when I viewed 'The Passion.' After the man went through all that one could possibly imagine to do to another to cause pain and suffering, the man demonstrated love even as he hung from a cross. There was nothing that another human could do to another human that had not done to this man. But the man on the cross showed all men everywhere that although a 'man' appears to die, he lives forever in Truth. The body cease to be, but the body was not the spirit of the man, only the shell.

10. We are still equal as learners, although we do not need to have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn from mine, and be reawakened by them. That is their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the way, the truth and the life. When you hear only one Voice you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by being able to hear the Holy Spirit in others you can learn from their experiences, and can gain from them without experiencing them directly yourself. That is because the Holy Spirit is One, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all.

Being equal does not mean that we must have the same experiences – quite the contrary as we read here – we have to simply learn from the experiences of others. We do not have to have all the experiences Jesus had, we have but to learn from them. He listened to the Voice within him, and we are told to do the same. That Voice is the One Voice for all of us. Listening to that Voice is listening to our Truth.

11. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom we share, makes this unnecessary. To use my experiences constructively, however, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them. My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the unjustifiable. My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned it, is that no perception that is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. I undertook to show this was true in an extreme case, merely because it would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptation to give in to anger and assault would not be so extreme. I will with God that none of His Sons should suffer.

If you take from this paragraph nothing more than the fact that it is all about perception – how we see what is before us. And he tells us here that the one major lesson he is trying to teach us is no perception seen without the aid of Spirit is justified. No perception viewed by us without asking for assistance from Spirit is correct. So as we look upon the world we make, we ask for guidance from Spirit to see it through the Eyes of Truth.

12. The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its Wholeness. Only this is knowledge.

The crucifixion is projection; the resurrection is awakening – tuck this away in a corner of your mind and refer to it often.

13. The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear:

Teach only love, for that is what you are.

And this message is repeated many more times in the Course – it is one that we must accept, acknowledge and demonstrate.

14. If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended. The Apostles often misunderstood it, and for the same reason that anyone misunderstands it. Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the "wrath of God" as His retaliatory weapon. Nor could they speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their sense of guilt had made them angry.

Does your sense of guilt make you angry also? Does our imperfect love make us vulnerable as well?

15. These are some of the examples of upside-down thinking in the New Testament, although its gospel is really only the message of love. If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted me as saying, "I come not to bring peace but a sword." This is clearly the opposite of everything I taught. Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they did, if they had really understood me. I could not have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" unless I believed in betrayal. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did not. The "punishment" I was said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar mistake. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible?

Perhaps for those who have read the Bible often, some of the above may feel uncomfortable to you. But the message Jesus taught in his short life on this earth was Love – love your brother as yourself. See your brother as you see yourself. With him demonstrating Love, he would not have thoughts of betrayal, punishment or condemnation.

16. As you read the teachings of the Apostles, remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand later, because they were not wholly ready to follow me at the time. I do not want you to allow any fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am guiding you. I do not call for martyrs but for teachers. No one is punished for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners. Any concept of punishment involves the projection of blame, and reinforces the idea that blame is justified. The result is a lesson in blame, for all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it. The crucifixion was the result of clearly opposed thought systems; the perfect symbol of the "conflict" between the ego and the Son of God. This conflict seems just as real now, and its lessons must be learned now as well as then.

So we might say that much of what was given by the Apostles in their stories was not correct because they had yet failed to understand much of the meaning of what was taught. They had difficulty see Love when their leader was tortured and hung to die on a cross. What they perhaps failed to see was that no fear was shown by their teacher. No blame was placed on anyone for the ordeal he was enduring. The crucifixion was truly between the ego and Spirit – with Spirit continuing into eternity, while ego ceased to be. And such is death. We have not sinned – we cannot sin – sin is an illusion of ego – it means nothing for it comes from nothing. If we cannot and have not sinned, then we are not to be punished for what we have not or cannot do.

17. I do not need gratitude, but you need to develop your weakened ability to be grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. He does not need your appreciation, but you do. You cannot love what you do not appreciate, for fear makes appreciation impossible. When you are afraid of what you are you do not appreciate it, and will therefore reject it. As a result, you will teach rejection.

This is about acceptance of ourselves for being who we are in Truth. This is one of the many stumbling blocks we encounter on our path. Many of us have difficulty accepting our Truth – we feel arrogant – we feel guilt – over the fact that we are affirming who we are in Truth. We simply must appreciate – and be grateful for the fact of who we are. Until we accept ourselves in the Truth we are, we cannot extend to another the Love we are. If we are afraid to admit our Truth, then we will simply extend fear to others.

18. The power of the Sons of God is present all the time, because they were created as creators. Their influence on each other is without limit, and must be used for their joint salvation. Each one must learn to teach that all forms of rejection are meaningless. The separation is the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this you will believe it. This is not as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again.

Let's put this in the first person: The power I have as a 'Son of God' – my truth – is present at all times because that is as I was created by God. My influence upon others is without limit and is used for our joint salvation. Any limitation that I see is but an illusion I make – not true. Each one of us must teach each other that all forms of rejection – fear – have no meaning. The separation I believe in is an example of that rejection. I am rejecting God when I believe in separation. If I teach this, I will also believe this. This is not thoughts from the Mind of God, and I will think as God thinks so I can feel again His Presence.

19. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Communication Link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His Voice you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves. When you perceive only this need in them, and do not respond to any other, you will have learned of me and will be as eager to share your learning as I am.

As I remember that Spirit is my Link to God, I will listen to His Voice and know that I cannot be harmed nor harm. I will know that this message is to be shared with all others as well. When I hear the call for Love and I respond to that call, I answer my own as well.

Chapter 6.

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

II. The Alternative to Projection

1. Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation. The Wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the Wholeness of God's creation. By this recognition it knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and that once it occurs projection becomes its main defense, or the device that keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be so obvious as you think.

Projection is then the defense mechanism we used to protect the separation we believe so deeply in. Within this separation is the split mind. Can we have but one mind – whole and complete? We do in Truth.

2. What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.

So I have a thought which I project and in my projection I believe I no longer own it, it is no longer mine I believe. And in that act I am as well disowning myself – I am seeing myself separate from the person before me, while actually we are but One. And with each thought I project, I continue my separation. In my separation I have only separated myself from my Self – I have attacked me and yet believe that in this separation I am safe from others.

3. Yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem "better" than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.

Yet this projection that I do only brings me pain and suffering. What is wrong with this method? My projection reinforces my belief in the separated body I believe I am. It is a means to keep me from seeing others or myself as the One we are. Ego tells me that I am better in this separated state – I would not want to be like those before me that I judge. And yet that is precisely what the knowing within is telling me – I am those I see before me. Read again the line: "Anger without projection is impossible." Without project, I would not experience anger; when I experience anger I am projecting. When I am projecting, I am seeing myself separate from God.

4. We have learned, however, that there is an alternative to projection. Every ability of the ego has a better use, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit extends and the ego projects. As their goals are opposed, so is the result.

The Holy Spirit's alternative to projection is extension – what we extend we are – we own what we extend.

5. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy.

The Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – sees me as the perfect creation I am. This perfection I am is extended to my brothers, and in this are we all strengthened in Love. In place of anger which is from projection, love is present in my extension. In this change, the correction of error is accomplished as well – in me and my brother. In this perception is my Reality, and in my Reality is the happiness and joy given to me by God. I am in this world but I am not of this world – a very big difference indeed.

6. How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a Fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone is perfect. To deny this is to deny yourself and Him, since it is impossible to accept one without the other.

Within this paragraph is our Truth – stated again and again – so that we may affirm it. We cannot be anywhere God is not. And where God is, we are. We are total inclusion in God – we are the One That Is. This is not to be changed nor could it be changed – it is Truth. What God created is the Image and Likeness of God – as God Is We Are. As God is perfect, so we also are perfect. If we deny any of this, we deny God and we deny ourselves.

7. The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit's perception is the reflection of the perfect equality of God's knowing. The ego's perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the Bridge between perception and knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way that reflects knowledge, you will ultimately remember it. The ego would prefer to believe that this memory is impossible, yet it is your perception the Holy Spirit guides. Your perception will end where it began. Everything meets in God, because everything was created by Him and in Him.

Want a frightening thought? Imagine yourself only as ego with no link to God! The ego presents us with the past, but the Holy Spirit presents us with the memory of God we have within us. The past never was but the memory is forever.

8. God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now. God created you to create. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its wholeness.

God created me by extending His Thought, and within that Thought is God inclusive. Not only me but each of us is a Thought of God – the Oneness we feel deep within is that memory. With the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we come to see who we are and what we are. From that knowledge we extend Love to all we see – we extend our Truth to others – we extend God through us.

9. Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. This is as true of God's Thinking as it is of yours. Because your mind is split, you can perceive as well as think. Yet perception cannot escape the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind and project your perceptions outward. Although perception of any kind is unreal, you made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it toward God. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore does not want it now.

Recall that we have been told many times that a thought never leaves its source – we, being a Thought of God, have never left God. Our mind is seen as split in this dream, but in Reality it is One with the Mind of God. What we think we project. What we project is not real, but with the help of Spirit can be seen in Love. We can see others as they are in Truth instead of seeing them as separate bodies moving through this dream.

10. The Holy Spirit uses time, but does not believe in it. Coming from God He uses everything for good, but He does not believe in what is not true. Since the Holy Spirit is in your mind, your mind can also believe only what is true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this, because He speaks for God. He tells you to return your whole mind to God, because it has never left Him. If it has never left Him, you need only perceive it as it is to be returned. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred.

The illusion of time is used by the Holy Spirit only for our benefit. Time does not exist. When we seek the help of Spirit, and become aware of that help, we see only that which is real. We are reminded by Spirit that we have never left our Source. We are not separate bodies moving about; we are Spiritual Beings extending our Truth to others. We ask for and receive a correction of thoughts we hold within our mind which are not in Truth. And we let go of old beliefs that have believing to the contrary.

11. The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem difficult. Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary, because what never happened cannot be difficult. However, you can make the idea of return both necessary and difficult. Yet it is surely clear that the perfect need nothing, and you cannot experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment, because that is what you are. This is the way in which you must perceive God's creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one line the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line of communication with God, and lets your mind converge with His. There is no conflict anywhere in this perception, because it means that all perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose Mind is fixed on God. Only the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict, because only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He perceives only what is true in your mind, and extends outward only to what is true in other minds.

Read this carefully – the return to God is not difficult – it is not even necessary because we never left God. So what is it that we believe so strongly in that holds here in this dream? We have but to believe in the Truth within us – to believe in who and what we are in Reality – that we are as God Is. God is closer to us than our next thought. Believing in Truth, our next thought is God.

12. The difference between the ego's projection and the Holy Spirit's extension is very simple. The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one. Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same. Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because that is what He is. The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you. The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it.

Here is a big definition for us: projection of ego is to exclude, to continue the separation. Extension of Spirit is inclusive – we recognize we are One with others. What Spirit sees is equality – Oneness. What ego sees is separation and seclusion. As we extend our Truth to others, we experience the Peace within us. As we experience that Peace, we shine from within so that others may see as well.

13. The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by recognizing Him impartially can you recognize Him at all. The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is One. No darkness abides anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This alignment with light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the light of the world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one.

The Holy Spirit is One with All That Is – One with us. Ego is an illusion that appears everywhere separated from all. With ego is darkness; with Sprit is Light. And once again we are told we are the Light of the World – each one of us is that Light – all of us are that Light. A Light of Oneness has no comparison, and within it is found no darkness.
Chapter 6.

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

III. The Relinquishment of Attack

1. As we have already emphasized, every idea begins in the mind of the thinker. Therefore, what extends from the mind is still in it, and from what it extends it knows itself. The word "knows" is correct here, because the Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe in your mind through His impartial perception. By attacking nothing, He presents no barrier to the communication of God. Therefore, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. The ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what is not true. You have taught yourself to believe that you are not what you are. You cannot teach what you have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in yourself because you are sharing it. Every lesson you teach you are learning.

So the last line really gets me! I best look at the curriculum I am teaching/learning! Each and every thought I have within my mind, remains within my mind. It never leaves and can never leave. Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, I have this 'knowing' within me that what I had believed about myself is false. I am responsible for 'teaching' myself what I am not. How insane is that?

2. That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember. I said before that the message of the crucifixion was, "Teach only love, for that is what you are." This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. "As you teach so will you learn." If that is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. And what you project or extend you believe.

Jesus taught only Truth while he experienced his short life in this dream. His Truth is my Truth – your Truth – and it is only that which I can teach and learn – LOVE. Love is my Truth. As I teach Love, I learn Love – I become aware of my Truth at a very deep level.

3. The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign. They bless because they know that they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. No compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it.

Look at what teaching Love does! As I extend Love to all I see – believe I see – I am extending the Spirit within me which is sparking the flame of Love within them. As they glow from within, others, including me, glow as well. This is teaching Love – demonstrating what I am.

4. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.

Ever look upon this life we lead as possibly ever not teaching something? We always teach – we always learn. But if we are teaching – demonstrating – love, then what might we be teaching/learning?

Chapter 6.

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

IV. The Only Answer

1. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. The ego always speaks first. It is capricious and does not mean its maker well. It believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. If it meant you well it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary error, the foundation of its whole thought system.

Perhaps we could remember this like: Answer = Holy Spirit; question = ego. Ego is never the answer, but always the question. Spirit is always the answer and never the question. It is rather strange to read that ego does not regard itself as part of me – just the usual way ego has of circumventing all of life – denial. It denies it is me, while it is concern that I may abandon it. It needs me for its survival and yet acts as if I don't matter most of the time.

2. When God created you He made you part of Him. That is why attack within the Kingdom is impossible. You made the ego without love, and so it does not love you. You could not remain within the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom is love, you believe that you are without it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separate and outside the Mind of God. The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but one it can never answer. That question, "What are you?" was the beginning of doubt. The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than obscure the question, because you have the answer and the ego is afraid of you.

God made me and I am part of God. I made the ego but the ego denies this. And then ego asks the big question: "What am I" and the first response I get is from ego – I am this body – but then the second response comes into mind and I hear – I am as God created me – and ego becomes silent. With that response is my strength – my truth.

3. You cannot understand the conflict until you fully understand the basic fact that the ego cannot know anything. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but He always answers. Everyone has called upon Him for help at one time or another and in one way or another, and has been answered. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly He answers for all time, which means that everyone has the answer now.

Have you ever received a response from ego that was not another question? Even ask ego if I get such and such, will I be happy? And ego responds with perhaps this: But more is better than just that, right? When I want results – when I want answers – there is only one thought I must hold – Holy Spirit.

4. The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the mind that made it is against it. It interprets this as a justification for attacking its maker. It believes that the best defense is attack, and wants you to believe it. Unless you do believe it you will not side with it, and the ego feels badly in need of allies, though not of brothers. Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind, the ego turns to the body as its ally, because the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend. It is an alliance frankly based on separation. If you side with this alliance you will be afraid, because you are siding with an alliance of fear.

Ego does not hear Spirit, and Spirit does not recognize ego. Spirit offers me peace and ego offers me chaos, confusion and the illusion of attack. And it has me attacking myself for the thoughts I am holding with it. Is this not insanity as its best? Ego fears itself as well as others. Ego knows only fear, and therefore knows only illusions, believing them to be truth. How does the ego use the body to work against you? Could it be with addictions, abuse, sickness and disease?

5. The ego uses the body to conspire against your mind, and because the ego realizes that its "enemy" can end them both merely by recognizing they are not part of you, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which is real, that the mind is the ego's learning device; and further, that the body is more real than the mind is. No one in his right mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right mind does believe it.

Read this paragraph a few times – it describes best what ego does – the ego believes it convinces the mind that the mind is a learning device for ego and that the body is more real than the mind. Is this not what we believe so strongly in ourselves, at times? Do we not believe we are this body and it is real? When we have this thought we know immediately that we are not in our right mind.

6. Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists and only this is real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken. Your dreams contain many of the ego's symbols and they have confused you. Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you wake you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you. Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true.

Let's do this in the first person:I am a child of God, a priceless part of the Kingdom of God, which God created as part of God. Nothing else exists and this, and only this is real. I have chosen a deep sleep in which I am having bad dreams, but this sleep is not real and I hear the call of God to awaken. Nothing will be left of my dream when I wake, for I have heard and responded to the call of God. My dreams contain ego symbols of fear and they have confused me. But this was only because I was asleep and did not know I was sleeping. When I wake I will see the truth around me and in me, and I will no longer believe in dreams because they have no reality for me – they are false. But what will have reality is the Kingdom of God created for me, and there shall I see beauty and Truth as never seen in my dream.

7. In the Kingdom, where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. There is no doubt, because the first question was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Being alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. The time spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its eternity. You are as certain as God because you are as true as He is, but what was once certain in your mind has become only the ability for certainty.

Within the Kingdom of God, I know exactly what I am and where I am. There exists no doubt within the Kingdom. Within the Kingdom I am One with God, and God is One with Me. Once, in a dream, I had other thoughts but now, I know – I am certain – I am in Truth – of who and what I am.

8. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, because abilities are potentials, not accomplishments. Your abilities are useless in the presence of God's accomplishments, and also of yours. Accomplishments are results that have been achieved. When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless. It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. Remember, however, that when you put yourself in an impossible situation you believe that the impossible is possible.

We often speak of our abilities – our potentials – but did you ever look at those words as to what they are implying? We have not yet reached our potential, we often say. We forget all too quickly that we are the perfect being God created. As we forget, we struggle foolishly to perfect our perfection. And all of this because we believe that the 'impossible' is possible. Just look at the words we use and the meaning they hold for us. Why would we do something which we say is impossible?

9. Abilities must be developed before you can use them. This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible for what you made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can get you out of it. You have a Guide to how to develop them, but you have no commander except yourself. This leaves you in charge of the Kingdom, with both a Guide to find it and a means to keep it. You have a model to follow who will strengthen your command, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your imagined enslavement, which in itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved.

Do you believe that you have the power – the ability – to do whatever you desire to do? What is it that holds us back here – simply fear – a gift from ego to show us that we are not worthy of such ability – that we are perhaps less than someone else – you know, the ever-present victim role. Within this dream we have a link to God – a Guide to show us the path, but necessarily how to walk it – that choice is ours to make. We have been given examples from the Teacher of Teachers – we have been shown how to walk the path. And yet something holds us back from doing all that we are capable of doing – ourselves.

10. You are in an impossible situation only because you think it is possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection, and proved to you that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect are inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are therefore helpless. This is the kind of "reasoning" in which the ego engages. God, Who knows that His creations are perfect, does not affront them. This would be as impossible as the ego's notion that it has affronted Him.

So bottom line here is that if we believe any situation to be impossible, it will be seen as such as long as we hold that thought. The impossibility comes from our thought and nowhere else. Everything is impossible with ego, nothing impossible exists in Truth.

11. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you made them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His Own certainty? I have frequently said that what you teach you are. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your right mind, which is the only place where you can find the sanity He gave you.

Spirit always offers us a solution – but never forces it on us. It is there for us to choose, should we desire to do so. If we do not choose the answer from Spirit, we stay with the choice of ego. Perhaps life would be indeed be different if God just made the choices for us – that Spirit forced its answers upon us and gave us no other choices. But this life we have in this dream contains a free will as a gift from God – what we choose in this dream is our choice alone – and here is our opportunity for growth – our alternative to ego. We alone must see that the life we make is insane, and the reality we are in Truth is sane.

12. God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack, which God knows is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change, but God created only the changeless. The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice. It could not shatter the peace of God, but it could shatter yours. God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He merely gave the Answer. His Answer is your Teacher.

And that Teacher is the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. God does not teach us because we are of God, and God only sees us in Truth. In Truth we have all knowledge and change is not required at any time. We chose this dream, but we have not become what we are not in it. We are as we have and will forever be. God did not blot out this dream, because God sees no illusion, only Truth. We believe in the illusion and we believe in the Truth, and we must decide which to stay with.

Chapter 6.

THE LESSONS OF LOVE

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit

1. Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit knows more than you do now, but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. You had already taught yourself wrongly, having believed what was not true. You did not believe in your own perfection. Would God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous. Giving His joy is an ongoing process, not in time but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened."

The Holy Spirit reminds us of all that we have forgotten – all that It knows, we know but choose not to remember. What we have taught ourselves is only illusionary – false ideas that we have come to believe in. We believe our mind is split, but could the mind of God be divided? We believe in time which is just an illusion to hold in guilt and fear. The opposite of time is eternity, our truth. We believe in a world of duality – where everything has an opposite. But in Reality, there can be no opposite to God, to Love.

2. How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now. Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking, so they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. And so when bad dreams come, they will themselves call on the light to dispel them.

Remember when your children were very small, and you would go into their room to wake them from a sleep – ever so gently making just small noises, or perhaps singing softly so as not to startle them? This is how we are being awaken in this dream as well, ever so gently by Spirit, ever so softly whispering in our hearts the Truth we are. And with each whisper of Truth, we feel a peace flow over us – a serenity flowing through us – as we know deep within who and what we are. And we discover what it means to be awake – truly awake. And so when the fears come before us again, we remember our awaken state of truth and walk through them in comforting knowledge that we are forever protected by Love.

3. A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm, but what you need to learn to have joy. Consider the fear and confusion a child would experience if he were told, "Do not do this because it will hurt you and make you unsafe; but if you do that instead, you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid." It is surely better to use only three words: "Do only that!" This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood and very easily remembered.

Spirit shows us only Truth, never emphasizing the illusions we dream, for they are not real. Spirit shows us the path before us and gently guides us along its way. It does show us what could happen if we did not follow It's guidance, for the choice is always ours alone to make. As we listen to the Still Small Voice within us and we hear It's whisper to us "Do only..." we shall know instantly that we are guided by our Truth.

4. The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom are children. Yet He always answers their call, and His dependability makes them more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality, and they are frightened because they do not recognize the difference. The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the Call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever.

Ever hear a list of all your 'wrongs' be recited to you in a rather arrogant voice? Ever hear how unworthy you are – how unimportant you are – how insignificant you are? This voice is ego. Spirit sees nothing of 'wrongs' we believe we have committed; sees us worthy of the Love we are; and knows that 'important' is simply an ego phrase giving value to illusions – we are beyond what importance could ever begin to imply. As children do not like to hear what they have done wrong, so we even as adults do like to be told of our errors either. But we are far enough on our spiritual path now to know that any error is easily corrected; that the opinion of another matters nothing to us. We can change all that we believe we have done with a thought.

The Holy Spirit, the Voice of God, within us is the Light of the world we all are. From within each of us shines It's glory and It's rays light another Light as well. Soon we shall see the Oneness of us all as One brilliant Light of Love – our Truth. With Light present, darkness is not to seen, not to be believed. With Light present no illusions are envisioned, no fears experience. We bask in the glory of the Light and experience the Peace of God that we forever are.
Chapter 6

Section V

A. To Have, Give All to All

1. When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, it will not work.

Let's try this in first person language: When my body and my ego and my dreams are all gone, I will know that I will last forever. Maybe I think now that this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death because death is nothing but an illusion of ego. Everything that IS is accomplished through life, and life is of my mind and within my mind. My body neither lives nor will it die, because it cannot contain That Which I AM. I can share my mind with others for it is of One mind, and death can be overcome by all because it has been shown to us already. Death, according to ego, is its attempt to resolve conflict by not taking a stance. Like anything else of the ego, it is but an impossibility.

2. God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device. Again as always, He reinterprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demonstration against it. If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this.

This is a concept that I have seen many students of the Course have a very difficult time with. God did not make this body. Why? Just look at this body. It is destructible and what God makes is eternal. This body is a symbol of what I think I am in a dream I am having alone. This body is an illusion within an illusion as is everything within this illusion. This body symbolizes my separation from God and my separation I believe from all others. The Holy Spirit aids me in seeing this body as a means for a learning device for me in this dream. Spirit takes the message of ego and interprets it for me in truth. I am shown again and again that the mind is real and the body is not. I have experience how the mind heals the body by a change of thought on my choosing. Every change of thought from fear to love is a miracle I notice.

3. I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. He always tells you that only the mind is real, because only the mind can be shared. The body is separate, and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless.

The Holy Spirit is my motivator for miracles. It shows me and I choose with It. Spirit tells me again and again that only my mind is real, because only my mind can be shared. This body I believe in is not real; this body is separate from all others and cannot be shared. To know that I am of One Mind is meaningful to me, but to think I am this one body means nothing to me. What does all this say to me? It simply points out to me that what I believe I see as this body is without meaning – it is an illusion. What is real is my mind, the mind that is shared with All That Is.

4. To the Holy Spirit, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is familiar enough to you by now, but it has not yet become believable. Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot use it. We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to let this crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation stone of the thought system I teach and want you to teach. You cannot perform miracles without believing it, because it is a belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is full appreciation. Nothing more and nothing less. Without a range, order of difficulty is meaningless, and there must be no range in what you offer to your brother.

To the Holy Spirit, to the Voice of God within us, to the Truth we are, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. We have been told this many times this short distance into the Course, and yet it is a concept that is hard for us to grasp as truth most of the time. Could it be as simple as the definition we had learned of what a miracle is from the past we believe in? As a child, we believed a miracle was a wondrous happening of a spiritual nature seen by few and believed by many who felt they were not perhaps worthy of such a sight. But now we have remembered that a miracle is a change of thought in our mind. How difficult can that be for us to perform? As difficult as we can make it! The reason is obvious by now – ego does not want us to know that for every thought it places in our mind, we can have an alternative thought of love to replace it.

5. The Holy Spirit, Who leads to God, translates communication into being, just as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge. You do not lose what you communicate. The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure and for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees the body only as a means of communication, and because communicating is sharing it becomes communion. Perhaps you think that fear as well as love can be communicated; and therefore can be shared. Yet this is not so real as it may appear. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always breaks communication, making it impossible. Egos do join together in temporary allegiance, but always for what each one can get separately. The Holy Spirit communicates only what each one can give to all. He never takes anything back, because He wants you to keep it. Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson:

To have, give all to all.

Just stop for one moment of your time today and think about attack, pleasure and pride. Did you ever think of them as being gifts offered you by ego? Attack for sure, but pleasure and pride? But pleasures of the body are swift to be sure, and pride is arrogance in the making. Perhaps today, you can examine the feelings you are experiencing at different moments and see if they are ego based or Spirit centered. Remember sanity is of Spirit, and insanity is offered by ego. Look at the history of wars and see how ego's joined together for a short time to attack other ego's and then later separated back into themselves and attacked even those they had been in union just before. We have learned thus far that giving and receiving are but one and the same. Quite a different definition than the one we had been accustomed to before the Course. And so it is no real surprise that we are being reminded again that in order for us to have, we must give all of what we are to all that we look upon – we must give the Love we are to the Love we see – and as we give, we receive.

6. This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself, but it is necessary that you turn in that direction. Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in charge of the journey, where you and only you must remain. This step may appear to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it, because it is the beginning step in reversing your perception and turning it right-side up. This conflicts with the upside-down perception you have not yet abandoned, or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some remain at this step for a long time, experiencing very acute conflict. At this point they may try to accept the conflict, rather than take the next step towards its resolution. Having taken the first step, however, they will be helped. Once they have chosen what they cannot complete alone, they are no longer alone.

Recall how often the Course tells us that we are to show but a little willingness – a little simple desire – and the rest will be taken care of for us? Here we read that to 'have all give all' is just a preliminary step on our path, but one we must choose ourselves. And then we read that we don't even need to raise our foot to take that step as long as we are aware of that step – that we show that little willingness to take it. And so this is the first step in reversing our perception – reversing how we see what we have made. Frightening perhaps for some, exciting for others. Some of us may stay here with this first step for what appears as a long time, while others move forward. Remember each path is an unique as the one walking it. The first step is for every one however. Those in 12 step programs can probably relate to many individuals who stayed in the first step for a while because they found it difficult to accept. Look at the last couple of lines: After we have taken the first step in the reversal of our perception, we will be helped along the way for once we have given the effort, we no longer walk alone.

Chapter 6

Section V

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It

1. All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it.

Did you catch the line that said, "What you teach you are"? This is one of those statements that if we could have something tattooed on our eye lids, this is it! If we demonstrate retaliation, abandonment, attach and rejection, we are teaching fear. If we teach fear, we believe we are separated from each other and from God. And if we teach fear, we are not able to teach love. Remember in this world we have made, it always one or the other, but never, ever can it be both at the same time. In order to teach insanity, we must be insane. What is at the center of your thought system right now?

2. All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one. Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. Change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental.

What we are being taught here is motivation for strengthening our ability to change our minds. This is what a teacher does for their pupils. Changing the mind is a choice of the pupil. Because of the free will given us by God, we must do the choosing. So often we pray that our mind be changed for us, but in the final moment, it is us that is choosing the change. Ever think how we change our mind? Could it be as simple as letting one thought go and replacing it with another?

3. The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit's first lesson was "To have, give all to all." I said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still further now. At this point, the equality of having and being is not yet perceived. Until it is, having appears to be the opposite of giving. Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a contradiction, since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet. Further, the mind of the learner projects its own conflict, and thus does not perceive consistency in the minds of others, making him suspicious of their motivation. This is the real reason why, in many respects, the first lesson is the hardest to learn. Still strongly aware of the ego in yourself, and responding primarily to the ego in others, you are being taught to react to both as if what you do believe is not true.

Giving and receiving being the same as define by the Course, this topic will continue to be presented to us in many ways. The first step in the process of "To have, give all to all", could be as simply defined as our letting go – a phrase we also hear many times. Ever wonder why some phrases continue to be in front of us all the time? Could be that we need to hear them that often! To ego, "to have" is to possess, to own. "To give" is to not have anymore, or at least not to have as much. So you can understand a little why you feel conflict with this. And the statement here that perhaps 'the first lesson is the hardest to learn' is correct for many of us. It is so contrary to what we had believe in up to now. How can I still have what I am giving?

4. Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative since the other possibility, which would be much less acceptable to it, would obviously be that it is insane. The ego's judgment, here as always, is predetermined by what it is. The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit's Voice makes it impossible for the learner not to listen. For a time, then, he is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both.

Either the ego has to make a commotion here or it must admit it is insane, which is not likely to happen. The ego believing it is this body, also believes it is separate from everyone else, including God, and therefore being separate must take care of itself first and always. During our learning the first step, we will hear a lot of chattering going on – ego beseeching cries for us to listen to it and it alone; and the still small Voice within urging us to continue to affirm, "To have, give all to all.'

5. The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it. Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for peace to help you. Its lesson is not insane; the conflict is.

Even with the logic of ego, it is clear that to get out of conflict, we must make a choice between the two opposing voices. If we choose ego, we remain in the conflict even though we made a choice. If we choose Spirit, we see only the Truth we are, and we begin to recognize others for the truth they also are. In this recognition is our glimpse of peace, the peace that we have been denying as we continued to believe in this body. Peace is the forgotten state of mind we had when we entered this dream. Only forgotten, never lost.

6. There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit's Voice, and Its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made for you. That is why I suggested before that you remind yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.

The first statement could be shorten to "There can be no conflict." Only in the world we made is duality possible for us to believe. Only in duality is conflict possible because there is always opposition to every thought. Our thoughts can only be of love or fear – truth or false. The more we remember with the assistance of Spirit, the more we are able to see our world for what we have made it. Everything within our world will someday cease to be. Everything in our Truth – our Reality – is as eternal as is our Source.

7. You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you can think you are. It must, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God's creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, His second lesson is:

To have peace, teach peace to learn it.

Insane decisions are decisions made as ego. Decisions of Truth are made with Spirit. So for us to have peace, we have to teach peace, and for us to teach peace we must first remember peace.

8. This is still a preliminary step, since having and being are still not equated. It is, however, more advanced than the first step, which is really only the beginning of the thought reversal. The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a step in the direction out of conflict, since it means that alternatives have been considered, and one has been chosen as more desirable. Nevertheless, the term "more desirable" still implies that the desirable has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one. Lack of order of difficulty in miracles has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired. To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself created you as a creator.

We are still being taught 'baby steps' here, but then again we have to be taught everything all over again. This step then is a way out of the conflict we feel but not the final step in the process. That bit about 'order of difficulty in miracles" is still hanging around. We have yet to let go of expectations about how one thought is so much easier to think than another. That is insanity even to write.

9. The second step, then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step toward the unified perception that reflects God's knowing. As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing toward the center of your thought system, where the fundamental change will occur. At the second step progress is intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first because it follows. Realizing that it must follow is a demonstration of a growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on.

So we took the first 'baby step' and now our second 'one' and we are still standing. We have not run away from the Course or tossed it against the wall to make that familiar 'blue mark". Just remember to be patient with yourself, we are just beginning to remember all that we have forgotten, and we are encountering a force that does not want us to remember. But we are the "Power" over that force. Note that when we read that we are following, how comforting that is to hear. If we are following, then we must have made the choice to do so, and that we are not alone here.

Chapter 6

Section V

C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom

1. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.

Ever think about this – if it wasn't for the presence of Spirit, how would we know the difference between truth and false? If we did not have this link to God, we would forever be in this nightmare of a dream. Everything presented to us as ego thinking is false, but until we ask for a 'second opinion' we really are not sure of it. We take everything for truth that has been presented to us thus far, and only now we are beginning to question all that we have taught ourselves. We are beginning to grasp that what we had believed in may not be truth, and it is disturbing to us. We have been lied to is one way we react. With Spirit ever present with us, we have but to turn to It for an evaluation of what is being presented to us. We have the best Advisor one could have with us at all time. Spirit and ego will never agree on any one item. Ego sees anything as an answer to its needs, while Spirit sees everything in the Light of Truth. And as for moods, well we all know a lot about moods, right? But did you ever stop and realize that only one mood exists when we are with Spirit, while a multitude of moods will churn through us with ego?

2. The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He does not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is:

Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom.

We are being told here once again that we are what we teach and we learn what we teach. To judge another is an error on our part and one that we do not wish to teach others. Spirit judges because it can easily see truth from fear. We cannot. We are remembering not to judge and to perceive others in the Light we are. We are Love and we can only teach Love, but in order to teach Love, we must be without judgment. But once again, this 'being without judgment' is but a thought in our mind. We cannot love and fear at the same time. What does vigilant mean to you? Is it that we are to be ever aware of what we are holding as thoughts in our mind?

3. This is a major step toward fundamental change. Yet it still has an aspect of thought reversal, since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against. It has advanced far from the first lesson, which is merely the beginning of the thought reversal, and also from the second, which is essentially the identification of what is more desirable. This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable.

Being vigilant then does not mean that we must be 'on guard' against attack thoughts, but just that we are aware of what we are thinking. If we discover we are thinking fear, we change our thoughts to love. The first step was about that thought reversal was possible. The second step shows us to distinguish what it is that must be reversed. This 'major step' as it is called, emphasizes the difference between the 'desireable and the undesirable."

4. While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you must be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. This lesson is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutually exclusive. As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. By teaching what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom.

While the first two steps have to do with conflict, this step is about our awareness of conflict. And it is not a matter that we simply can be, it is a matter that we must be. This step has nothing to do with the order of difficulty of miracles we get so focused on, but is all about our awareness, our vigilance of what thoughts we hold. We are told that temptations will be shown to us, but that in our vigilance, we will see them for what they are. But look where all this is leading us – to a place where we will arrive where we will no longer have to choose at all. So when the going gets a bit rough here, keep that in the corner of mind as well.

5. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom. You create by your true being, but what you are you must learn to remember. The way to remember it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others, and goes beyond them towards real integration. If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. Since it is whole, you are teaching peace because you believe in it. The final step will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit has prepared you for God. He is getting you ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him.

Choosing through the Voice of God will lead us to the Source of the Voice. We create in Truth, and we must continue to remember our Truth. If we are aware of only thoughts of Love in our mind, then we becoming the Oneness of Mind we have forever been. In the acceptance of the thoughts of Love, we are accepting our Truth as well. We can teach Peace because we are Peace, and we are peace because we believe we are. In our taking the third step with Spirit, we have but one more step to take – with God. We are in the act of remembering all of our Truth.

6. You learn first that having rests on giving, and not on getting. Next you learn that you learn what you teach, and that you want to learn peace. This is the condition for identifying with the Kingdom, since it is the condition of the Kingdom. You have believed that you are without the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included, and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must exclude.

Giving Love is having Love. Teaching Peace is being Peace. To be aware of both is the third step. And the third step is a prerequisite, sort of, for our remembering all that we are. We have so long believed we have been separated from God, and now we are remembering that we have never left our Source.

7. The third step is thus one of protection for your mind, allowing you to identify only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question. As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparent to you. This is why you must be vigilant on God's behalf. The ego speaks against His creation, and therefore engenders doubt. You cannot go beyond belief until you believe fully.

The third step then has only identifying with our essence of Truth, our altar at the center of our being. This altar is made of our beliefs and we stand before it acknowledging what we remember. But these beliefs are only necessary for us while we still see ourselves in this dream. Beliefs are necessary now, but are meaningless in our awaken state – our Truth. This is why we continue to be aware of the thoughts we hold. Those thoughts indicate the beliefs we hold as true. Ego will constantly throw doubt before you on your path. You have two choices: see it and not see it.

8. To teach the whole Sonship without exception demonstrates that you perceive its wholeness, and have learned that it is one. Now you must be vigilant to hold its oneness in your mind because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness and will be unable to teach it. The wholeness of the Kingdom does not depend on your perception, but your awareness of its wholeness does. It is only your awareness that needs protection, since being cannot be assailed. Yet a real sense of being cannot be yours while you are doubtful of what you are. This is why vigilance is essential. Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty. Certainty is of God for you. Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it is necessary against illusions.

If I demonstrate to all I see of the Love I am, then I am seeing all of us as One. If I make a distinction that one is not to be included, then I am denying all of us. If I hold one doubt, I believe in that doubt, and I cannot experience Oneness. Only my awareness needs my vigilance. Doubt can creep in without my noticing it. If a doubt does enter, I must see it for what it is and change my thought about it. In the insane world we make, we must only vigilant against illusions, never Truth. Now that by itself says an awful lot.

9. Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What you made has imprisoned your will, and given you a sick mind that must be healed. Your vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed it radiates health, and thereby teaches healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, and those who choose to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe.

No illusions within the Kingdom of God and no illusions in Truth. Remember how we have been told that the Kingdom of God is within us? Then apply this to that – there are no illusions in the Truth within us. That which is within us has been made sacred and holy and is beyond the grasp of ego. Is it any wonder we are told so often to go within? But what of this other kingdom spoken of here? This is the 'kingdom' I have made – this body that I have longed believe to be me – this name I respond to and call my body – this label attached sol that I can be distinguished from other bodies. And yet this body is also my prison where I attempt to lock myself away from others – to keep what I believe I have – not to give away or I will have less. But this is an illusion – a thought I held in my mind for a very long time and one that I have come to let go of – to be replaced with the knowledge of who I am in Truth. As my mind is healed, my body will be seen as well. With only thoughts of Love, I can teach others by demonstrating my Truth. I am a Teacher of God and I accept what given me to perform.

10. The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe, and entails a willingness to relinquish everything else. The Holy Spirit will enable you to take this step, if you follow Him. Your vigilance is the sign that you want Him to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only until you learn that effort itself is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made because it was not true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. Only this can cancel out the need for effort, and call upon the being which you both have and are. This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit.

This third step can be seen as an affirmation of my Truth – of who I am in Truth. As I say this affirmation, I am dropping all the illusions that I have long held onto. I take my life out of my hands and place it within the hands of Spirit, and a sense of peace floods over me. My past is washed away and I feel cleansed. This is only possible because I asked for and accepted the guidance of Spirit. Effort of my vigilance is not necessary any longer as long as I affirm my Truth. My awareness of my truth is shown before me and I gladly accept it.
Chapter 7.

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

I. The Last Step

1. The creative power of God and His creations is limitless, but they are not in reciprocal relationship. You communicate fully with God, as He does with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because you share it, you are inspired to create like God. Yet in creation you are not in a reciprocal relation to God, since He created you but you did not create Him. I have already told you that only in this respect your creative power differs from His. Even in this world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but children do not give birth to parents. They do, however, give birth to their children, and thus give birth as their parents do.

Although this is entitled "The Last Step" it is not the end of the Course. The last chapter is number 31! Our creative power is as God's – limitless. While God created us, we did not create God, but this is given to us in this dream. There is no difference in us and God – we are the One we seek. But unless this point is made in the dream, we might just get somewhat head strong being as God is.

2. If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not increase through its own creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would not be co-creator with God. As God's creative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so must your creative thought proceed from you to your creations. Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. God's accomplishments are not yours, but yours are like His. He created the Sonship and you increase it. You have the power to add to the Kingdom, though not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom. You claim this power when you become vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. By accepting this power as yours you have learned to remember what you are.

If we did create God, and God did create us, can you see where we would be? In a circle going nowhere and accomplishing nothing. Creation is from God, not from Its creations. As One with God we create as God, but believing we are separate from God, we are unable to create as God creates. The Creation of God – us – is unlimited. As the creation of God, God flows through us, and in so flowing continues to create. And what are our creations? Are they the illusions we believe exist in our world we make? What is it that we create that is like a creation of God? A thought within the Mind of God is extended and becomes us. What thought do we hold in our mind that is likewise extended and becomes something? What is that we can add to the Kingdom of God but not to God? In realizing this power we are accepting the Truth of who and what we are.

3. Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless it does not stop. It creates forever, but not in time. God's creations have always been, because He has always been. Your creations have always been, because you can create only as God creates. Eternity is yours, because He created you eternal.

So my creation, my thought remains within my mind, as I remain in the Mind of God. To create is to love and to love is to create. Love extends from our mind to another mind, but never leaves our mind. But that thought is limitless in that it can flow to the minds of many others as well, and still never leave my mind. Being limitless is being eternal; no beginning nor an ending. Eternity is our reality because that is how we are created by God.

4. The ego, on the other hand, always demands reciprocal rights, because it is competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to strike a bargain, but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no bargains are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God's Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your gifts must be like His. Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you.

Now ego always wants something for something, in actuality it wants something for nothing. Ego cannot comprehend that to give is to receive. Ego knows nothing of doing some act of kindness for another without any expectations in return. We are the gifts of God and God created his gifts as God is – unlimited. What are the gifts of ego and are any of them limitless? My gifts to the Kingdom of God are the same of God's gifts to the Kingdom – Love.

5. I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creator with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. The eternal are in peace and joy forever.

If you do not believe you are as God is, what gift might you offer to the Kingdom of God? Is there something that you would offer that would greater than the gift placed there by God? If you do not believe your essence is Love, you cannot extend Love to another. You cannot offer to another that which you believe you do not have. Accepting your Truth is also accepting your eternity.

6. To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are, and to create like Him is to share the perfect Love He shares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads you, that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. I have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true need be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step.

To think like God is to extend God. And we learn all of this by listening to the still small Voice within us. We remember how to extend Love as we remember our Truth – that we are Love. So again, as a review, the steps we are talking about here are the steps to our remembering all that we have forgotten.

7. God does not take steps, because His accomplishments are not gradual. He does not teach, because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last, because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word "first" as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the First in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator, because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever. What is timeless is always there, because its being is eternally changeless. It does not change by increase, because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it as not increasing you do not know what it is. You also do not know Who created it. God does not reveal this to you because it was never hidden. His light was never obscured, because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully shared be withheld and then revealed?

God takes no steps because all is complete with God. God does not teach because we have the knowledge of God within us. God does nothing last nor anything first. With God, time is not a thought, and as we are of God, time to us is an illusion. So the last step that we have been anticipating was already accomplished for us. We have but to remember and accept.

Chapter 7.

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

II. The Law of the Kingdom

1. To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements they share, can transfer easily to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole, and therefore in need. If you, too, see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.

Only in this world is healing necessary. Only in this world is separation and sickness believed to be perceived. Only in this world we make. In our Reality, in the Kingdom, healing is not present because Wholeness is – Love is Whole. If either ourselves or our brother perceive sickness, we are also perceiving that we are not One with God – that we are somehow separate from God – we feel something missing within us. If I believe I am sick, then I shall also believe my brother to be sick as well. How I see my brother is how I see me, and vice-versa. If we believe in this world we make with illusions, then we will believe in sickness and separation. Note that this is a choice for us.

2. To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness in your mind. This reflects creation, because it unifies by increasing and integrates by extending. What you project or extend is real for you. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in this world, because the thoughts it governs are very different from the Thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order. The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them, and I assure you that you must obey them, you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have been adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes seem possible because you can respond to two conflicting voices.

Healing then – either of ourselves or a brother – is just a matter of a change in our perception – a change of our thought. If we believe we see sickness, we can say that sickness is an illusion and we refuse to believe in illusion. And as we see us, we see others. And in this simple choice of changing our thoughts from fear to truth, we have extended Love to all. And did you note that the 'laws of mind as they operate in this world' is not an option for us? The laws are there because we believe in the duality of this world – in the opposing views, thoughts that are forever present.

3. Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to "What you project you believe." This is its teaching form, because outside the Kingdom learning is essential. This form implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others, and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you extend you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it, just as their own creation did.

This is one reason I so often used the word "remembering' instead of 'learning.' Learning is of this world – implying something we do not already know. Remembering implies that we already know what is being presented to us and we have forgotten. Why we have forgotten is never an issue, only that we have forgotten and are now in the process of remembering. This process for me, is our awakening. In this world we dream, we project a thought, and then give it meaning by believing it is real. In Truth, perception is not required, believing is not necessary, and All That Is is known by us.

4. Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak different languages. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the Translator of the laws of God to those who do not understand them. You could not do this yourself because a conflicted mind cannot be faithful to one meaning, and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form.

Do you suppose that "laws of God' are present in the Kingdom, where we are One with God? Just a thought to ponder a bit. Everything in this world we make requires some translation because everything is in chaos. Many of will interpret a view of something in many ways. There was a time when I would see a forest as a group of trees – no big deal. Now I when I am in front of a forest, so much more is shown to me – so much more is visible for me to see and invisible for me to experience. Have you ever walked through a silent forest and felt the 'energy' of God moving through you – coming from the ground, moving through your being, and then extending upward to nowhere? Have you ever seen a 'homeless' bird? Or an ugly flower in the woods? The forest is taken care of by the same Love that holds us. Many people interpret the Course, some as they feel from an ego view, and others listen from the Spirit within. Interpretation is sometimes necessary not so much as to impose a view on us, but more often to get us to think beyond the words we read.

5. The Holy Spirit's purpose in translating is exactly the opposite. He translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respects and in all languages. Therefore, He opposes the idea that differences in form are meaningful, emphasizing always that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same; only the meaning matters. God's law of creation does not involve the use of truth to convince His Sons of truth. The extension of truth, which is the law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited yourself you became a learner of necessity.

The interpretations from Spirit change nothing in the words presented, but gives meaning where none was seen. Spirit does often show us opposites but that is because we live in such a world – a world of opposites. If we read the Course with Spirit as a 'tutor' then we will be given what we are to have at any particular time, and more is always available as we become open to it. We need nothing to convince us who we are in Truth. We need only the willingness to accept our Truth. Truth is presented to us by Spirit. The question then becomes what we do with what is being presented.

6. No one questions the connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible without memory since it must be consistent to be remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit's teaching is a lesson in remembering. I said before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting is only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better. You will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of interpreting them. Therefore you must forget or relinquish one to understand the other. This is the only way you can learn consistency, so that you can finally be consistent.

Note the part that Spirit teaches 'forgetting' to us. Did you ever stop to think that we do indeed need to learn to forget, for forgetting is really letting go of what we believe, and look at what we believe in this world we are in. By our forgetting the lies we have been taught, we open ourselves up for the truth within us. It is just like ridding ourselves of darkness so that light may be present. Our truth is Love. Our world is fear. By letting go of the world we believe in, we let go of fear, and allow Love – Truth – to enter.

7. What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to those who are confused? It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning, and therefore prevents the learner from appreciating it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom, because there is only one meaning. This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally free, because nothing discordant ever enters. That is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.

Can you imagine a place where no confusion exists; where no meaning is necessary; where no translation is required; where nothing but Love is? Such a place is our Reality – our Home – the Kingdom. In our memory is all this tucked away, waiting for us to bring it forward when we are reading to accept it. When we speak of God, we speak of ourselves – can you accept that yet? The Oneness we speak of, you are!

Chapter 7.

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

III. The Reality of the Kingdom

1. The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson, and applies it to all individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, He maximizes all efforts and all results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that all power is yours. Its application does not matter. It is always maximal. Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does enable you to use it always and in all ways. When I said "I am with you always," I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way, the truth and the life. You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was created to be shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as belonging to anyone at the expense of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by eliminating or overlooking its real and only meaning.

**If there is but one lesson to learn, why are we such slow learners, or so it appears to us often? Could it be the magnitude of this one lesson? Do you truly know what it means to have the 'power of the Kingdom of God Himself' within you? Can you even begin to comprehend the implications is this one lesson? And remember, this is not a lesson in learning, but a lesson in remembering. We are to remember what we already know. Now how does that feel? You already know this lesson deep within you? Jesus is quoted as saying that "I am always with you" but have you said this to a brother recently – or ever? You and that** **brother are One – you are always with him, and he with you, there is no separation. And this statement of being one comes from that power that is within us.**

2. God's meaning waits in the Kingdom, because that is where He placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as you do. How can you who are God's meaning perceive yourself as absent from it? You can see yourself as separated from your meaning only by experiencing yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what you are. That is so contradictory it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always teaching. You must, therefore, be teaching something else, even though the ego does not know what it is. The ego, then, is always being undone, and does suspect your motives. Your mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the ego, because the mind does not belong to it. Yet what is "treacherous" to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego's "enemy" is therefore your frien

Ever think of yourself as the 'meaning' of God, or what that implies? That's a good thought to take in the silence. Only in a world of insanity, could we even attempt to perceive ourselves separated from our Source. Only in a world of illusions made by the ego of us, could such a thing even thought to be possible. But then again, this is simply showing us what insanity appears as. We have been taught of our separation – that we are different from others – better than some or less than others. We have learned that others can seem to make our world horrible for us, that others can guilt us, shame us, and even blame us for what happens. Regardless of how often those lessons of learning appear to us, there is always something somewhere that is softly whispering that it just ain't so, that what we are being taught is false. Ego tries in a variety of unending attempts to get us to be obedient only to it, forgetting for a moment that this world we made with it has us believing we have a split mind, and therefore one of conflict. But in this conflict, who is the 'enemy'.

3. I said before that the ego's friend is not part of you, because the ego perceives itself at war and therefore in need of allies. You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brothers, because only equals are at peace. Because God's equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. It is the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted the impossible as true. Is that different from saying you perceive yourself as unreal?

Have you ever looked at 'competition' as being one of conflict? What happens when you simple enter into a game and just enjoy the game instead of 'competing' in it? Without competition, there is no winner or loser, just participants – equal in stature because they all played. Is war only necessary because someone thinks they want what another has, or because they feel they are right and the other wrong? But we are all equal – we are One. And this thought of 'competition' is so subtle that we often do not become aware of it until we are in the throes of it.

4. To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it. As long as you believe you can attend to what is not true, you are accepting conflict as your choice. Is it really a choice? It seems to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the same. You who are the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you are reality. This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, not in the Kingdom, but in your mind. The altar there is the only reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought, because it is a reflection of perfect Thought. Your right mind sees only brothers, because it sees only in its own light.

We are told here that to be in our Realty, our Truth, is as simple as our focusing on it. But because we also believe in this world of duality, this world of conflict, we often choose this world over one which we believe we cannot see. But it is a matter of choice for us. We are that Kingdom we are afraid to look at! We are that which we seek and yet appear not ready to accept. This world we believe in is not our reality, it is our dream. Our Reality is our Truth – eternal as is our Source.

5. God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His light because His light is what your mind is. This is totally beyond question, and when you question it you are answered. The Answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is why the Holy Spirit never questions. His sole function is to undo the questionable and thus lead to certainty. The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt. They do not raise questions, because nothing questionable enters their minds. This holds them in perfect serenity, because this is what they share, knowing what they are.

Can you accept that the light within you, the Light of the World, is the Light of God? Our Truth is God. So we are beginning to understand that questions do not exist, only answers. And the answers are always available to us from within. Do you want serenity, peace, joy and happiness? Seek the assistance of Spirit and be shown within for that which you seek. Never question, but only respond.

Chapter 7.

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth

1. Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Holy Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice for God and certainty comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, Who knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is still of God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind that does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are unaware. Because they are unaware, they do not know.

The first line appears confusing but look at it again. Truth can only be recognized and only needs to be recognized. Then can we say once we recognize Truth, we need go no further, for there is no further. Once Truth has been recognized, there is nothing beyond Truth. Truth is of God and is God. Note that healing is not from God because we are as created by God – perfect. But healing is still required in this dream we have. God does not see this dream of ours for it is but an illusion. We, however, believe in it and are not aware that it is but a dream.

2. The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you He is in you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in God because you are part of Him. The miracles the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order of difficulty, because every part of creation is of one order. This is God's Will and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of it. When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. I said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is therefore not the opposite of remembering when it is properly perceived. Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, it can be used as a way out of conflict, as all proper perception can.

The Voice of God work through me to teach me that the Presence of God is within me. This is just a step in my process of becoming aware of who I am in Truth. Again we read that no order of difficulty exists within miracles. A reminder that we shall often have before us. Healing is nothing more than a miracle – a change of thought of fear we hold in our mind, to a thought of love. Is one thought greater than another thought? No matter how you discuss them, they are still simply thoughts. Another item here to take note of is that forgetting is not the opposite of remembering. It is, we are told, a way of remembering better.

3. The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned, because that would defeat its purpose. Therefore it does not really learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has "learned." The kind of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability that was applied to the learning. All you need do is make the effort to learn, for the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for the effort. If different abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction, or in one way. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one result, and by so doing, their similarity rather than their differences is emphasized.

Are you surprised to read that the ego does not really learn at all? Think about this and remember the many times you did the same thing and got the same results? Spirit takes the examples of ego and teaches us the opposite. And again the message is so clear to us – all we have to do is make the effort to learn – simply show a little willingness.

4. All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who understands how to use them properly. He uses them only for healing, because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit understands that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering.

By learning of wholeness, we remember our Truth, we remember God. In believing in our separation, we deny the existence of God, and we deny our Truth. In following the guidance of Spirit, we can once again feel the wholeness we are, the completion of God.

5. The ego's goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit's, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, which is in all of you.

Both voices within our mind have their own agenda – directly opposing each other. Ego has us feeling separated, alone and frightened. Spirit has remembering our Truth, our wholeness (holiness) and our Oneness with God. Spirit sees no difficulty in our healing, but ego will often tell us it is impossible to be One – to be healed of the separation for the separation is real. Which perception do we choose?

6. To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own "will" as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do not use it, you forget that you have it. By not remembering it, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in accordance with the laws of God, and recognizing their universality. Without this recognition, you have made the laws meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is contained by them and in them.

You might say that by believing and following ego, you are lost and away from home on Christmas Day. There are gifts for you to open but they will have to wait until you return. Ego will like to keep you far from home for as long as possible. But within you is a guiding light that so dimly lights your path and you see you are headed away from home instead of towards it. By stopping where you are at, and going in the direction of home – this is the little willingness – you arrive swiftly and your presents from God are there for you to open and enjoy.

7. Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly because they are the laws of truth. But seek this only, because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is All in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him Who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you, by not recognizing its existence in your brother. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge fear. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Sonship, being what the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not. This enables you to remember what you are.

Seek Heaven because there is nothing else to seek – nothing true. Everything else is an illusion within the illusion. We have not been separated, nor could we be separated. We have not committed grave sins, but simple errors we can correct with the Atonement. In seeking Heaven we find within that which we seek. In our Truth is all of our memory returned to us. In our awakening we find that we are as we have and will forever be.

Chapter 7.

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind

1. The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.

" **The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities...the unhealed healer does not understand his own vocation." Do you realize your abilities to heal? Are you aware of your 'vocation'?**

2. Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and a learner 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.

The body is a means of communication, but only minds actually communicate. Ego believes that the body can indeed communicate and it does not require the mind to do so. So ego would like to have us believe that we can do things without thought. But the body of itself does nothing. To believe in the body is to believe in the ways of ego. To believe that the mind holds what we believe we see, is to begin the process of undoing all that we have learned. The body does not inherent sickness, cannot produce sickness or of itself, cure itself. The mind holds a thought of sickness (fear) and we project that thought upon the body and see the body as sick. But the source of sickness is the thought we hold in the mind, then we can change that thought to one of wholeness and the body appears whole and complete. We have that power within our mind.

3. Healing is the one ability everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication in this world, and the only one He accepts. 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 situation, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic always involves the belief that healing is harmful. This belief is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.

If we want to get really simple thinking here, we can say that healing is but changing a thought we hold of sickness to one of wholeness. Actually sickness is from fear, so to think Love will change what we perceive. And each of us has this ability to heal ourselves. As we heal ourselves, others see us as healed and whole, and are led to healing of themselves as well. Healing is not harmful, but a thought of returning to our wholeness. Magic is all about what we think we see but don't while healing is all about changing our thought to one of love.

4. 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 the 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 lack.

Healing strengthens us, magic weakens us. Healing is available to all of us, magic is believed to be of a chosen few. As long as they feel chosen, they feel separated. While healing requires a change of thought, with that change comes a release that we must also take by letting go of what we believe the sickness is. The sickness is only a fear – an illusion.

5. The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency 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 is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The "fearful healer" is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful.

Spirit does not tell us things such as this may or may not work, but try it anyhow. It tells us that we are to change our thoughts to love, and the fear will be gone. No alternatives or doubts. Within that thought of love is no conflict, no opposite. If anything is of God, then there are no exceptions available for it. There are no exceptions to Love. We may have thoughts of fear, but they are not exceptions to Love, they are reactions from ego to the unknown.

6. Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony, because it proceeds from integration. It 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. Yet if healing is consistent it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistency because God means consistency. Since 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.

Here's a quick test for us to know if we are in healing or in fear; are we experiencing gladness? If not, we are in fear. If we continue to feel separated, isolated, and alone, we are in fear. If we experience joy and harmony in our lives, we are healing. We cannot separate ourselves from God – not now and not ever. We are whole and complete as God is. As God is we are – and in all ways and in all things. The understanding God has for healing is our understanding.

7. The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful to them. That 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. True learning is constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one 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 given him 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 places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seems contradictory;– you must learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless.

Those of us who believe they have an illness want something from the rest of us who believe we do not. They truly want what we appear to have – healing and wholeness, but they are not ready to let go of what they are believing in. Some of those who appear sick want us to be grateful to them for their sickness because they are enduring something for us. What they believe they are enduring is a choice they alone make for themselves. Changing our mind appears easy and simple – as easy as the next thought. But if we did not make it so difficult for ourselves, it would be. Some of those who believe they are sick have given great value to their illness and fear letting go of that importance. Probably the largest stumbling block to changing our minds is our belief that we can actually do that.

8. When you heal, that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by realizing 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 may 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. By changing your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him.

As we heal, we are remembering the power we have within our mind, the power to change our thoughts – to change from fear to love. As we remember this about ourselves, we begin to see it in others as well. By seeing a change in us, we see a change in them. Changing our thoughts is a gift we often failed to use.

9. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or an idol that you may worship out of fear, but 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. That 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, does not appreciate it and does not love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something, it has increased. I have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by your creations, which can only be created as you were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it?

Hearing two voices, we hear two tales. One shows us fear, the other offers us Love. One shows us that which is false; the other shows us our Truth. We choose the Love because it truly resonates deep within us – like a missing puzzle piece that suddenly completes an unfinished puzzle. With this completeness – this wholeness – we reject fear for what it is. In rejecting fear, we extend love and receive love.

10. You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body in communion because this is to share nothing. Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father? Yet 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.

We cannot forget God because we are that which we would be trying to forget. That Truth within us that is as eternal as our Source. In our remembering, we begin to demonstrate what Love is, and others soon recognize what they have long forgotten as well. In this remembrance is our Oneness seen. In this remembrance does our awakening begin.

11. 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 mind 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 true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought.

There is but one Mind and we are that One Mind. Not only do we share It, we are It. From that Mind we see all minds as healed and whole. From that Mind do we see the Light of the World we all are, shining back to us. Within that Mind is the perfect Communion with God.

Chapter 7

Section VI. From Vigilance to Peace

1. Although you can love the Sonship only as one, you can perceive it as fragmented. It is impossible, however, to see something in part of it that you will not attribute to all of it. That is why attack is never discrete, and why it must be relinquished entirely. If it is not relinquished entirely it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love make or create, depending on whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they will return to the mind of the thinker and they will affect his total perception. That includes his concept of God, of His creations and of his own. He will not appreciate any of Them if he regards Them fearfully. He will appreciate all of Them if he regards Them with love.

Even though we see our brothers as one, we also believe we see them as separate bodies. And how we see one, we see them all. This paragraph is once again reminding us that this is an either/or world we make. We cannot have it both ways. We let go of all of our thoughts of fear, or we let go of none of them. And note the expression that 'fear makes' and 'love creates'. This, for me, is a main thought within the Course that constantly helps me to see my world – what I project in fear, I make with ego. What I project with love, I create with Spirit. I believe the last three lines need some explanation, and possibly re-writing them may be helpful: That includes my concept of God, of God's creations (my brothers) and of my own and their own. I will not appreciate my brothers if I regard them in fear. I will appreciate my brother is I see them in love.

2. The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes it can destroy love, and therefore does not understand what love is. If it does not understand what love is, it cannot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of unreality and results in utter confusion. Your thinking has done this because of its power, but your thinking can also save you from this because its power is not of your making. Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this you have denied the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerless in your belief.

What caught my attention here was the part about understanding what love is. We are told early in the Course that Love is beyond our understanding. So what does this mean here? For me, this means that I can understand that my Truth is love and when I am thinking thoughts of fear, I am not in my Truth. Not in Truth means I am acting as if I did not understand my Truth. But I do understand the Truth that I am, and I accept the Love I am, but understanding that Love is beyond me yet. But looking at all this, I realize that I hold a power within me to change my thoughts – to change from fear to love – that I am not powerless but powerful.

3. The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preserving it, which must result in extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never recognizes what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This threatens its own existence, a state which it finds intolerable. Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive its existence as threatened by projecting the threat onto you, and perceiving your being as nonexistent. This ensures its continuance if you side with it, by guaranteeing that you will not know your own safety.

If you are looking for a definition of insanity, the above is just such. Re-read this paragraph and then know that it is describing you when you are listening to the ego part of you. Think of your anxieties, of your logic. See how the ego treats this body it believes it is – by any addiction it can have you participate in – an act of self destruction but not see immediately as such. And read again the last line "you will not know your own safety" – have you not experience this as well?

4. The ego cannot afford to know anything. Knowledge is total, and the ego does not believe in totality. This unbelief is its origin, and while the ego does not love you it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten. Mind always reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it treacherous to love because you are love. Love is your power, which the ego must deny. It must also deny everything this power gives you because it gives you everything. No one who has everything wants the ego. Its own maker, then, does not want it. Rejection is therefore the only decision the ego could possibly encounter, if the mind that made it knew itself. And if it recognized any part of the Sonship, it would know itself.

Let's play with this a bit: I cannot afford to know anything. Knowledge is total and I do not believe as an ego, in totality. This is my origin as ego, and while I do not love me as ego, I am nonetheless faithful to me as ego. My mind will produce as it was produced. As ego, my mind was produced in fear, and con only produce more fear. But the Truth of me is fearful to ego – it does not recognize my Truth – it fears for its existence if I recognize my Truth. It will continually deny my Truth unto its last breath. But my Truth cannot be changed nor denied. In my Truth I recognize who and what I am – I am Love. I have All That Is and therefore see anything else as illusion. Ego will do all it can do to have me change my thoughts, but the Power is within me to change. The ego – me as this body – knows nothing for I am nothing – and as ego I can do nothing and think nothing. But in Truth, there is no limit to me or my thinking. My mind is One with God.

5. The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all recognition, all sane perception and all knowledge. It perceives their threat as total, because it senses that all commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to detach itself from you, it is willing to attach itself to anything else. But there is nothing else. The mind can, however, make up illusions, and if it does so it will believe in them, because that is how it made them.

Ever notice that the thoughts you have as ego are looked upon as permanent thoughts – such as, I will never change my mind about what you did to me – and yet from that thought, ego will lead us to another thought and another thought. Ego has no recognition of what it is doing – it has no knowledge – it knows nothing and that is exactly why we never get any answer from ego other than another question. But we know in our Truth, that our thoughts are easily changed by our willingness to do so.

6. The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. I have said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable. As I have already said, understanding brings appreciation and appreciation brings love. Nothing else can be understood, because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else has meaning.

Some repeated thoughts here, and for a reason: illusions are meaningless – Spirit does see them as they do not exist. Without illusions being real, conflict is also an illusion. And as an illusion, we will never understand it. What we can understand is that appreciation brings love, and nothing else is real.

7. If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything but God and His Kingdom. The only reason you may find this hard to accept is because you may still think there is something else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. Vigilance has no place in peace. It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. When you believe something, you have made it true for you. When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him.

The line that sticks out for me here is: "When you believe something, you have made it true for you." When I believe in what I am projecting in my world, I am making it 'true' for me, while it is still an illusion. When I believe in my Truth, I am remembering All That Is.

8. I have repeatedly emphasized that the ego does believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that you have done this. If the mind cannot attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the belief that you must be a body. By not seeing you as you are, it can see itself as it wants to be. Aware of its weakness the ego wants your allegiance, but not as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own delusional system, because otherwise the light of your understanding would dispel it. It wants no part of truth, because the ego itself is not true. If truth is total, the untrue cannot exist. Commitment to either must be total; they cannot coexist in your mind without splitting it. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time. This requires vigilance only as long as you do not recognize what is true. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems share truth, your need for vigilance is apparent.

And so we need vigilance as offered by Spirit because we do indeed believe in two thought systems – at least yet we do. When we choose Truth, ego cannot exist. But we are to commit to one or the other to end the conflict we experience. If we want peace, truly want peace, we totally have to accept Truth.

9. Your mind is dividing its allegiance between two kingdoms, and you are totally committed to neither. Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you, when you are thinking insanely. What you are is not established by your perception, and is not influenced by it at all. Perceived problems in identification at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since their presence implies a belief that what you are is up to you to decide. The ego believes this totally, being fully committed to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is totally committed to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.

So ego is totally committed to untruth, and you, you believe, are committed to Truth. So why the conflict? Because we still see these bodies we believe we are – we still see ego. It is not a decision that we must make as the decision has already been made for us. We can never change what and who we are in Truth. But we can change our thoughts about this body we believe in. The Truth can never change, but what is not true can be changed many times.

10. You can be perceived with meaning only by the Holy Spirit because your being is the knowledge of God. Any belief you accept apart from this will obscure God's Voice in you, and will therefore obscure God to you. Unless you perceive His creation truly you cannot know the Creator, since God and His creation are not separate. The Oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power. This limitless power is God's gift to you, because it is what you are. If you dissociate your mind from it you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak, because you do not believe you are part of it.

Spirit sees us for who we are in Truth. We see ourselves as to who we believe we are in this illusion. In the illusion, we cannot hear clearly the Voice of God – we cannot see clearly the Light within us – we cannot think clearly the thoughts of Love we are. Seeing ourselves as Spirit sees us clear up our hearing, vision and mind.

11. Perceived without your part in it, God's creation is seen as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do attack. The attack must be blind, however, because there is nothing to attack. Therefore they make up images, perceive them as unworthy and attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is. Nothing. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand it because, if you do, you are believing that it can be understood and is therefore capable of being appreciated and loved. That would justify its existence, which cannot be justified. You cannot make the meaningless meaningful. This can only be an insane attempt.

This is a very powerful paragraph – within this illusion we see ourselves as weaker than some and stronger than others. We believe we can attack another, even kill another. But none of this is real – we are believing in that which is not real. It is a world of our projection – a world of illusion – a world of nothing. We have tried to give it meaning but it is meaningless. It does not exist. What we believe we see, is not there in truth. Knowing this, we feel the insanity of what we hold in our mind. We see that we have tried to make real that which is not.

12. Allowing insanity to enter your mind means that you have not judged sanity as wholly desirable. If you want something else you will make something else, but because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.

So we have been shown what insanity is – that we live in it – make it – and believe in it. Now, is this what you want?

13. In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creator with God, and are therefore depriving yourself of joy. This is not God's choice but yours. If your mind could be out of accord with God's, you would be willing without meaning. Yet because God's Will is unchangeable, no conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God's, and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, knowing They are One.

So here is a good response for depression – we are sad because we are doing what our function as co-creator with God is. And because of this, there is no joy in our life. And this is because we have chosen to ignore our truth and believe in the illusion. Our mind is One with the Mind of God – a fact that can never change. God's Will for us never changes as well. And as we listen to Spirit over and over, we will come to remember all of this. Creation is truth, separation is an illusion. Oneness with God is truth, being alone is an illusion.

Chapter 7

Section VII. The Totality of the Kingdom

1. Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, 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. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. 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 the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.

The first thing I read in this is that again I am reminded that I cannot have part of love and part of fear – this is not an either/or world I make. And the second point is the last line: I will never be able to exclude myself from my thoughts."

2. 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 are therefore not aware of it in yourself. Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make.

Note that in this paragraph we are told that when we judge a brother to be acting in fear, then this is an opportunity for us to offer him Love – simply extend Love to him. We don't have to physically help him, just send love from one mind to another mind. And we shall never lack in our abundance of love – it is what we are. Look carefully at the last two lines: Every response I make is determined by what I think I am – and what I think I am, I am. And who do I think I AM?

3. You do not need God's blessing because that you have forever, but you do need yours. The ego's picture of you is deprived, unloving and vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can very easily escape from this image by leaving 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 would not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you 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.

**First person helps me here: I do not need God's blessing because I have God's blessing forever, but I do need my blessing. Ego's picture of me shows me as being deprived, unloving, and vulnerable. This is an image I cannot love. But I can 'escape' this image by leaving it in a past that never was. I am not in that past and that image is not me. And I will not see that image in others or I will know I am seeing myself the same. All of our illusions as dispelled together. I will tell no one who to be that I am not demonstrating to them. You are my mirror in which I see my image as long as I continue with my** **perception. And perception will continue until we see ourselves as One. I made perception and it will last as long as I want it.**

4. 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 will have put them out of your mind. While you include them in it, you are giving life to them. Except there is nothing there to receive your gift.

Ever 'invest' in something that wasn't there? This is what we do with our illusions. We give the illusions value – we give them high hopes – we invest ourselves in them, only to discover them to be illusions – nothing.

5. The gift of life is yours to give, because it was given you. You are unaware of your gift because you do not give it. You cannot make nothing live, since nothing cannot be enlivened. Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and are, and so you do not know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life, because that 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 yourself, and teach His way lest you forget yourself. Give only honor to the Sons of the living God, and count yourself among them gladly.

So the 'gift of life' is the love we are. Love is our Truth given us by God because we are the image and likeness of God. We do not extend 'life' but we do extend Love. Whatever we do, we do with God, and there is no other way of Truth. Give Love to another and receive love.

6. Only honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of honor, and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation 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 a 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.

Note the last two lines: I will love everything God created, which includes me, or I cannot learn of the Peace of God nor accept the gifts of God for you and me. I cannot know my own perfection until I honor all who are One with me and with God.

7. One child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all 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 infinite Love for which He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, since 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 your brothers theirs. Do not share their illusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.

Only a child of God can teach a child of God. The Holy Spirit is within each of mind and teaches the same lesson in each mind – that we are the Son of God – that we are the image and likeness of God – that we are as God is – Love. Every attack we imagine is a call to Spirit for guidance and patience – let us see this differently. See your attacker with the eyes of love.

8. Attack could never promote attack unless you perceived it as a means of depriving you of something you want. Yet you cannot lose anything unless you do not value it, and therefore do not want it. This makes you feel deprived of it, and by projecting your own rejection you then believe that others are taking it from you. You must be fearful if you believe that your brother is attacking you to tear the Kingdom of Heaven from you. This is the ultimate basis for all the ego's projection.

We have nothing to lose and yet we see attack as having something taken from us. What we think we have is the illusions we gave value to – still nothing. Instead of feeling deprived and fearful, look at how humorous we appear.

9. Being the part of your mind that does not believe it is responsible for itself, and being without allegiance to God, the ego is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief that you have been treacherous to your 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, that is what he believes. Projection always sees your wishes in others. If you choose to separate yourself from God, that is what you will think others are doing to you.

Remember those times in your life when you 'trusted' another, but not really? You had those doubts hanging on. Have you ever experience total trust of another? Ego does like trust in anyone other than itself.

10. You are the Will of God. Do not accept anything else as your will, or you are denying what you are. Deny this and you will attack, believing you have been attacked. But see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere. See 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. There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way into it. Understand totally by understanding totality.

Now here is a great affirmation: I AM the Will of God! If I deny that affirmation, I deny God and myself. But in affirming that, I will see as God sees – I will see the Creation of God as the Oneness it is. We are all of the Oneness. Within this Oneness we feel complete and whole; outside of it we are lonely and afraid.

11. Perceive any part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable. Wanting this only you will have this only, and giving this only you will be only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons, who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His.

This is good news for us: all we have to do is to see any part of the ego's thought system as totally insane, totally delusional and totally undesirable, and we have correctly evaluated all of it. Remember how we have read the phrase 'a little willingness'? Here we are reading that we only have to see a part in order to evaluate all of it. Which would you prefer to do in this life: make sacrifices and present yourself to God?

Chapter 7

Section VIII. The Unbelievable Belief

1. We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extension there can be no love. These reflect a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one that always operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law that unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your mind. To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extension. To the ego it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it. This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize the law. Every mind must project or extend, because that is how it lives, and every mind is life.

And once again the theme of 'giving and receiving are one' is repeated. This is a difficult concept for us as egos to accept. Ego believes strongly that in giving anything, you must therefore have less. The law of giving and receiving cannot be changed but we can choose to follow it or not to use it at all. We have all gone through those periods where we suddenly 'clean up our act' – we begin to sort and pitch through all those items we have been keeping only to discover that we can not remember why we thought them valuable at the time. In giving them up, we have lost nothing. Abundance and scarcity are both of ego we can never look at the Love we are as just an abundance of love – it is so much more than that. It is our truth.

2. The ego's use of projection must be fully understood before the inevitable association between projection and anger can be finally undone. The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict, because it does not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist on giving it up. The ego therefore tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself. Using its own warped version of the laws of God, the ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind's real purpose. It projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of the problem.

When you have been in the situation where ego has 'transferred' conflict from your mind to another, how long did it take before you realized that you still had the conflict? To rid ourselves of the conflict we have to see differently. In order to see differently we must be willing to give up ego expectations and adopt Spirit sight.

3. There are two major errors involved in this attempt. First, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected because it cannot be shared. Any attempt to keep part of it and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. The second error is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. Giving it is how you keep it. The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the power of extension. That is why those who project are vigilant for their own safety. They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this.

Two errors for us to see: first is that we cannot give away what we are holding in our mind, and second is that to rid ourselves of something is not accomplished by giving. Giving is how we keep it. So our spiritual logic will tell us that in order to rid ourselves of anything, we must release it – and by releasing we simply mean we change our thoughts.

4. You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. The belief that it can, an error the ego always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what you are. Yet its existence is dependent on your mind, because the ego is your belief. The ego is a confusion in identification. Never having had a consistent model, it never developed consistently. It is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power.

Note in particular the last few lines: the ego – us – is a confusion in identification. Ego never had a consistent model to pattern itself after, so therefore it never developed consistently. The ego is a product of distorted minds that misused their power. That is what we believe we are!

5. Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole.

There is nothing for us to fear from ego because we made it by believing it to be real, and therefore we can dispel ego by simply not believing in it. The ego is our making and no one else can be responsible for it. Once we accept total responsibility for what we call ego, we are ready to begin laying aside fears. The fears we have believed in must now by seen for what they are – illusions of nothing. With the aid of Spirit, we can walk through and see through all of our fears. Once this is accomplished the Oneness we seek will be experienced.

6. The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond your belief, because truth is beyond belief and His perception is true. The ego can be completely forgotten at any time, because it is a totally incredible belief, and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. The incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. The meaninglessness of perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not be recognized as being beyond belief, because it is made by belief.

Some may wonder how to let go of the ego, or why it is still here although we claim we don't believe in it. Here we are told that the more we learn about the ego, the more we will realize that it cannot be believed in. It is not just a matter of saying we do not believe in it, and it is gone. Learning about ego will be an ongoing process for us. We will continue to believe more in our Truth and much less in ego.

7. The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally part of you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness has no limits because being is infinity.

**Be sure you read the first line carefully and perhaps several times. The purpose of this Course is to teach us that who we think we are in unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. We are not this body – we are not this image – this label – this whatever else is given us as a description – we are none of those and never will be. By correcting our thoughts, we accept our Truth and in our Truth we see who we are and what we are – and that is beyond all belief in this world we make.**

Chapter 7

Section IX. The Extension of the Kingdom

1. Only you can limit your creative power, but God wills to release it. He no more wills you to deprive yourself of your creations than He wills to deprive Himself of His. Do not withhold your gifts to the Sonship, or you withhold yourself from God! Selfishness is of the ego, but Self-fullness is of spirit because that is how God created it. The Holy Spirit is in the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the spirit, mediating between them always in favor of the spirit. To the ego this is partiality, and it responds as if it were being sided against. To spirit this is truth, because it knows its fullness and cannot conceive of any part from which it is excluded.

Only I can limit my own creative power. God does will that I do deprive myself of anything. When I am selfish with others, I depriving myself as well. Spirit is my link to God and my mediator in my split mind. Spirit only sees truth and sees everything from ego as being less than the truth.

2. Spirit knows that the awareness of all its brothers is included in its own, as it is included in God. The power of the whole Sonship and of its Creator is therefore spirit's own fullness, rendering its creations equally whole and equal in perfection. The ego cannot prevail against a totality that includes God, and any totality must include God. Everything He created is given all His power, because it is part of Him and shares His Being with Him. Creating is the opposite of loss, as blessing is the opposite of sacrifice. Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself. Spirit yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being.

The power of our Oneness and the power of God are the fullness of Spirit, and of all creations of God. The ego is no match for such totality, for to be total must include God. Everything God created is given the Power of God, because everything God created is God. Creating is the opposite of sacrifice. Our simply being is an extension of God. As God shares with each of us, we share also with each other. There is no holding God back from anything.

3. The extension of God's Being is spirit's only function. Its fullness cannot be contained, any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness is extension. The ego's whole thought system blocks extension, and thus blocks your only function. It therefore blocks your joy, so that you perceive yourself as unfulfilled. Unless you create you are unfulfilled, but God does not know unfulfillment and therefore you must create. You may not know your own creations, but this can no more interfere with their reality than your unawareness of your spirit can interfere with its being.

The extension of Love is Spirit's function through us. Ego's thought system blocks extension and therefore stops our function as well. But it blocks more than just our function – it blocks joy and happiness that we experience as we extend to another. We may not know where the love we extend goes, but we know it simply goes to all others. We continue to monitor which thought system we are using.

4. The Kingdom is forever extending because it is in the Mind of God. You do not know your joy because you do not know your own Self-fullness. Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself and you are not whole. A split mind cannot perceive its fullness, and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness in it, and restores it to the Kingdom because of its acceptance of wholeness. The full appreciation of the mind's Self-fullness makes selfishness impossible and extension inevitable. That is why there is perfect peace in the Kingdom. Spirit is fulfilling its function, and only complete fulfillment is peace.

The Kingdom of God is forever expanding for the Kingdom of God is within the Mind of God. We are within the Mind of God. We are that Kingdom. And we continue to expand as we extend our Truth – the Love we are. We do this by not seeing a split mind – but one of completeness and totally whole (holy). In this mind we are joined with Spirit in the One Mind. Spirit is fulfilling its function and we are fulfilling ours.

5. Your creations are protected for you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring them into your awareness whenever you will let Him. They are there as part of your own being, because your fulfillment includes them. The creations of every Son of God are yours, since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole.

The Love we are is shown to us at any time when we ask Spirit to show it. The Love – the Oneness we are – is ever present but often unnoticed.

6. You have not failed to increase the inheritance of the Sons of God, and thus have not failed to secure it for yourself. Since it was the Will of God to give it to you, He gave it forever. Since it was His Will that you have it forever, He gave you the means for keeping it. And you have done so. Disobeying God's Will is meaningful only to the insane. In truth it is impossible. Your Self-fullness is as boundless as God's. Like His, It extends forever and in perfect peace. Its radiance is so intense that It creates in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of Its Wholeness.

We have not fail in our attempts to extend Love to others, and therefore have received Love in return from them as well. What God has given us, we share and in our sharing are we forever receiving.

7. Be confident that you have never lost your Identity and the extensions which maintain It in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an expression of this confidence. They are reflections of both your proper identification with your brothers, and of your awareness that your identification is maintained by extension. The miracle is a lesson in total perception. By including any part of totality in the lesson, you have included the whole.

As much as often we believe we are this ego, know deep within you that your Truth is not lost and that that Truth is forever growing. Be confident when you say who you are in the Truth you know within you. Know that as you extend Love to your brother, Love is flowing to you as well. By including God in what you do, what you do, you do in Love.

Chapter 7

Section X.

The Confusion of Pain and Joy

1. The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this world is. You may have carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything. If you really saw this result you could not want it. The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego's premises, but not at their logical outcome. Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has established them for you. They are exactly where they belong. They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises that will determine what you accept into your mind.

Okay, so this is about confusion – and confusion is depicted immediately. If we really saw the conclusion of ego's logic which is total confusion of everything, why did we still choose it? Truly, if we saw this we would not have chosen it. Perhaps we only thought we saw all of it but then only saw part of it. And because we did this with ego, could we have done the same with God? Could we have decided not to go with the reasoning and logic of God?

2. It is surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not there, and deny what is. Yet the function God Himself gave your mind through His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness. Truth is God's Will. Share His Will and you share what He knows. Deny His Will as yours, and you are denying His Kingdom and yours.

We can accept what we believe is not there, and we can deny what is there. But the function God gave us we may deny but we cannot prevent it. Why? Because that function is who we are. As we begin to share in the Will of God that is ever present in us, we begin to share in the knowledge we have within us as well. If we deny the existence of this will, we are denying ourselves and the Kingdom as well.

3. The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit's main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict.

Another example of confusion: we are not able to recognize pain anymore than we can recognize joy and happiness. And it is a fact that we often have them mixed up. We can avoid pain, and that should grab your attention immediately. The problem, we are told, is not that what Spirit says is true, the problem is whether we choose to listen to Spirit or not. What is joy to us, is painful to ego – what is painful to us, is a joy to ego. We are confused! Pain is of the ego. If we continue to listen and follow ego, we will experience pain. If we choose to follow Spirit, we relinquish ego and its pain. We sacrifice nothing and gain everything.

4. That is why you need to demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the opposite of God's Will can be better for you. You also believe that it is possible to do the opposite of God's Will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. The ego's wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only with God. This is the ego's weakness and your strength.

Are you up to the challenge here? Are you ready to demonstrate the obvious to yourself to show that what you believe with Spirit is true? Do you feel a major resistance here from you ego as you read this? We are being told what we believe as ego and then we are told of our Truth. God wills for us; ego only wishes for the impossible. Our will is as powerful as the Will of God because it is the Will of God. This is not arrogance, but it is our Truth. Ego wishes mean nothing, but the Will of God is everything. What appears weak as ego is our strength in Truth.

5. The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion in motivation, and given this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.

Spirit is forever with us in this journey. Each time we decline His advice, we are being weak and being weak in frightening and thus fearful. Spirit never once asks us to make a sacrifice. If a sacrifice is involved, so is ego. So who are we to trust – ego or Spirit. It is not about which guide is not trustworthy, but which choice we make in Truth as to who we trust in. If we follow ego, we shall be making a journey in fear. If we follow Spirit, we shall make that journey in Light. Darkness or fear, it is a choice we must make.

6. The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God's decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it.

We are as God is and as the Holy Spirit is – Trustworthy beyond question. No matter how much we question God, or how much we question Spirit, or even how much we question ourselves, our Trustworthiness is the Will of God. And with the Will of God, there is no choice for us to make – it simply is the Will of God. And in this dream of a journey we believe that we can be in opposition to the Will of God – that we can be separate from God. But try as we might, believe as we may, nothing will ever change the Will of God.

7. Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made. There is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will must be the Will of the Father, because the Father's Will is His Son.

There is no wish we may ever have that is not already fulfilled by the Will of God. We have but to listen to the advice given to us by the Voice of God, and no confusion will be present in our life.

8. Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God's Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.

Miracles – a change of thought – are in accordance with the Will of God, Who wills only that we see our Truth. We can deny the Will of God, but that changes nothing for us. In accepting, we have change our thought and experience the joy of true happiness. In happiness, there is no pain.

Chapter 7

Section XI. The State of Grace

1. 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 that is easy, because it is not of the world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace.

You did read that phrase again: 'there is no order of difficulty in miracles.' Repeated for us so that we may grasp it once again and again. Here we are told that to follow Spirit is the easiest thing in our world, and the only thing that is easy because it not of our world. It is natural that we follow our Truth, but this world we make goes against our nature – against our Truth. Difficulty is seen throughout our world because ego sees nothing as being desirable, even though most of what we see is a projection from its thoughts. There is 'no difficulty' for us because our natural state is one of grace.

2. 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 that 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 he can make.

Grace is our natural state and when we are not in grace, we do not function well in our world. Everything we appear to do is done as if it were a real hardship. Everything is seen as one big pain. The reason, we are told here, is that we were not created for this world – we cannot adapt to this line of thinking. It is opposite to who we are. We are happy and content only when we function in our Truth. In Truth there is no strain, no pain.

3. Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect 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 yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet 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 yourself.

Time for a true assessment of the world we make: is what we see a worthy home for a child of God? Is what we see a place of peace and love constantly? Is this a place where fear is never present? Is this a place where we give and yet never lose? Is this a place where we can experience the happiness that is ours? This place was made by us. The Kingdom was created by God. As we believe in separation we continue to see our world we make. When we are willing to give up those thoughts of separation, we will begin to remember all that has been forgotten. As long as we believe in the separation of ourselves and God, we deny ourselves the Kingdom.

4. I call upon you 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.

We are being asked here to teach Love to our brothers, and to teach Love to all brothers – no exceptions or there is no teaching. Every one of us will teach each other of Love by demonstrating the Truth within us. And we have learned of this Truth by listening to Spirit – the Voice of God.

5. 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. Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural. You have trained yourself not to recognize it, and this has been very difficult for you.

We have learned early on in the Course, that if light is present, darkness is gone. When our mind has only light, it knows only light. And from the light within us, we shall shine outward to others so that they too, will discover the light within their mind. This light is the Majesty of God. This light is everything to all of us equally. This light is a gift from God to each of us. As we see within each of us the light shining there, we recognize our own light as well. This recognition is natural for us, but we have trained ourselves not to recognize it, to ignore it. Although we have made this difficult, we can change our thinking so that it once again becomes our nature.

6. Out of your natural environment you may well ask, "What is truth?" since truth is the environment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourself, 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. I have already said that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with God, because only the whole Sonship can create like Him. Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative power, and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you.

" **What is truth?" "What is love?" Two questions that probably will never be answered to our satisfaction. We are truth, we are love. And yet we do not know who we are or who are our brothers are. But when we heal a brother by simply recognizing in him what is within us, we are acknowledging who we are – the power we have.**

7. You cannot deny part of truth. You do not know your creations because you do not know their creator. You do not know yourself because you do not know yours. 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 as like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation.

We cannot deny part of truth – again we are reminded that we cannot have a part of anything – all or nothing. I do not know my creations because I do not know me. My creations cannot establish my reality. I cannot establish the reality of God either. But I can know both. Because God shares Being with me, I can know God. But in knowing God, I know what God also created and know what we all share as One. The Kingdom of God includes all of us.
Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

I. The Direction of the Curriculum

1. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom. Knowledge can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is not His. Knowledge is His Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegiance.

Look closely at the first two lines. Many students think knowledge is the motivation factor in taking the Course. But here we are told straight out – peace is. Peace is like a key that opens many doors for us. Peace is a prerequisite for knowledge and peace is the condition of the Kingdom. Knowledge is not to be learned but restored – remembered by us when we meet certain conditions. It is for our betterment that we meet those conditions. Knowledge is the Will of God. And we, in this dream, act in opposition to the Will of God at times. If we could grasp just a little what knowledge has to offer us – what the Will of God has to offer us – then we would be not so reluctant to toss it aside.

2. The distractions of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so. The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say "I am not real." Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you.

Here's the end of one myth for me: I thought ego could easily distract me from remembering my truth, but not true. I have to give ego power to distract me first. So who is responsible for my own distractions? Just me. Ego will tell me that it is real and that what I am looking for is an illusion. When I ask for help here from Spirit, I am told what is correct.

3. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make. Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition so alien to the Kingdom that you cannot understand the state that prevails within it.

Who can respond to the ego except me? And who, then, calls for was instead of peace? And in this was, who is my opponent? If I believe that I can attack another, I am giving up my peace. If I give peace up, do I still have it? If I share peace, I still have it. But in giving up peace, I am also excluding myself from peace. Not a wise choice and truly one that is alien to my Truth.

4. Your past learning must have taught you the wrong things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone its value should be questioned. If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes is a sign of learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you wanted.

What I have learned appears to be incorrect, because what I have learned so far has not given me what I have been looking for – peace. In doing the Course, I am remembering much of what I have forgotten, and I can see what I have learned before is in contradiction to what I have remembered.

5. The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourself, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary. The first change to be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, each one merely interferes with the other. This leads to fluctuation, but not to change. The volatile have no direction. They cannot choose one because they cannot relinquish the other, even if it does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them that all directions exist, and gives them no rationale for choice.

The curriculum of the Course can be seen as a curriculum of correction, correction of the curriculum I previously followed. The previous curriculum offered me nothing – truly nothing. The new curriculum offers me peace, and once tasted, I remember it well. It is time I lay down the curriculum I had been following – listening to two voices only confused me at times. I choose to listen to one true Voice of the Teacher and peace shall follow.

6. The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely different things in entirely different ways, which might be possible except that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is.

I have come this far in the Course and I am ready to lay aside that split mind – that mind of conflict and confusion. I want peace and I know how to obtain peace – peace is mine to enjoy. I have singled out my Teacher and will listen well to what is to presented.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

II. The Difference between Imprisonment and Freedom

1. There is a rationale for choice. Only one Teacher knows what your reality is. If learning to remove the obstacles to that knowledge 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 what you are. It is expert only in confusion. It does not understand anything else. As a teacher, then, the ego is totally confused and totally confusing. Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is impossible, you could still learn nothing from the ego, because the ego knows nothing.

And that one Teacher is Spirit, of course. From Spirit we shall learn how to remove what we believe are obstacles to our remembering our Truth. Ego, knowing nothing, can only attempt to teach what it knows – nothing. It teaches us that we are this body when we are not. It teaches us that we are separate from God, when we are not. It's teaching only produce confusion in our minds. We can only learn nothing from nothing.

2. 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 its teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of what you have. When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your learning because your learning will imprison you. Your will is in your nature, and therefore cannot go against it.

Knowing what you know now, can you think of any possible reason we would choose ego as a teacher at any time for any thing? Why would we choose to try learn nothing when we already know All That Is? Is a teacher of nothing capable of teaching the Son of God anything? We are here in this Course because we have decided that there is a better way to experience this life – we said what Bill said – There must be a better way. We have stopped and paused and saw that we have imprisoned ourselves with the nothingness we have collected. It is nothingness now, but there was a time when we value this nothingness. Because of what we all are in Truth, we have that inner connected knowing who we really are. And what we are is not nothingness.

3. 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 in accordance with 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 that must be unconflicted, but also the content.

Ego cannot teach anything because we have the free will to ignore the teachings. We have the free will, but we must make the choice. Our will and the Will of God are as One as we are with God. So we have come to a point where we now take every teaching we have accumulated from ego, look at them for what they are, and then lay down aside of our path, and then remember our Truth as we move on.

4. The ego tries to teach that you want to oppose God's Will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the Will of the Son is the Father's. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back.

Ego will try to pull us back to its learning by having us believe we can indeed oppose the Will of God – that Will which is our will. It will try to have us fear our own will, which is insane to even read. Spirit leads us on the path and has us disregard all teachings of nothingness offered by ego.

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

Clearly we need the assistance of Spirit to show us the difference between love and fear. What we have learned from ego is totally opposite to Truth. Ego has believe we are free when we are in the prison we have made for ourselves. Can this be freedom? With this confusion, can we possibly trust such a teacher?

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

So we could say that the direction of our path is freedom and the goal is God. In our remembering who and what we are, we become aware of an unexplainable desire to be that memory – right now.

7. When I said, "All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His," this is what I meant: The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because that is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. You are part of Him Who is all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is.

All power and glory are ours and the Kingdom of God is within us. Could there possibly be more? The Will of God, the same as our will, is unlimited in all ways. There are no boundaries, nothing left out and everything within. All That Is is there, and we are One with All That Is.

8. To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God's Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is, and for its own acknowledgment of what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledgment automatically to everyone, because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice for his Creator, because It is the Voice for his creations and for his own extension.

So it is only natural – our nature – to respond to Voice of God – it is the Oneness we are.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section III

The Holy Encounter

1. Glory to God in the highest, and to you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been given. Ask for light and learn that you are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment you will learn it, because your decision to learn it is the decision to listen to the Teacher Who knows of light, and can therefore teach it to you. There is no limit on your learning because there is no limit on your mind. There is no limit on His teaching because He was created to teach. Understanding His function perfectly He fulfills it perfectly, because that is His joy and yours.

For me, this paragraph is like a vaccination against fear. Glory to me in the highest. I have but to ask and it is already given to me. If I think I need light, I forget I am light. Understanding and enlightenment will be shown to me because I choose to see them. And Who is to show all this to me? The Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – the Teacher of Teachers – Which is forever within me. My mind, One with God, is limitless as is it's Source. The teachings of Spirit are limitless as well. There is never a point of mind-overload – what is being shown to me, I can absorb.

2. To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully known, because it is the only function that can be fully experienced. When this is accomplished, then, there is no other experience. Yet the wish for other experience will block its accomplishment, because God's Will cannot be forced upon you, being an experience of total willingness. The Holy Spirit understands how to teach this, but you do not. That is why you need Him, and why God gave Him to you. Only His teaching will release your will to God's, uniting it with His power and glory and establishing them as yours. You share them as God shares them, because this is the natural outcome of their being.

We speak a lot about this experience or that experience, and here we read there is but one experience for us – peace and joy which is the Will of God. How comforting is that to read, to grasp, to retain, and to know deep within us. If we are not experiencing peace and joy, we are denying the Will of God to be shown to us. We have but to choose again. Often times we are not aware where we are, and in those moments we pause and ask Spirit for guidance, for direction, and we are shown where we are at and where we want to be – we have but to make that choice.

3. The Will of the Father and of the Son are One, by Their extension. Their extension is the result of Their Oneness, holding Their unity together by extending Their joint Will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created, in union with the perfect Creator. The Father must give fatherhood to His Son, 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 can know what it means only of God Himself.

My will, your will, our will, are the One Will of God. And we extend that Will, that Love to one another and to all we see and think of. This is the perfect Oneness we seek. Because we are the image and likeness of God, because we have never separated from God, because we are One with the Source of All, we extend who we are to all others.

4. 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 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.

How many times a day do you have this thought – every encounter you have is a holy encounter? How do you see your brother? Do you see your brother as One with you, or do you see him different, separate, and judged? Many of us have a difficult time grasping the meaning of how we see others is how we see ourselves. But the next time you see another any less than the Love you are, stop and pause and ask yourself how you are as you see this person.

5. The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is "Know thyself." There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him because they are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself alone, because it does not know where to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you cannot find yourself, because that is not what you are. 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.

Never forget your responsibility to another because it is your responsibility to yourself! The goal is to find ourselves, but not within ourselves alone, for we are not alone – we are the Oneness we shall forever be. Every encounter is an encounter of having a teacher before you, and being a teacher. Not only is there something for you to learn, but there is something for you to teach by your demonstration of Love. A teacher teaches by demonstration, not by words.

6. The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone. To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego, whose purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you can know it, and you will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego would make of you. This is your responsibility, because once you have really looked at it you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so.

Remember how we were told that the Kingdom of God was within us. This is telling us that indeed It is, but it is not in us alone – and there is that word again – alone. We are not alone – we are all united in the Oneness of Truth. As we begin to forgive ourselves for how we believe we have been or are – how alone we thought we were – how unique we believed we were – as we begin that process for ourselves, others will suddenly appear before us with a look not before seen – a look of belonging – a look of being One with us.

7. You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brother from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true. The imprisonment they seem to produce is no more true than they are.

Wrong decisions have no power – how many times have you wished that phrase would have come up before you in the past? The Atonement – the correction of all error – changes all those decisions we thought as wrong to choices we can make again. It is not about making a right choice or a wrong choice, but it is all about choosing Love instead of fear.

8. Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will let you remember what you have of Him, and by this you will remember also what you are in Him. You cannot be powerless to do this, because this is your power. Glory is God's gift to you, because that is what He is. See this glory everywhere to remember what you are.

Can you accept that what God has, you also have? Can you accept the power and glory of God as your own? Ego will have you thinking that this is arrogance on your part. Spirit will have you thinking that this is Truth of you. The Glory of God is within us all. See that glory in ALL that you look upon, ALL that you encounter, and you shall see God.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

IV. The Gift of Freedom

1. 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. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.

Notice how often we are reminded that we might be refusing to acknowledge the Will of God for us? Could it be that we need each and every reminder constantly? God's Will is peace and joy. Are you there yet? And this is the only Will of God – peace and joy. If we are not in peace and joy, we are denying that we are One with God. And yet God is All That Is. If you believe you are not part of God, what do you then believe about yourself? If we are feeling lonely, helpless, depressed, etc., we are not in the peace of God.

2. I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. I said that I am with you always, even unto 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 still 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 wherever you go. The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you.

Read this one carefully again. Did you read how our world dissociates itself from everything and everything is an illusion of isolation. In this world we make, we fear being alone, and yet we maintain that feeling separation. Insane? We are told here that regardless of lonely we feel, we are never alone. And not being alone we cannot keep up the charade of loneliness. There is within each of us a Light which connects us all together as One Light – and that Light shines upon the world we make and darkness is no longer seen. As we remember who we are in Truth, we remember who we are as One.

3. You were in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will of the 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 therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. 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 decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.

Note that the problem of our world is our refusal to accept that we are One with God and One with each other. That is our only problem, and within the problem is also the answer. Love is possible because God is Love and therefore so are we Love. As we listen to Spirit, we listen to our Truth, and as we hear our Truth, we hear it from others as well. And as we hear our Truth, we demonstrate our Truth so that others may know theirs as well.

4. 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 want to have it of me, you must give it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

And again we are reminded that as we give, we shall also receive – what we give, we shall receive. Do you want peace? Then give peace to others. Listen to the Voice of God within and you shall be guided as to how you are to extend peace to others. You shall be guided in your healing so that others can be seen as healed. Choose to listen to Spirit always.

5. Healing reflects our joint will. 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 decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you.

Healing is a joint effort – not something we do alone – but something we do together, something we share. Healing is the removal of the sickness of separation. We decide to accept our Truth that we are One, and the healing is already taking place. Just look at the power we have with but just one thought. Everything and anything is possible as One, but separated, nothing is possible. But the bottom line is always the same for us – it is but a choice we must make.

6. Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His. If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. 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 mind over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach.

One of the more 'famous' lines here. If I want to be as I believe Jesus was, I can listen to Spirit for guidance as Jesus did. If I am not ready yet, everything is on hold until I choose again. No pressure, but why would I wait? Why would I not want to be as I am in Truth? Why would I want to believe I am this body and that the world I see and make is true? Why? It has to be a fear that I believe in more than I do believe in Love. Why can I not see all others as equal to me, and me to them? Why must I see some less than me and others more than me? Why do I continue to listen to ego, when Spirit is also present and waiting for me?

7. If your will were not mine it would not be our Father's. This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself 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.

Jesus the man could do nothing just as I as this body can do nothing. But the Truth of both of us can move mountains. The Oneness of us all can accomplish all things. As we remember our Truth of ourselves, we remember also the Truth of others, and we are united as we have forever been. And together we experience the freedom we are in Truth.

8. Freedom is the only gift 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. Whom 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, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.

Freedom is all I can offer you, and all you can offer me. Freedom is Love, for Love is Creation. If you believe you can love some and not others, you are not loving any, including yourself. If you isolate one, you isolate yourself as well. Being One with God and the Creation means that no separation is possible. No one is left out. What part of being One with God can you not understand? But there is the key – it is not about understanding – it is about acceptance. Accept who you are and stop resisting your own Truth.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section V. - The Undivided Will of the Sonship

1. 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 they do not recognize it because they prefer the delusion. Judging truth as something they do not want, they perceive their illusions which block knowledge. Help them by offering them your unified mind on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on behalf of yours. Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.

Alone we are powerless, together we are the Power That Is. We seek for peace but fail to find it in our world of separation. Perhaps if we sought peace within, we would find it. Offer your brother the Truth of Which you are, and his Truth will be seen as well. Show him that this body is not reality, but what is within is his Truth. Demonstrate that we are of One Mind.

2. 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 the belief that your will is separate from mine, you are exempting yourself from the Will of God which is yourself. Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite with those who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the 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 realize this when you understand that there is no separation between your will and mine. Let the Love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. My reality is yours and His. By joining your mind with mine you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is One.

Could there be a 'divided will' of the Sonship? Only as an illusion we believe in. We are forever the One Will. We can deny that but never change it. Sickness is only in separation, wholeness (holiness) is in healing. Healing is changing our thoughts of what we believe we are to that which we are in Truth. As you look upon another, and whisper "Namaste" – do you mean what you are saying?

3. God's Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All glory lies in Them because They are united. 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.

Separated we are nothing, together we are All That Is. But if we exclude one of us, we exclude us all.

4. 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 you. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego. Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I share this confidence for both of us and all of us. I bring God's 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.

Are you ready to unite with others? Are you ready to drop your image of the ego? Are you ready to accept and acknowledge your Truth? Let's begin with the acceptance of the person in front of you – see them as one with you – and then move onto the next. Exclude no one and include everyone.

5. Would you know the Will of God for you? Ask it of me who know 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 because the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so. Sensing defeat and angered by it, the ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation because I am with you. On this journey you have chosen me as your companion instead of the ego. Do not attempt to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.

Do you know the Will of God for you? Have you sat in the silence and listened carefully to what was revealed? Our journey is not a journey back to God, but one of simply wakening within God. We never left God – there is no need for us to 'journey' back. But this is still of journey without beginning and without ending. And as we believe we travel this journey to nowhere, we have a choice as to who are traveling companion might be – love or fear. Take the hand of your brother and see within them the love you are and they are. Drop the illusion of fear that holds you here in this dream of dreams.

6. 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. It has none, because the journey is the way to what is true. Leave all illusions behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back. I go before you because I am beyond the ego. Reach, therefore, for my hand because you want to transcend the ego. My strength will never be wanting, and if you choose to share it you will do so. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need you as much as you need me.

We have come to believe in the ego – in the body we have imagined – in the fears we have projected. But the ego has no power other than what we make for it. What we have made for it, we can change with but one thought. Walk this journey of journeys with Love, and see your path lighted before you. Cease to walk the path of darkness. Lay down all your illusions and see your Truth. Reach your hand out before you and feel the hand of Love grasping you. Is there a hand of fear as well? A hand that grasps you in its clench fist, holding you prisoner of your own fears? It is a cold feeling indeed. Love will be a warming sensation, a flow of peace rushing through you. You cannot mistake one hand for the other. But which hand you hold is your choice alone to make.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section VI. - The Treasure of God

1. 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. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God's welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer.

Can you grasp that WE are the Treasure of God? As we begin our journey to nowhere, we collectively gather in all others – we experience the Oneness we are – and we all move forward. Anything and everything is for all of us. The strength we feel is felt by all. The weakness we experience is experienced by all. And our journey is not one that will take us afar, but one that will take us within. Therein is the Kingdom of God.

2. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself.

Once again we are reminded about an all or nothing world – an either/or, but never some of this and some of that. If we see the world, we fail to see God. If we see God, we see no illusion. And all of this is a choice we must make – one or the other. But that which is true is not a choice we make, for that which is true has forever been true. What God has established is forever.

3. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom the world has no power. No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal; 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.

As you read "Power vs. Force" by Hawkins, or even watch the movie "What the Bleep" you begin to see that the world we make contains a force, but the Truth of who we are is a Power greater than any force. What we seek will never be found in the world we make. What we seek, we have found within us.

4. 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 had squandered everything for nothing of any value, although he had not understood its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father, because he thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home the father welcomed him with joy, because the son himself was his father's treasure. He wanted nothing else.

Was there ever a time in your life when you were ashamed to be seen by God? You believed you did something so horrid, or thought or said something so bad, that God would not look upon you? And yet we are told over and over that how we see ourselves in the fear we make, is not how God sees us. God sees us in the unconditional Love which is our essence. Why is that we find it so difficult to be what we are in Truth and so easy to be the illusion we think we are?

5. 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 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 that are created like His? Your creations love you as you love 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 made only the decision to be unworthy of both. Yet you cannot make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God, and 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.

Remember in the Introduction to the Course, "Nothing unreal exists."? What is real except the creations of God – us – you – me – them? And what is that we can do for each other – the only thing we can do for each other? Simply extend the Love we are – to extend our essence – to extend God and experience the Oneness of us all. We can dream ourselves to be many things, none of which is real or true. But that which we are in Truth is no dream – that is our reality.

6. 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 God 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 accept his function can understand what it is, and no one can accept his function unless he knows what he is. Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you to create. Your will was not created separate from His, and so you must will as He wills.

Let's try first person here: My function is to add to the Treasure of God by creating my treasure. The Will of God is for me and for you alike. God would not withhold my ability to create because God has joy in my creations. I cannot see joy except as seen by God. God's joy is in creating me, and God extends Itself to me so that I can extend myself as God does. I gladly accept my function God has given me, in so doing, I know deep within me the Truth of who I am. I am the Will of God. You are the Will of God. The Will of God created me to create – to extend God. My will is not separate from the Will of God, it is but One and the same.

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

Can we have an 'unwilling will'? Never, because our will is the Will of God, and God's Will is a Thought and like any thought, it cannot be contradicted. We may think we can have an opposing thought to God's Will, but that doesn't change God's Will. But those opposing thoughts we hold, we can give great power to. So great is the power we give those thoughts, we believe, that we believe we have imprison ourselves within this body we have made and that we shall even die. An illusion within an illusion within an illusion. In thinking opposite to the Will of God, we fail to recognize our function here. But just because we don't see our function does not make it go away. It is created by God and is a part of us, forever present in us.

8. 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 work 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, 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, because you who are God's Own treasure do not regard yourself as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand anything.

If you want to ask the question above, do you also want to hear the answer? Do you really want to know the Will of God for you? And are you willing to accept the Will of God as your own? The Will of God is that we work together – as a unit – as a 'whole' and cease to see and believe in the separation we have projected out into our world. Are you willing to see all others as equal to you? Can you disregard the accomplishments you believe you have made in your world and see yourself on a level with all others? Can you accept everyone as being the same Love you believe you are? Can you also see them as that Love? Are you ready to extend God to all others, knowing that as you give, you also receive? Are you willing to accept the Will of God even though It is beyond your understanding?

9. 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.

Perhaps the next time you hear the phrase 'Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder' you will hear a different message. We are the ones God has joined together, and we shall forever be that One. No man can separate us – classify us – see us as different – in truth. And we know and accept this truth at the deepest of levels within us.

10. 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.

If you knew that a Treasure was somewhere to be found that was just yours, wouldn't you look for it? God's Will for us is our Treasure. We are as God is. We have been given all that God Is. And the Treasure lies within us. Let us go there now and open it so that we may experience the peace and joy therein.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section VII. - The Body as a Means of Communication

1. Attack is always physical. When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since this is the ego's interpretation of the body. You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation. You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack can get you something you want. If you did not believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for you. When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression. When a child of God thinks of himself 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.

This is one of the more controversial subjects of the Course – the body – and our belief in it. We forever fear physical attack and often desire to physically attack another. With either thought we are believing that we are this body – this physical form of nothing – this limiting cage of thoughts we have made. Note the line above that tells us that depression is an experience of our belief in the body. Think to those times when you have felt depressed and look to see if you were not involved in thoughts of a body at the time. If you think of yourself as the Truth you are, only happiness is experienced, depression is a 'gift' of fear we offer ourselves.

2. Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication. Being the Communication Link between God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made 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 regard bodies solely as a means of joining 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.

The Course will tell us this again and again – the body as seen by Spirit is nothing more than a means of communication. With the body we experience separation from others and from God. Spirit uses the body as link between others and God. When we begin to see others in their Truth, we will no longer see bodies. We will see the reflection within us shining back to us.

3. If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies, and teach them through the body that this is not so, you will understand the power of the mind that is in you. If you use the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it for attack. In the service of uniting it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion is. This is God's way of making unlimited what you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do, because He knows the only reality of anything is the service it renders God on behalf of the function He gives it.

So now we are told that the body, when used for the purpose of attack, is harmful to us; when used as a tool of communication, as seen by Spirit in Truth, it becomes a tool that is used by the power we have within our mind – the power to join with others in a Oneness that we have long forgotten. We are not the limited physical cage we believe we are – we are as unlimited as God is – we are wherever God is.

4. Communication ends separation. Attack promotes it. The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see the use to which you have put yours. If the body becomes a means you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of 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.

As we communicate with others in Love, the separation we experience ends and we experience the Oneness that we wish for. Recall those times when you have saw the beauty of someone within them, long before you even saw their outward appearance. You looked beyond the body, and saw deep within their soul your reflection.

5. Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of any kind is impossible. But when you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and glory are "lost" to you and so are yours. You have attacked him, but you must have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which must bring him his. Do not allow him to belittle himself in your mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and thus escape from yours. As part of you, he is holy. As part of me, you are. To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of you.

Another subject which comes up often in the Course is the subject of 'loss'. In order for us to experience a 'loss', we must first believe we have something, and yet, when only illusion exist in our world. Since only love and fear exist in our world, when we do not see others in love, we are seeing them in fear – and thus attack. No matter how another may seemed to appear to us, look beyond the façade of the body, and see the Spirit within them. See your truth in them.

6. Rejoice, then, that of yourself you can do nothing. You are not of yourself. He of Whom you are has willed your power and glory for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you accept it for yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you believe you have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name's sake, because His Name is yours.

Your ego probably is telling you right now that you are feeling hopeless and helpless, because you have just been told you can do nothing – that is as you believe you are. God has literally given us All That Is so that we may accomplish whatever is presented to us. The gifts of God have never been taken from us, we have simply misplaced them. With the aid of Spirit we are finding them. It is our choice to open them and use them as they are to be used. Did you ever stop and think that a gift from God can never be misused? As we open our gifts, others will find theirs as well and open them also. And the beauty long hidden and forgotten will again be seen and experienced.

7. The Bible says, "The Word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical. Yet thought is communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only natural use to which it can be put. To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.

So we 'thought' and then 'believed' and here we are – still a thought that we believe in. What we believe in – what we see in our world we make – what we think is our reality – is but a dream – a thought we hold in our mind. None of this is our Truth. And what is our Truth? That we are as God is – and no further elaboration is required, for there is none that could be added.

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

When you first began reading the Course, did you not feel that it could not be learned, at least by you? Were you not depressed and felt that you would never learn what was being presented to you? The utter frustration you experienced was just the struggle you were going through in remembering what you already knew, but had long forgotten. Learning is a word used by the ego so often in life, either is an academic manner or in the 'lessons of life" we learn – either way, they are often very frustrating to us. But the Course, while it uses the term 'learning' often, is simply reminding us as what we already know.

9. In this world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions with 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 a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to spirit. 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; His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.

So we could see our body as going through a renovation project – we are changing the décor from chaos to 'no order of difficulty' – to Truth. We are changing our perception as to what we thought the body was to be used for, to what purpose only the body has – communication. We allow willingly to have Spirit be in charge of the renovation. And we have done before, we listen to Who is charge.

10. 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 that has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has turned against itself.

Read the first line several times – healing is the result of our using the body only as a means of communication. We are whole – One – and any thought to the contrary is a thought of sickness or dis-ease. And seeing the body whole and healed is not all that we can do with the mind. We can go beyond the appearance we see – beyond the boundaries of the body – into the endless flow of everlasting love eternally present. If ever a block is experienced, it is but a block we have made with thought we hold in our mind, and can be swept aside by changing that thought.

11. The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind that 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 loses 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.

The removal of blocks – the changing of our thoughts – is our only way to heal ourselves. With those changed thoughts, we help our body to be seen as healed and whole. As long as we continue to see our body as separate, we will continue to experience sickness and illness. As long as we think separation, we will not be using the body as it is to used.

12. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose. This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both. 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. This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind's function.

Can you possibly see the Oneness of us all, and yet attack another? The body has but one purpose, and like anything else, this is an either/or duality – never some of both. Whenever we see the body for anything other than communication, we are seeing separation – attack – sickness and illness. In the world of illusion that we make, we believe all too often that the body is many things when used in different ways, but there is but only one way the body is to be used – as directed by Spirit – as directed by the Voice of God. When we attempt to use the body is any different manner, we are denying the existence of God – we are denying our Truth.

13. The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God's joyous Teacher and learning His lessons. To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to 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 purpose of the body, because apart from the mind the body has no purpose at all.

Here again, we are talking about the duality in our world – joy/depression. We are either in one or the other, never a middle road. When we are depressed, we have been tuned into the wrong teacher – listening to the wrong lessons. The reward of either's teaching is experience immediately – joy/depression. When we see our body as anything less than a purpose of communication, we are limiting our thinking and binding ourselves within the boundaries we have made.

14. You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be made flesh. Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and does not interpret it as limitation. Whenever you see another as limited to or by the body, you are imposing this limit on yourself. Are you willing to accept this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape from limitations? To conceive of the body as a means of attack and to believe 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 one that is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own.

By now you have seen how the Course repeats itself in many ways – here we are again reminded that we are not limited by the body we believe we see, and that the flesh we also believe we see is not real – the body is but an illusion we are making with a thought we are holding in our mind. Can you allow your mind to go beyond the physical world you think you see? Can you allow your mind to see others as you yourself are in Truth?

15. Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God's. When yours is unified it is His. Believe you can 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 its seeming results. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him because you have condemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no results.

Joy is a unified purpose of God and that word 'unified' denotes all of us – we are united as One. When we choose to unified our purpose, we united with God in that purpose. Note that only we can condemn ourselves and believe that a punishment is ours as fits our 'sin'. All thoughts of fear – all thoughts of sin – all mistakes we believe we make – are only experienced by us in this illusion. We can never be less that what God created us as – in the image of God. Nothing unreal exists.

16. Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. In 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.

In this last paragraph, we are reminded again of several things we do not wish to choose: we do not believe in suffering – we do not believe suffering in any form is possible – we do not believe in the illusions we make – we do not believe we can attack another or be attacked by another. We do believe that we have unlimited communication powers, we do believe we are whole (holy) and healed, and we believe we can choose to extend our Truth to others so that they may experienced theirs also. We further believe that we are not limited in our thinking – that we can think beyond the boundaries we make for ourselves, we believe we unlimited in our thinking.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section VIII. - The Body as Means or End

1. Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack. The ego's definitions of anything are childish, and are always based on what it believes the thing is for. This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function it ascribes to it. It does not equate it with what it is. To the ego the body is to attack with. Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. The body's condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal. The whole does define the part, but the part does not define the whole. Yet to know in part is to know entirely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. But knowledge never changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between the part and whole.

Have you ever once considered what you would be if you did not believe you are what you think you see? Confusing yes, but think about it for a moment. What are you if you are not this body you believe you are? What are you if you are not the 'flesh and blood' you call a body? And what particular fear holds you in your belief that you are indeed this body? The Course talks to us a lot about the body and our belief in it for a purpose – we are not that which we think we are. We are not separated from all others as it appears to be – but to the contrary, we are One with all we see. And here is another thought for you to ponder a bit – can you possibly be a 'part' of God, a 'part' of the whole?

2. The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one to the other, making the concepts of both health and sickness meaningful. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something.

This is a good description of how we believe 'life' is – a struggle with two opposing voices both having us wanting to listen to them both. One directs us on endless routes only to be led on another endless route of nowhere. The other directs us inward to the joy and happiness we hold within us. One has us believing in what we believe we see in a mirror; the other has us believing in what we have within us. One offers us confusion, while the other offers us peace.

3. It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego's belief in the body as an end, because it is synonymous with the belief in attack as an end. The ego has a profound investment in sickness. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego's firm belief that you are not invulnerable? This is an appealing argument from the ego's point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack that underlies the sickness. If you recognized this and also decided against attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego's stand.

The first line offers us a hint of hope in our senseless world – 'it has been...difficult' – implying that it is no longer going to appear difficult. I will take that thought and hold onto it. This world I make is not real and I do not have to see it the way I am viewing it – I can see it differently.

4. It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness, because you do not realize that it is entirely out of keeping with what you want. This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy because you have not seriously cross-examined him. If you had, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego's views. A more honest statement would be that those who want the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who would disagree with its case, nor does the Holy Spirit. I have said that judgment is the function of the Holy Spirit, and one He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego as a judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the ego calls on a witness, it has already made the witness an ally.

We could view the ego as somewhat of a 'con-artist' – one who has planted its defenses well. It will only accept those that are in its grasp – those who believe they are that illusion called ego. When we deny ego initially, ego throws all sort of 'garbage' our way – blame, shame, guilt, fear, death. Ego – us – can not judge without favoring what we believe in as egos. Spirit judges as Its function. Who would you call upon for judgment – one who already has an opinion or One that sees only Truth?

5. It is still true that the body has no function of itself, because it is not an end. The ego, however, establishes it as an end because, as such, its true function is obscured. This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose sight of the function of everything. A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego's interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.

Read this paragraph carefully – unless we believe that the body has a purpose other than communication, we are also believing that sickness is possible. Sickness is but a screen ego invents to attempt to hide our own truth.

6. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. The function of truth is to collect information that is true. Any way you handle error results in nothing. The more complicated the results become the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises give rise in order to judge them truly.

Sickness is then seen as a means that we believe pain is possible. Sickness means we are frail, vulnerable and needs guidance from 'out there'. The Course reminds us that we neither frail nor vulnerable, and the guidance we seek lies quietly within us. Life can be as simple as we are willing to have, or as difficult as we believe we can make it.

7. A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego's confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.

This message is also repeated often by the Course, and so must be one of importance for us to remember. By asking yourself "How do you feel?" you are asking yourself an impossible question. You feel nothing because that is what ego has to offer you. You experience joy and happiness because of your Truth. The only truth about the ego is that it knows nothing, and nothing is what is presented to us by ego constantly. Think about that – it is nothing but nothing that we give value to and believe in. But the knowledge that is within each of us is ours for all eternity – it is the knowledge of God. Ego knows nothing and in Truth, we have the knowledge of God.

8. You might well ask how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. Have you thought about the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not real? There are many instances of how what you want distorts perception. No one can doubt the ego's skill in building up false cases. Nor can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you choose not to accept anything except truth. When you lay the ego aside, it will be gone. The Holy Spirit's Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine.

If the voice of something that does not exist, appears so insistent, is it any wonder that we also believe in what we think we see? We have believed in what ego has fed us for so long, that a different 'diet' is often times frightening to us until we begin to savor the offerings of Spirit. If the Holy Spirit's Voice is as loud as our willingness to hear It, then how willing are you to hear it? It does have to be always heard as that "still, small Voice" but can be heard sometimes as a scream if we become so intense in hearing It. What we are told again and again is this – we have free will and what we experience is what we believe in – we have the power to change a world of fear into a world of love. That power is within each of us.

9. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brothers, so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and therefore heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot be sick. Everything used otherwise is. Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your decision to attack. Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the one Teacher Who knows what life is, being the Voice for Life Itself.

Now here is a lesson that we must learn and not we can remember because it has to do with the body, the illusion we believe we are. We are taught by Spirit to communicate with others, to extend the Love within us to others, to show the Light within us so that others may watch as the spark within them flares up into the Light they also are. We are not this body – we cannot be sick – we do not have illness. The one and only use of this body – this illusion – is to communicate with others. Other than that, this body has no purpose. We all want health – and look how we can have it – by letting of all attempts to use the body in a loveless fashion – to use the body to attack. Health is just the beginning of a change of perception as guided by Spirit.

Chapter 8.

THE JOURNEY BACK

Section IX. - Healing as Corrected Perception

1. I said before that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the Answer to everything, because He knows what the answer to everything is. The ego does not know what a real question is, although it asks an endless number. Yet you can learn this as you learn to question the value of the ego, and thus establish your ability to evaluate its questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body, for this would merely be to accept the ego's belief that the body is the proper aim of healing. Ask, rather, that the Holy Spirit teach you the right perception of the body, for perception alone can be distorted. Only perception can be sick, because only perception can be wrong.

Regardless of the question you hold in your mind, the answer will always be the same – Spirit. What does that really mean? Simply that any and all questions that we hold are to be offered to Spirit for the answer. As egos, we know nothing. How many times have you asked a question to yourself, only to get another question in response. As ego, you will never have an answer. When you believe you are sick, you don't ask Spirit to heal you, but you ask for help in changing the thoughts you are holding that you believe you can be sick. Spirit sees our bodies for one purpose only – for communication with all others. How we think we see anything is always wrong as compared to how it is in Truth.

2. Wrong perception is the wish that things be as they are not. The reality of everything is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the condition of its reality. It is also the condition of your awareness of its reality. You do not have to seek reality. It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions. Its conditions are part of what it is. And this part only is up to you. The rest is of itself. You need do so little because your little part is so powerful that it will bring the whole to you. Accept, then, your little part, and let the whole be yours.

How we believe we see reality is not as reality is. Reality is harmless – it is not attacking. And we are told here that reality will seek us, that we do not have to seek it. Why is that? Could it be that reality is present before us right now, and yet we perceive it all wrong? And how do we meet the conditions of reality? Could it be that we have lay down our perception so that we might see what is before us? And as we begin to see what it is that is before us, we become One with what we see.

3. Wholeness heals because it is of the mind. All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce sleeping out of fear of waking. This is a pathetic way of trying not to see by rendering the faculties for seeing ineffectual. "Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining. Dreams are illusions of joining, because they reflect the ego's distorted notions about what joining is. Yet the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on behalf of waking if you will let Him.

To experience the wholeness – the Oneness – we seek, we have but to think the thought. It is that near to us. Here we are told that sickness – all forms – and death are but expressions of the fear we have of awaking from this dream. Ego wants us to continue this sleep we are in, its existence depends on it. Sleep is our going through withdrawal of this illusion we have made. Waking is the result of going through sleep. And in our waken state we are all One. For those who have gone through "withdrawal" in this dream, you know the darkness and fears you have move through – from the depths of hell to the light of heaven you traveled, but the journey was complete when you woke to find yourself. You were as if lost, but then you came to find yourself.

4. How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. To whom did you give it? Under which teacher did you place it? Whenever you wake dispiritedly, it was not given to the Holy Spirit. Only when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep according to His purpose. You can indeed be "drugged" by sleep, if you have misused it on behalf of sickness. Sleep is no more a form of death than death is a form of unconsciousness. Complete unconsciousness is impossible. You can rest in peace only because you are awake.

In the paragraph above, the term 'Rest in peace' was stated. This was and is a term used by many religions in their burial ceremonies. Once you read the Course, the term will forever have a different meaning for you. "Rest in peace' now becomes a goal for us – not as we die, but as we live. We can experience this dream by either listening to ego which knows nothing, or by listening to Spirit which will remind us of the knowledge we have within us. One Voice offers us a 'rest in peace' now, while the other knows nothing of peace.

5. Healing is release from the fear of waking and the substitution of the decision to wake. The decision to wake is the reflection of the will to love, since all healing involves replacing fear with love. The Holy Spirit cannot distinguish among degrees of error, for if He taught that one form of sickness is more serious than another, He would be teaching that one error can be more real than another. His function is to distinguish only between the false and the true, replacing the false with the true.

Another point that the Course makes often is this – there is only love or fear in this dream – love being real, and fear being unreal. And nothing unreal can exist. Healing is then our release of fear prompted by our decision to wake. There is no sickness greater than another – sickness is but a fear and no fear is greater than another, as there is no such thing as more love or greater love – Love simply is as God is.

6. The ego, which always wants to weaken the mind, tries to separate it from the body in an attempt to destroy it. Yet the ego actually believes that it is protecting it. This is because the ego believes that mind is dangerous, and that to make mindless is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible, since it would mean to make nothing out of what God created. The ego despises weakness, even though it makes every effort to induce it. The ego wants only what it hates. To the ego this is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, the ego wants attack.

This paragraph shows the insanity of the ego – how it desires to destroy the body and yet believes it is the body – it will try to make itself what itself despises – it will want only what it hates – it will attack because it believes in attacking. Is this not what is seen is so many addictive problems – we want what we hate and yet we constantly desire more. Take as an example over-eating – we want to be thinner, weigh less and yet we want any food that we can possibly take, knowing it is harmful to us in the quantities we take.

7. The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal all errors, to take no thought of the body as separate and to accomplish all things in my name. This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. The Name of God's Son is One, and you are enjoined to do the works of love because we share this Oneness. Our minds are whole because they are one. If you are sick you are withdrawing from me. Yet you cannot withdraw from me alone. You can only withdraw from yourself and me.

While parts of the Bible are stating some truth, as a whole it implies great separation, but that is an error. No separation has ever existed. We have been as we will forever be – ONE with All That Is. Each time we believe we are sick or ill, we believe we are withdrawing from others, but in truth, we are only withdrawing from ourselves. We are healed in the Oneness we are, and we are sick in the separation we had believed in.

8. You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical course, and one that means exactly what it says. I would not ask you to do things you cannot do, and it is impossible that I could do things you cannot do. Given this, and given this quite literally, nothing can prevent you from doing exactly what I ask, and everything argues for your doing it. I give you no limits because God lays none upon you. When you limit yourself we are not of one mind, and that is sickness. Yet sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of sickness are signs that the mind is split, and does not accept a unified purpose.

Let's try this in first person:I have begun to realize that this Course is practical and means what it says. I am not asked to do anything that I cannot do, and it is impossible for me to not do the same things Jesus has done. Taking all this literally, there is nothing that could prevent me from doing what is asked of me, and everything points that I can do whatever is presented. If I see myself limited in any way, I am believing in sickness and not of the body for that is not possible. Sickness is of the mind alone. If I experienced sickness in any form, I know instantly that I am not in the Oneness I know I am.

9. The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit's only way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which healing means anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a chaotic thought system is the way to heal it. Your task is only to meet the conditions for meaning, since meaning itself is of God. Yet your return to meaning is essential to His, because your meaning is part of His. Your healing, then, is part of His health, since it is part of His Wholeness. He cannot lose this, but you can not know it. Yet it is still His Will for you, and His Will must stand forever and in all things.

The return of our memory of the Oneness we are in Truth is our way of healing, our only way. This .memory restores meaning to a meaningless life – restores order to chaos. Our function is only to meet the conditions for meaning, and the rest is taken care for us by Spirit. We remember that our will is the Will of God.
Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section I. - The Acceptance of Reality

1. Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs the human mind has ever made. It could not possibly have occurred unless the mind were already profoundly split, making it possible for it to be afraid of what it really is. Reality cannot "threaten" anything except illusions, since reality can only uphold truth. The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are, is perceived as fearful, demonstrates that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God of which you are afraid, but yours.

Perhaps the biggest of fears that we were taught was the fear of God – what God would do to us if we did not do the 'right' thing. Here we read that not only is this fear impossible, but the fear we have is ourselves. The guilt we feel we inflict upon ourselves, as is the shame, blame, doubt, hate, and other fears. God's Will for us is happiness. Why not accept God's Will instead of trying to make happiness occur?

2. Your will is not the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God is really the fear of your own reality. It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If the purpose of this course is to help you remember what you are, and if you believe that what you are is fearful, then it must follow that you will not learn this course. Yet the reason for the course is that you do not know what you are.

Our will is the One with the Will of God. Because of this, ego has us forever in a constant struggle within our mind – everything in our mind as ego sees it, is actually the reverse of what it is. This is an example of insanity at best. We do not fear God, but we fear what we believe we are in this body. We believe what we project is reality, and yet, what is our Truth is Reality. And look closely at the last couple of lines: "If the purpose of this course is to help me remember what I am, and if I believe that what I am is fear, then it must follow that I will not learn this course. Yet the reason for the course is that I do not know I am." And will I learn or will I remember?

3. If you do not know what your reality is, why would you be so sure that it is fearful? The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth is. All this could mean is that you are arbitrarily associating something beyond your awareness with something you do not want. It is evident, then, that you are judging something of which you are totally unaware. You have set up this strange situation so that it is impossible to escape from it without a Guide Who does know what your reality is. The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what you want. He is not attempting to force an alien will upon you. He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose on Him, to re-establish your own will in your awareness.

Perhaps we could look at this life we make as somewhat of a maze – a multitude of turns and apparent 'dead-ends' and inescapable looking pathways. We as ego make this for ourselves to wander aimlessly through and continue to remain in constant fear. But the Truth of us has provided us with a Guide that sees a way out of this maze for us. We have but to choose to follow the Guide to be led to our freedom – our Truth. To follow this Guide, we must lay down the fears we hold, the beliefs we grasp, the past that burdens us down.

4. You have imprisoned your will beyond your own awareness, where it remains, but cannot help you. When I said that the Holy Spirit's function is to sort out the true from the false in your mind, I meant that He has the power to look into what you have hidden and recognize the Will of God there. His recognition of this Will can make it real to you because He is in your mind, and therefore He is your reality. If, then, His perception of your mind brings its reality to you, He is helping you to remember what you are. The only source of fear in this process is what you think you will lose. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit sees that you can possibly have.

Ever have one of those moments where you suddenly recall something you thought you had long ago forgotten? How does that thought of hidden memories come to the surface and for what reason? I believe they are brought up so that I can look at them one more time – changing my perception of what I believe they hold to the illusion they are. As an illusion, they can be simple left go of. This is the work of Spirit within us – to show us that the prison we have made can easily be left. The fears that we built our prisons with are but bricks of illusion we can now walk through.

5. I have emphasized many times that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice anything. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality of yourself, the Holy Spirit must remind you that this is not God's Will because it is not yours. There is no difference between your will and God's. If you did not have a split mind, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it is communication.

If ever we feel that a sacrifice is in order, we can be sure we are not following the Guide within us. Sacrifice is of the ego, salvation is of Truth. There is but One Will and that is our will as well. We are One with the One Will.

6. It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues. You and your Creator can communicate through creation, because that, and only that is Your joint Will. A divided mind cannot communicate, because it speaks for different things to the same mind. This loses the ability to communicate simply because confused communication does not mean anything. A message cannot be communicated unless it makes sense. How sensible can your messages be, when you ask for what you do not want? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, that is precisely what you are asking for.

We have been told previously that words are but symbols, with their meanings many times removed. What this really means is that the words we know cannot convey that which we are. As we communicate mind to mind, we extend our Truth to each other – we extend the Love we are. No words need be spoken for none could describe, and yet the giver and the receiver are aware of the presence within them.

7. You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind of questioner you are. You do not ask only for what you want. This is because you are afraid you might receive it, and you would. That is why you persist in asking the teacher who could not possibly give you what you want. Of him you can never learn what it is, and this gives you the illusion of safety. Yet you cannot be safe from truth, but only in truth. Reality is the only safety. Your will is your salvation because it is the same as God's. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is different.

We have all said at one time or another, that we are not being answered in our 'prayers' – that we did not receive what we had asked for. But perhaps it is all because we did not know what we asked for – we feared to ask for what is in our hearts, and yet we complain when we don't receive it. What would happen to you if you asked Spirit to have your Truth be known to you?

8. No right mind can believe that its will is stronger than God's. If, then, a mind believes that its will is different from His, it can only decide either that there is no God or that God's Will is fearful. The former accounts for the atheist and the latter for the martyr, who believes that God demands sacrifices. Either of these insane decisions will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone, and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Yet no one really wants either abandonment or retaliation, even though many may seek both. Can you ask the Holy Spirit for "gifts" such as these, and actually expect to receive them? He cannot give you something you do not want. When you ask the Universal Giver for what you do not want, you are asking for what cannot be given because it was never created. It was never created, because it was never your will for you.

Our will is One with the Will of God and our mind is One with the Mind of God. In this illusion, as the ego/body we often believe we are, we have moments where we truly believe we are not only separate from God, but that our mind is stronger than God's. Whatever the Will of God is for us, we can resist it! And then we might even get so arrogant that we believe that God doesn't really exist or if God does exist, we should best hide from God and fear Its wrath. What we don't comprehend is that God is not an entity somewhere but a Presence everywhere.

9. Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God, because ultimately everyone must recognize himself. This recognition is the recognition that his will and God's are one. In the presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no sacrifices. In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless. To deny what is can only seem to be fearful. Fear cannot be real without a cause, and God is the only Cause. God is Love and you do want Him. This is your will. Ask for this and you will be answered, because you will be asking only for what belongs to you.

This is a very powerful paragraph – sooner or later we will all remember our Truth – we will all remember that our will is the same as the Will of God. So why wait for the later, why not accept and acknowledge this now? In this recognition we will see the Oneness we are. In this recognition we shall view fear as the illusion it is – a nothing from nothing. Now is the time on our path when we ask Spirit to have us shown our Truth – have us become aware and accept that our will is God's Will.

10. When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you He cannot answer because nothing can hurt you, and so you are asking for nothing. Any wish that stems from the ego is a wish for nothing, and to ask for it is not a request. It is merely a denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is complete communication failure between them. Yet you can ask for everything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests to Him are real, being of your right mind. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in His Son?

If what we believe we want comes from a thought of ego, the wish is nothing. Anything from ego is nothing. But we can ask Spirit to be shown our Truth and the Truth shall be presented. The Truth is Real. And our Truth of who and what we are makes us Real as well.

11. You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve it is to succeed? The belief that you must have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. God could not will that happiness depended on what you could never have. The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to deny facts, although it is impossible for you to change them. If you hold your hands over your eyes, you will not see because you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not know it because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you.

We can change, alter or even erase that which we believe we have made with the thoughts we held in our mind with ego. But that which is of God is eternal and not subject to change, alteration or dismissal. Most of this dream we spend enormous energy trying to change what cannot be changed. Happiness for us is the Will of God. That means that we have that happiness right now, but we are resisting it with fear. If only love is real, what do you suppose our efforts of resistance are?

12. Any attempt to deny what is must be fearful, and if the attempt is strong it will induce panic. Willing against reality, though impossible, can be made into a very persistent goal even though you do not want it. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are devoting your mind to what you do not want. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it were never created, it is nothing. Can you really devote yourself to nothing?

And if more fear were possible, that would be explain the term 'panic'. Have you ever been in what you consider panic and suddenly stopped, took a breath, and relaxed a bit? What happened in that instant was that you let go of some of the fear, and your vision became somewhat clearer. If we believe in our Truth – if we believe that we have All That Is – then what we think we need was never made and if it were never made, then it must not be real – it must be nothing. Do we really want more of nothing?

13. God in His devotion to you created you devoted to everything, and gave you what you are devoted to. Otherwise you would not have been created perfect. Reality is everything, and you have everything because you are real. You cannot make the unreal because the absence of reality is fearful, and fear cannot be created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create. Opposing orders of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning.

God created us in the image and likeness of God – which means that as God, we are. God is All That Is and we are All That Is. This is Truth – this is Reality. Anything else is but illusion – nothingness.

14. Remember, then, that God's Will is already possible, and nothing else will ever be. This is the simple acceptance of reality, because only that is real. You cannot distort reality and know what it is. And if you do distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression and ultimately panic, because you are trying to make yourself unreal.

The next time anyone asks you about what is possible, your response just might be: "God's Will". Nothing else is possible, nothing else exists. When we try so hard to distort that which is real, we experience fear – we experience the pains of anxiety, depression and panic. An affirmation is given us to relieve that pain. Say it as often as you must, but say it!

When you feel these things, do not try to look beyond yourself for truth, for truth can only be within you. Say, therefore:

Christ is in me, and where He is God must be, for Christ is part of Him.

Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section II. - The Answer to Prayer

1. Everyone who ever tried to use prayer to ask for something has experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with specific things that might be harmful, but also in connection with requests that are strictly in line with this course. The latter in particular might be incorrectly interpreted as "proof" that the course does not mean what it says. You must remember, however, that the course states, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape from fear.

Have you ever thought why we pray? Is it mostly because we fear something? And how we pray – the words we use – the manner we take – are all from some fear. We believe first of all that we are this body – and we also believe we have needs, wants, and desires that must be fulfilled. We also believe we want more of anything and everything, as we forget that we have All That Is in Truth. This course is not about having our prayers answered as we would like them to be, but it is about remembering all that we have forgotten of the Truth we are.

2. Let us suppose, then, that what you ask of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer be what you want. This is why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, even when the state of healing is. An individual may ask for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, if he were healed physically, the threat to his thought system might be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. In this case he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom that he himself selected. This request is, therefore, not for healing at all.

Do you suppose that if you wish for the Lottery with the thought that you will then have more money than others, that you will receive what you request? If you ask for healing of your mind so that the sickness others have told you have will disappear, but yet you have a doubt in your mind that this is possible, do you suppose you will see the illness gone? We are told many times that all we have to show is a little willingness and the rest will be taken care of for us. To show that little willingness, we must have a ray of faith that what we are asking to be taken from us, will be done. We cannot heal unless we believe we can, truly believe we can.

3. The Bible emphasizes that all prayer is answered, and this is indeed true. The very fact that the Holy Spirit has been asked for anything will ensure a response. Yet it is equally certain that no response given by Him will ever be one that would increase fear. It is possible that His answer will not be heard. It is impossible, however, that it will be lost. There are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard. I assure you that they are waiting for you.

This is a timely reminder that the answers come to us, but often not as we expect them to appear. I still receive a lot of my responses from billboards along the highway, TV ads, and especially casual conversations by others I do not know. To hear your answer, be aware of all that appears to be happening around you – listen carefully to what you hear and notice the not so obvious places where you would least expect to have an answer given. Answers are always given, but all too many times we fail to open the mail.

4. If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son of God. Do not question him and do not confound him, for your faith in him is your faith in yourself. If you would know God and His Answer, believe in me whose faith in you cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly, and doubt your brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth that is in him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words will be true. As you hear him you will hear me. Listening to truth is the only way you can hear it now, and finally know it.

And here is one the most used messengers for answers to prayers – all others you meet. Remember they are but reflections of your inner beauty – why would you not expect to have your answer there? The look from some stranger, the smile of another, and the casual remarks of yet another – all means of communication to you. What other purpose does a body have?

5. The message your brother gives you is up to you. What does he say to you? What would you have him say? Your decision about him determines the message you receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him, and His Voice speaks to you through him. What can so holy a brother tell you except truth? But are you listening to it? Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his mind that does know. This light can shine into yours, giving truth to his words and making you able to hear them. His words are the Holy Spirit's answer to you. Is your faith in him strong enough to let you hear?

How strong is your faith in your brother? How strong is your faith in yourself as for the Truth you are? Is the person you are looking at a true reflection of how you believe you are? This person also has within them the same Voice of God you have. Communication should be exceptionally easy, for the language is the same – love. And this person you are facing may not know who he is in Truth, but a word of love from you and the memory in him is ignited. Listen carefully to what a stranger says, and listen most of all in love.

6. You can no more pray for yourself alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his, and answers you. You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are not alone. And His answer is only for what you are. You will not know the trust I have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons? Hear of your brother what you would have me hear of you, for you would not want me to be deceived.

Here we are reminded again of the Oneness we all are – that none of us are separate as we often believe we are. And so the prayers we have in our mind are also in the mind of our brother, for the prayers are for the Oneness we are. From your mind to another mind and then another mind, flows the Love of God – the essence of the Oneness.

7. I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may deceive you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God's Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly.

How do you feel after reading this paragraph? You are loved because of the Truth in you. You can deceive yourself but never deceive God. And the only Truth you hear is the Voice of God, all else in an illusion. And the Holy Spirit speaks through all others as well. We all share that common bond – that Oneness we crave. The answers to the prayers you hold lie within the Oneness. Be there and listen.

8. Believe in your brothers because I believe in you, and you will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believe in me by believing in them, for the sake of what God gave them. They will answer you if you learn to ask only truth of them. Do not ask for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how blessed you are. By following this way you are seeking the truth in you. This is not going beyond yourself but toward yourself. Hear only God's Answer in His Sons, and you are answered.

If we believe in the man called Jesus and his teachings, then we also believe in ourselves and all others, for we are all One. There is nothing we can ask for that is not also for others. We are not alone – we are not separate – we are that Oneness we seek. Several paragraphs have re-stated the same message: the answers of your prayers are given us by our brothers. Listen carefully.

9. To disbelieve is to side against, or to attack. To believe is to accept, and to side with. To believe is not to be credulous, but to accept and appreciate. What you do not believe you do not appreciate, and you cannot be grateful for what you do not value. There is a price you will pay for judgment, because judgment is the setting of a price. And as you set it you will pay it.

Here is another remark about judgment – that which we automatically perform as the alone human we believe we are. Each judgment has a price for us to pay. Each judgment is our way of saying that we do not believe in our Truth. Each judgment is an attack against our Truth – ourselves. Instead of judging, we could simply accept and appreciate without creating a value.

10. If paying is equated with getting, you will set the price low but demand a high return. You will have forgotten, however, that to price is to value, so that your return is in proportion to your judgment of worth. If paying is associated with giving it cannot be perceived as loss, and the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized. The price will then be set high, because of the value of the return. The price for getting is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it and you will not want it.

Notice how subtly the reminder of giving and receiving was placed here for us to read. Remember to give is to receive and to receive is to give – there is no difference but only in the world we make as ego.

11. Never forget, then, that you set the value on what you receive, and price it by what you give. To believe that it is possible to get much for little is to believe that you can bargain with God. God's laws are always fair and perfectly consistent. By giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving, and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have. What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have, being the exact measure of the value you put upon it. And this, in turn, is the measure of how much you want it.

Look carefully at the line "It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know you have." We have All That Is because of who we are. There is nothing we will ever need, want or desire, for nothing else exists except the Truth of us. Ever think how foolish we sound when we ask for more Love from God?

12. You can ask of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving to Him, and you can give to Him only where you recognize Him. If you recognize Him in everyone, consider how much you will be asking of Him, and how much you will receive. He will deny you nothing because you have denied Him nothing, and so you can share everything. This is the way, and the only way to have His answer, because His answer is all you can ask for and want.

Many of us used the expression "Namaste" and each time we utter that word, we are affirming that the Holy Spirit in me sees the Holy Spirit in you. And in this way, we are seeing the Oneness in us all.

Say, then, to everyone:

Because I will to know myself, I see you as God's Son and my brother.

Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENTI.

Section III. - The Correction of Error

1. The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. Egos are critical in terms of the kind of "sense" they stand for. They understand this kind of sense, because it is sensible to them. To the Holy Spirit it makes no sense at all.

Ever notice how quickly we can see the 'error' of someone else and never see our own? This truly makes no sense.

2. To the ego it is kind and right and good to point out errors and "correct" them. This makes perfect sense to the ego, which is unaware of what errors are and what correction is. Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquishment of the ego. When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that, if he is speaking from the ego, he will not be making sense. But your task is still to tell him he is right. You do not tell him this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly. He needs correction at another level, because his error is at another level. He is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does.

Anytime I read that anything makes sense to the ego, I know that not only does it not make sense, but that it cannot make sense. Instead of my correcting another, I prefer to see them in their right and perfect place at that particular instant in time, as I am in mine as well. I do not have to verbally say to another that what they are doing is just fine, I have only to hold that thought in my mind and I accept them where they are and how they are.

3. If you point out the errors of your brother's ego you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors. This must be true, since there is no communication between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego makes no sense, and the Holy Spirit does not attempt to understand anything that arises from it. Since He does not understand it, He does not judge it, knowing that nothing the ego makes means anything.

If I see errors in my brother, I see the same errors in me. My brother is my reflection. Asking and receiving guidance from Spirit, I see my brother as the Oneness we are.

4. When you react at all to errors, you are not listening to the Holy Spirit. He has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them you are not hearing Him. If you do not hear Him, you are listening to your ego and making as little sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. This cannot be correction. Yet it is more than merely a lack of correction for him. It is the giving up of correction in yourself.

If I see the errors of my brother – if I see the so called character flaws in him, I am seeing through the eyes of ego – through the eyes of fear. With Spirit I see my brother as the Perfect he was created as. To see with Spirit, I must listen to Spirit. To listen to Spirit, I must ignore ego. To listen to ego makes no sense; to listen to Spirit, I must be in my 'senses'.

5. When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours. If you want to give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his. Unless this becomes the one way in which you handle all errors, you cannot understand how all errors are undone. How is this different from telling you that what you teach you learn? Your brother is as right as you are, and if you think he is wrong you are condemning yourself.

If a brother acts out as ego, I can only 'heal' him by seeing him in the Truth he is. If I see him less than the Truth he is, not only do I see myself as such, but I am engaging in insanity – the chaotic turmoil of an ego world. And the reminder about teaching others as we learn is most appropriate here. As we see him, we are also seen.

6. You cannot correct yourself. Is it possible, then, for you to correct another? Yet you can see him truly, because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not up to you to change your brother, but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.

We are told that we cannot correct ourselves, let alone a brother. So if we cannot correct ourselves, what can we do when we see an error in us? We only have to change how we see this error – with whom we see this error – ego or Spirit – real or illusion? And again we are told that we cannot change our brother, but we can change how we see him. And the only way to see him is to see him without error – to see him as he was created – as we are in Truth.

7. Your brother's errors are not of him, any more than yours are of you. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself. If you would find your way and keep it, see only truth beside you for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in you forgives all things in you and in your brother. His errors are forgiven with yours. Atonement is no more separate than love. Atonement cannot be separate because it comes from love. Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance.

If we see errors – our own or other's – we are but attacking ourselves. As we forgive ourselves, we also forgive others – everything we do is done with all others. This is what the Oneness we are is about. Atonement is not just for you or me, but for all of us. There can be no such thing as love for a few and not for all – Love is All That Is.

8. The Holy Spirit forgives everything because God created everything. Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours. Accept only the function of healing in time, because that is what time is for. God gave you the function to create in eternity. You do not need to learn that, but you do need to learn to want it. For that all learning was made. This is the Holy Spirit's use of an ability that you do not need, but that you made. Give it to Him! You do not understand how to use it. He will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation, by learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven.

If we are open to it, Spirit will show us how to forgive everything in this dream, because everything is a perfect creation of God. Does perfection require correction? If we try to do this function on our own, we are trying to do what only Spirit can do while we forget what our function is. We have made time and in time we shall heal. With Spirit, we will be shown how to accept ourselves as the creation of God we are. As that creation, all that we look upon is seen the same. And condemnation will be seen as the illusion it is.

Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section IV. - The Holy Spirit's Plan of Forgiveness

1. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept as true only what your brother is, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is not and you cannot know what you are, because you see him falsely. Remember always that your Identity is shared, and that Its sharing is Its reality.

There is a lot for us to digest here; atonement is not just for me, but for everyone; for me to forgive is for me to overlook what I think I see and judge; as I see my brother in Truth, I also see myself in Truth, and only then; his identity is my identity as well.

2. You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.

This world we make is so very limited! Just look around you, beginning with you, and see the limitations: first we believe we are this body which we have given a limiting form and then limited that form to certain functions. Then within the limited world we made, we see only what the limitations allow us to see. When was the last time you saw beyond a horizon or beyond the stars in the sky? Understanding is a word of ego, while acceptance is a word of Spirit. We have a part in the overall plan of Atonement but we cannot comprehend the plan Itself. If we were not limited we would not see errors. We see errors because we do not see beyond them. Spirit will show us to look beyond all limitations we have made. Our part is just to accept the way shown to us, and not to try to understand it.

3. The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego's judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

Why would we need to be reminded of sharing? Remember as a child how easily you shared anything and everything with others? It wasn't until someone told us that if we shared something, we might not get it back that fear took over. Once we stopped sharing, we saw ourselves separated – they were there and we were here. Sharing is accomplished when we fail to see separation existing – when we see only the Oneness in each other. Sharing is the giving/receiving we remember.

4. The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego's plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it. This is where the ego is forced to appeal to "mysteries," insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas that are eternal.

We must always remember that we live in a world of duality – whenever we ask a question, we will always get two responses – ego and Spirit. So when we ask for forgiveness, ego will present us with its blueprint. Should we follow it, we will become lost in the unending path leading to nowhere. Ego will have us believe that we can see error in ourselves and others, and then after convincing us that we see it, we are then instructed to overlook it – pretend it isn't there. But like everything else, once we see it and give it some value, it is forever there. We give the error meaning and then we are told that the error is meaningless. Is this not insanity?

5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.

The forgiveness we remember is seeing beyond the error as the error is unreal. We give no meaning to a meaningless thought. Love is real and error is unreal. And the more we make this a habit, the more we will be acting in our Truth.

6. Follow the Holy Spirit's teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness is His function and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what I meant when I said that miracles are natural, and when they do not occur something has gone wrong. Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is.

It makes perfect sense to follow the instructions of Spirit for forgiveness, because forgiveness is what Spirit does best – it is It's function. And we are reminded of what we read in the very beginning of this course – that miracles are natural and when they don't occur something has gone wrong – and that 'wrong' is our not following the guidelines established by Spirit for forgiveness. And again, we do not have to understand how this is accomplished, only to accept that it is accomplished.

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

We all know the feeling of confusion. Confusion is like a smoke-screen ego puts in front of us so that we will not be able to see beyond the fear it presents – so that we can not see the Truth that is beyond. Ego would love to have us believe that any and all functions are its own. But keep in mind, that always we have two responses for every thought we have.

8. If you have no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you expect to react? You might ask yourself, regardless of how you may account for the reaction, whether its unpredictability places the ego in a sound position as your guide. Let me repeat that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself. Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane. You realize it because I realize it, and you have judged it by the same standard I have.

Recall in the Bible, how Jesus was tempted by the devil and he told the devil to get behind him? That is just another way of placing ego behind us. We walk with Spirit and ego trails us, screaming and hollering, but not always being heard. Get thee behind me is telling ego that I am not listening to it now and I no longer desire to have it guide me nowhere.

9. The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego's time is "borrowed" from your eternity. This is the Second Coming that was made for you as the First was created. The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?

Some of us were taught very young that we will someday die – everyone does. But really, no one 'dies' – the body ceases its function in this dream, but we – the Spirit we are in Truth – simply continues with our eternal Reality. Some of us can comprehend that in Truth, we were never even born, let alone the fact that others tell us we will someday die.

10. What can be fearful but fantasy, and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God is right. Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you were. Had you known, you could no more have been wrong than God can.

Is this dream we are dreaming simple a fantasy of fear? Did we not think that perhaps reality could be improved upon with a dream of our own? And something somewhere within us is telling us that this dream is but a fantasy and that reality is our Truth. That same something somewhere is also telling us to wake from this dream. Have you any idea what fear would exist if we did not have this something somewhere?

11. The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.

I suppose we could say that a "Second Coming" is not even necessary as the "First Coming" never happened. Reality has forever been; we have simply forgotten Its appearance. It is before us now, this very moment, but we fail to see it for we are looking for It from a dream and not from Truth.

12. Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of Us. Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.

Keep this in your mind – post it on the 'frig' – do whatever it takes to have it before you and become aware of what you are being shown.
Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section V. - The Unhealed Healer

1. The ego's plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God's. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers, and is therefore of the ego. Let us consider the unhealed healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to give what he has not received. If an unhealed healer is a theologian, for example, he may begin with the premise, "I am a miserable sinner, and so are you." If he is a psychotherapist, he is more likely to start with the equally incredible belief that attack is real for both himself and the patient, but that it does not matter for either of them.

The definitions given here for an unhealed healer probably brings to mind several individuals you met in life, some you even perhaps trusted. Reading the Course, we know that we cannot give what we do not believe we have. I cannot give Love to you unless I believe I am that Love – unless I believe in my Truth.

2. I have repeatedly said that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and this is why they are unreal. How, then, can "uncovering" them make them real? Every healer who searches fantasies for truth must be unhealed, because he does not know where to look for truth, and therefore does not have the answer to the problem of healing.

Ever try to share some blame with others, or even attempt to give it away, only to discover that you still had it all? Such is a gift from ego, and like all gifts of ego, they are never given away. Ego does not like to give away anything for fear of losing it. If the 'healer' before us does not know where to find Truth, then how will they ever know if Truth is presented to them, and Truth is being presented to them – we are that Truth they seek.

3. There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only to teach that they are not real, and that anything they contain is meaningless. The unhealed healer cannot do this because he does not believe it. All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness in one form or another. If they are theologians they are likely to condemn themselves, teach condemnation and advocate a fearful solution. Projecting condemnation onto God, they make Him appear retaliative, and fear His retribution. What they have done is merely to identify with the ego, and by perceiving what it does, condemn themselves because of this confusion. It is understandable that there have been revolts against this concept, but to revolt against it is still to believe in it.

The bottom line is one to read again as well as the whole paragraph. If we revolt against anything, we are believing in what we are revolting against. How much more life is now knowing some of our Truth than when we felt we were "miserable sinners" doomed for all eternity. If Jesus forgave those who crucified him, can we not forgive ourselves for a thought we hold?

4. Some newer forms of the ego's plan are as unhelpful as the older ones, because form does not matter and the content has not changed. In one of the newer forms, for example, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego's symbols in a nightmare, and then use them to prove that the nightmare is real. Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were also identified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind's corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied. This is a contradiction even in the ego's terms, and one which it usually notes even in its confusion.

I remember as a child waking from a nightmare and hearing my mother tell me it was all just a dream – it was not real. And that was comforting to hear and I believe in what she said. Later in life people would discuss their dreams and the meanings that they got from them, and I would think, but they are only a dream. There are many who claim they can interpret your dream for you. Whether you believe them or not is your choice. But has anyone really interpreted this dream? And like all dreams, it is an illusion. We can believe that about the dreams we have when we sleep, but what about the dream we are experiencing now – is this not also an illusion?

5. If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the mind, how can this build ego strength? Such evident inconsistencies account for why no one has really explained what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing really does. Nothing real has happened to the unhealed healer, and he must learn from his own teaching. His ego will always seek to get something from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore does not know how to give, and consequently cannot share. He cannot correct because he is not working correctively. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he does not know it himself.

What is it that an unhealed healer could have that could be shared? Only Love can be shared, and being 'unhealed' the healer does not recognize Love. The unhealed healer tells us many thing which he himself does not believe.

6. What, then, should happen? When God said, "Let there be light," there was light. Can you find light by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it, while emphasizing the distance? Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will change unless it is understood, since light is understanding. A "miserable sinner" cannot be healed without magic, nor can an "unimportant mind" esteem itself without magic.

In the world of duality we make, when darkness is seen, we have but to remember its opposite – Light. When Light is present, darkness is not. And in our Truth, Light is forever present – eternally shining for us to see our Truth. If darkness is believed to be seen, then we must also believe we can walk through the darkness and see it for what it is – an illusion of lack of light. There is no mystery to healing – it is a thought away in our mind. It is not a thought of ego but a thought of Spirit. It is not a magic potent but a thought of Love.

7. Both forms of the ego's approach, then, must arrive at an impasse; the characteristic "impossible situation" to which the ego always leads. It may help someone to point out where he is heading, but the point is lost unless he is also helped to change his direction. The unhealed healer cannot do this for him, since he cannot do it for himself. The only meaningful contribution the healer can make is to present an example of one whose direction has been changed for him, and who no longer believes in nightmares of any kind. The light in his mind will therefore answer the questioner, who must decide with God that there is light because he sees it. And by his acknowledgment the healer knows it is there. That is how perception ultimately is translated into knowledge. The miracle worker begins by perceiving light, and translates his perception into sureness by continually extending it and accepting its acknowledgment. Its effects assure him it is there.

When do we see a situation as impossible? Could it be when we give ourselves over to ego and let go of the faith we have in the Truth of who we are? Impossible is not in the language of Truth. Only a quitter sees the impossible. Only the ego offers us impossible when it tires of offering other ego alternatives. In Truth everything is possible.

8. A therapist does not heal; he lets healing be. He can point to darkness but he cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him. Yet, being for him, it must also be for his patient. The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist. He makes healing clear in any situation in which He is the Guide. You can only let Him fulfill His function. He needs no help for this. He will tell you exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help, and will speak to him through you if you do not interfere. Remember that you choose the guide for helping, and the wrong choice will not help. But remember also that the right one will. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God. As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world. But the laws you are obeying work. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. Only the good can work. Nothing else works at all.

The first line is one which is quoted many times by students of the Course. One can give one tools with which to make something, but one cannot make it for another. Healing is accomplished as we allow it – as we acknowledge our Truth and let go of old beliefs of fear. As we drop fear, Light fills the void.

9. This course offers a very direct and a very simple learning situation, and provides the Guide Who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will see that it works. Its results are more convincing than its words. They will convince you that the words are true. By following the right Guide, you will learn the simplest of all lessons:

By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves.

The Course is as simple as we allow it to be, and the more open we are to the Course, the more the Course opens for us. We have the Guide of guides – the Holy Spirit – to assist us on this path. And when we come upon a brother and see him as he is in Truth, we shall then see ourselves in Truth. Then the Oneness we seek will be evident.

Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section VI. - The Acceptance of Your Brother

1. 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.

We have all had the experience where someone has just 'made our day' – where they appeared as a 'ray of sunshine' when we saw only darkness. And how often they were not even aware of their effect on us. Or the reverse was also experienced – we affected others that way and yet we did not have the same feelings ourselves. We are all too often not aware of when and how Spirit works through us, but It does. The Spirit within us is the Truth of who we are. This body is but a means of communication to others, and Spirit uses us in this way. All too often we try to see Spirit, try to hear Spirit, and yet we feel we fail to do either. Seeing and hearing is within this dream – believing and knowing is our Truth.

2. 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. The decision to receive is the decision to accept.

If we could simply go through this life giving Love to all we see, and never once looking for a reaction from them, life would truly be simple. But the ego part of us says that if I give you something, I want to see a reaction from you. When we offer another Love, it is a knowing within us that the Love was accepted by them. They may not even be aware of it for sometime, but nonetheless, it was received. And our task is over.

3. If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is.

Can you believe in your brother as part of you and not accept him? In the acceptance is our belief. If you see your brother as less than you – different from you – separate from you – you then do not see your brother, you merely see a body, a form. The Son of God is not one individual. The Son of God is the Creation of God and only One Creation – the Oneness we know within us in the depth of our soul. The knowing we have and yet fear to acknowledge. When you look upon your brother, see him as you – then see him as the Oneness we are.

4. God is more than you only because He created you, but not even this would He keep from you. Therefore you can create as He did, and your dissociation will not alter this. Neither God's light nor yours is dimmed because you do not see. 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 of 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 brother's, and will accept it as you accept his.

Some students of the Course have had difficulty with the first line here – 'God is more than you because He created you' – this is only within this dream we believe in. In this dream, we believe we are separated from God – that we have a 'split-mind' – and that our brother is separate as well. God did indeed create us – He created us as the Oneness we are. Look further in this paragraph and see the message 'when you awake in Him you will know your magnitude' – We are told many times that when we do wake from this illusionary dream, we will be as we have forever been. Then God will no longer be more than we, for we shall be as God is – and actually as we forever are, but have forgotten.

5. 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 chosen 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 witness to God's. Yet 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.

Even though we say we walk through this dream awake, we are but in a 'sleep' and what is a sleep but a closing of our eyes and seeing darkness. But we are being shown and told how to slowly awaken from our sleep. We do this not by ourselves, but we do by awakening others – as they awaken, so we wake with them. We stay with that thought because of the Oneness that binds us.

6. Miracles have no place in eternity, because they are reparative. Yet while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to your reality 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 they are the same, the need for time is over.

When we fully awake, miracles or their need will no longer be necessary, in fact, everything of this dream will vanish as well. Miracles are only needed in this sleep. And within this short paragraph is the message once again repeated for us – giving and receiving are the same. When we fully accept that, time will be over as well.

7. Eternity is one time, its only dimension being "always." 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 co-creator with you.

The next time someone asks you for the time, reply "Always" and watch their response. Eternity and always are not comprehended by us as egos, although ego has its own version of both. Rather than trying to understand – which we cannot do – we are to simply accept eternity and always as truth. Acceptance is difficult for ego because it means that we surrender other beliefs for that new belief. Surrender to ego is seen as losing. As we accept eternity and always as truth, we accept our brother as being One with us as well. It all fits together.
Chapter 9.

Chapter 9

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section VII. - The Two Evaluations

1. God's Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you the means to find it? If He wills you to have it, He must have made it possible and easy to obtain it. Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers?

If God's Will is my will, and God's Will is my salvation, then is my will my salvation? And look how easy God made it for me to find my salvation. It is within my brother – within you before me. It is within everyone I see. And if my brother knows of this as well, what joy must there be for all of us.

2. Consider, then, that in this joint will you are all united, and in this only. There may be disagreement on anything else, but not on this. This, then, is where peace abides. And you abide in peace when you so decide. Yet you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often overlooked. The ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking.

In the unitedness we are One – in our Oneness is our salvation, and no place else. We can disagree on everything but on this one issue, nothing less than total agreement is allowed. In this acceptance is the peace we seek. In this acceptance is the Atonement we want. We are being told here to see the obvious – to see what is before us – not to overlook what is being presented. Pause and see what it is that is before you. Accept them as the Oneness.

3. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on you. His evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your mind, because He is. The ego is also in your mind, because you have accepted it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And it can never go beyond it because it can never be certain.

If 'suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst' is the range of ego, what then does Spirit offer us? Only Love for nothing else exists. Spirit sees only Love wherever It looks – on our brother and on us. Spirit is present in our mind as is ego, but the difference is that only Spirit loves us. Did you catch the line that says that ego does not love us? Did you find that surprising? Ego cannot love us for it knows nothing of love – in fact, it knows only nothing. Ego is nothing so it knows nothing. We are Love so we know Love.

4. You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your mind, and they cannot both be true. You do not yet realize how completely different these evaluations are, because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. He is not deceived by anything you do, because He never forgets what you are. The ego is deceived by everything you do, especially when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times its confusion increases. The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly, because it has evaluated you as unloving and you are going against its judgment. The ego will attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. Yet it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean except that you are agreeing with the ego's evaluation of what you are?

We are all aware of the conflict which appears to take place within our mind – the struggle between ego and Spirit – between Love and fear. And those times when we think on the Love side of our mind, the ego becomes more frightened and vicious and will produce more confusing thoughts of fear. If we stay in the mode of Love, we are showing ego that we know Truth, and we know fear to be false.

5. If you choose to see yourself as unloving you will not be happy. You are condemning yourself and must therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced, and must maintain for its existence? Can you escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?

We are all capable of loving, this is our nature. When we experience the feeling of being unloved or unable to love, we are resting with ego. We can stay there in that frightful rest of fear, or move on to the peace of Love. We have to make a choice.

6. You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your littleness. Within the system that dictated this choice the lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there and you do not ask, "Who granted it?" The question is meaningless within the ego's thought system, because it would open the whole thought system to question.

Another way of seeing is this as being a witness to yourself – see yourself step from your being and simply watch what you are doing. Does it appear that you acting insane? Does it appear that you are seeing yourself in the littleness of ego and not in the grandeur of God? Can you see how you got to be seen this way? Do you know how to change what you are seeing?

7. I have said that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know, and this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness therefore is to deny all knowledge, and keep the ego's whole thought system intact. You cannot retain part of a thought system, because it can be questioned only at its foundation. And this must be questioned from beyond it, because within it its foundation does stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought system merely because He knows its foundation is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.

To the ego, a question is a statement because it has no answer. Ever notice how ego feeds you one question with another and then another? It has no answers to anything for it knows nothing. The very foundation then of the ego system of thinking must be without any merit. What can we find comforting in the presentation of nothing? When the Truth is presented to us, we know instantly what it is from the knowledge we hold within.

8. Whenever you question your value, say:

God Himself is incomplete without me.

And if God is incomplete without me, how does that leave me – also incomplete without God?

Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him. You do not want anything else. Return your part to Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for the return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.

If it is not for God, it is not for me. If it is not of God, it is not mine. As I surrender my beliefs in nothing, I receive the knowledge of my Truth.

Chapter 9.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

Section VIII. - Grandeur versus Grandiosity

1. Grandeur is of God, and only of Him. Therefore it is in you. Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the ego automatically, because in the presence of the grandeur of God the meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly apparent. When this occurs, even though it does not understand it, the ego believes that its "enemy" has struck, and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its "protection." Self-inflation is the only offering it can make. The grandiosity of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God. Which will you choose?

This is but another spot in the Course where many students find as a problem – they feel it arrogant to consider themselves as the grandeur of God, and yet it is their Truth. Instead many will accept the grandiosity of ego as a substitute. There is no substitute for anything of God. Grandeur is of God. You are of God. What is of God is of you. Accept it as your Truth.

2. Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without hope because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real. Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it always involves attack. It is a delusional attempt to outdo, but not to undo. We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you despair of yourself. It shifts to viciousness when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a "solution."

How easy the ego makes it for us to accept grandiosity over grandeur. First it has us believe in the littleness it has presented to us. Then it shows us moments of grandiosity where competitiveness is actually viewed as an attack against each other. It has us believing in trying to outdo someone or something. The suspiciousness and viciousness is certainly visible in the grandiose moments it offers us. But those moments of grandiosity are short lived at best – quickly seen for what they are and then gone. Grandeur is eternal. Which would you truly experience?

3. The ego does not understand the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it sees no difference between miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. I told you that the ego is aware of threat to its existence, but makes no distinctions between these two very different kinds of threat. Its profound sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except in terms of attack. When the ego experiences threat, its only decision is whether to attack now or to withdraw to attack later. If you accept its offer of grandiosity it will attack immediately. If you do not, it will wait.

And so we see another example of the knowledge of ego – it has none. It knows no difference between grandiosity and grandeur and will offer resistance to both. It is a typical no-win situation with ego. So why not acknowledge the grandeur of God as your own and let the ego wait. It is not arrogant to acknowledge and accept your Truth.

4. The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because His grandeur establishes your freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because you will give up all investment in it. Grandeur is totally without illusions, and because it is real it is compellingly convincing. Yet the conviction of reality will not remain with you unless you do not allow the ego to attack it. The ego will make every effort to recover and mobilize its energies against your release. It will tell you that you are insane, and argue that grandeur cannot be a real part of you because of the littleness in which it believes. Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not make it. You made grandiosity and are afraid of it because it is a form of attack, but your grandeur is of God, Who created it out of His Love.

Ego is 'frozen' in your presence of the grandeur you acknowledge you are. This proves your choice was your Truth. Your grandeur shows your freedom. Your grandeur is the driving power which has ego leaving your mind. Grandeur being of God is real. Grandiosity being of ego is illusion. You can make grandiosity, but grandeur is given you by God. Grandeur is Love, grandiosity is fear.

5. From your grandeur you can only bless, because your grandeur is your abundance. By blessing you hold it in your mind, protecting it from illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of God. Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind of God. When you forget this, you will despair and you will attack.

As long as we maintain our awareness of our grandeur, we will see beyond illusions, see through all fears. Should we forget, we will once again see illusion, believe in them and experience fear.

6. The ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it. If you are willing to look upon your grandeur you cannot despair, and therefore you cannot want the ego. Your grandeur is God's answer to the ego, because it is true. Littleness and grandeur cannot coexist, nor is it possible for them to alternate. Littleness and grandiosity can and must alternate, since both are untrue and are therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting and extremes are its essential characteristic.

Seeing our grandeur, we no longer have a desire for ego. We have chosen grandeur over ego, love over fear. In grandeur we feel the limitlessness we are – the formlessness we are – the Love we are. We are in the presence of the Presence.

7. Truth and littleness are denials of each other because grandeur is truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is always true. When grandeur slips away from you, you have replaced it with something you have made. Perhaps it is the belief in littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. Yet it must be insane because it is not true. Your grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always will. Illusions are deceptions. You cannot triumph, but you are exalted. And in your exalted state you seek others like you and rejoice with them.

If ever you feel deceived, you can know that you are with ego, and not in the grandeur of your Truth. Truth never deceives, illusions always do. In our grandeur, littleness is not even a word with meaning to us. We are simply in our Truth. And the statement of not be able to triumph simply tells us that there is nothing in this illusion to triumph over – we are as God is and we begin to see that in others as well.

8. It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity, because love is returned and pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles, and will therefore deprive you of the true witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden, but its obviousness to you lies in the joy you bring to its witnesses, who show it to you. They attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not shared. God wants you to behold what He created because it is His joy.

If ever we feel less than Love, we are in grandiosity and not our grandeur. In grandiosity, we will feel pride, another of the gifts of ego. Pride always reminds me of a strutting peacock showing its feathers, while it forgets it could just as easily be a dinner at the time. Grandeur has a feeling of peace and joy with it, coming only from the Love it is.

9. Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it? And what can be real that has no witnesses? What good can come of it? And if no good can come of it the Holy Spirit cannot use it. What He cannot transform to the Will of God does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional, because it is used to replace your grandeur. Yet what God has created cannot be replaced. God is incomplete without you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it.

If God gives you a gift, can you possibly feel arrogant in unwrapping it? If you do, you have not yet opened the package. Arrogance is a trait of ego. We are never arrogant as Love. Is it arrogant to say that God is complete without us? God is never incomplete, but we feel complete without God, and God and we are One.

10. You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part of it empty your eternal place merely waits for your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of it, and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within it. Yet you do not know them until you return to them. You cannot replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself. God, Who knows your value, would not have it so, and so it is not so. Your value is in God's Mind, and therefore not in yours alone. To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance, because it is the denial of arrogance. To accept your littleness is arrogant, because it means that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God's.

Have we actually left God? Could we actually be apart from God? Not in reality, but within this dream, we believe it is not only possible but true. There are no parts of God for God is All That Is. We believe we parted from God in this dream and now wish to be reunited with God. God has placed within us in the dream, the Holy Spirit Who is our link with God, our life-line to God. With the guidance of Spirit we will led past all the illusions we believe in and discover that we have never left the Source of All That Is.

11. Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God's. You did not establish your value and it needs no defense. Nothing can attack it nor prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely is. Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and He will tell you, but do not be afraid of His answer, because it comes from God. It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so is Its answer. Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you replace the ego's belief in littleness with His Own exalted Answer to what you are, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.

We must be as God sees us – as God created us – for no other way exists. Nothing can harm us, attack us, or change us from what we are. Ask the Holy Spirit for your Truth and know that the response is the Voice of God responding to you. Know that what you hear is your Truth and fear it not. Know within you that the grandeur of God is of you as well. No longer hide it in disbelief. Allow it to be seen by all other so that they may see it within them as well.

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Introduction

1. Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything happening to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you. You can violate God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection and are as inviolate as your safety.

Do you accept that nothing exists beyond you, that nothing can make you fearful or loving? Both time and eternity are of our mind, both are but thoughts. So can anything truly happen to you unless it is simply a thought? And can a thought cause you pain and suffering? The Laws of God are for our good, and can never be violated but only in our imagination.

2. God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God's only creation and He created you eternal? Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it.

Only God exists and the Creations of God which are us. Anything else has to be an illusion for if it does not come from God, it is not real. Isn't it strange that we believe that there are 'things' 'out there' that can harm us when 'out there' does not exist? How is it that we become believers in what is not real?

3. God does not change His Mind about you, for He is not uncertain of Himself. And what He knows can be known, because He does not know it only for Himself. He created you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for yourself so you would be like Him. That is why your mind is holy. Can anything exceed the Love of God? Can anything, then, exceed your will? Nothing can reach you from beyond it because, being in God, you encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself, "Has God changed His Mind about me?" Then accept His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about yourself. God will never decide against you, or He would be deciding against Himself.

**We are prompted here to remember to ask: "Has God changed His Mind about me?" but let us not forget the other question as well: "Have I changed my mind about God?" Of course, God does not change His Mind about me, and I cannot change my mind about God, although I can often believe I do. Because God created me in the image and likeness of Itself, I am as God is and will forever be. Thus I am the Love of God and there is nothing beyond the Love of God. This is not arrogance but Truth. Knowing this then, does anything exist that can cause me harm, pain, illness or sickness? The Mind of God never changes, but I allow my mind to wander from the Mind of God. In this wandering I believe that illness, sickness and disease exist.**

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Section I. - At Home in God

1. You do not know your creations simply because you would decide against them as long as your mind is split, and to attack what you have created is impossible. But remember that it is as impossible for God. The law of creation is that you love your creations as yourself, because they are part of you. Everything that was created is therefore perfectly safe, because the laws of God protect it by His Love. Any part of your mind that does not know this has banished itself from knowledge, because it has not met its conditions. Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist.

If we feel 'banished' – if we feel isolated, left out, abandoned – we can be assured that we have chosen to listen to the ego part of our split mind. This feeling is simply part of the guilt we feel for having this dream in the first place. What is wrong in having a dream? Nothing in Truth, but we believe in the dream so we feel the guilt. We have banished ourselves from ourselves, but we have never really left God. So how can the banishment be real? The point is, it is not.

2. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you waken you realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking?

It is indeed comforting to note that I have forever been with God; that this dream I am having is just that – a dream I am choosing to have. Although what appears in the dream seems real enough, I know within me that what I see is not real. And when I wake, I will immediately know it was but a dream.

3. Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting dreams, or would you dismiss both together if you discovered that reality is in accord with neither? You do not remember being awake. When you hear the Holy Spirit you may feel better because loving then seems possible to you, but you do not remember yet that it once was so. And it is in this remembering that you will know it can be so again. What is possible has not yet been accomplished. Yet what has once been is so now, if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know that what you remember is eternal, and therefore is now.

It is truly odd that we give so much thought to a dream which is not real. Fortunately for us, within the dream we listen to Spirit and slowly begin to remember what is real. And what is real is eternal and forever lasting and a creation of God. That is what we are.

4. You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing Them you will have no wish to sleep, but only the desire to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

Here is a big clue for us – we will remember everything the instant we desire it wholly (holy) – in that instant we will have willed away all separation and return our mind to the Oneness it is. I have read from other authors the fact that everything happens in this dream because we actually will it to happen. Here we are told we must will away the thought of separation – that it is indeed an alternative for us. And then that point about we must desire it wholly – completely – as one desire with no exceptions. That is the way we are told to see all others and to love all others. Do you suppose it is as simple as our letting go of the judgments we have of others?

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Section II. - The Decision to Forget

1. Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is 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. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.

Here we read with comfort, that in order for us to forget, we must have had the knowledge of what it is that we forgotten. So as while some will say we are learning lessons, others will say we are remembering. The lessons are what we have already known but forgotten. It matters little what we call it, the knowledge that is restored to us is what we seek. And some of us are even fearful of remembering that knowledge. Why? Perhaps because of what it might mean to us – such as this is really a dream and we are the dreamer.

2. Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear. In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your willingness to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory. His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself.

As we let go of the dream, and open ourselves up for the Truth, we begin to experience joy, peace and the glory of our brothers. We have only to offer our willingness to the Holy Spirit, and the memory of Truth, the memory of God will again be known. God is our memory and the Holy Spirit is His Voice. All we have to do is simply be willing to let go of the dream.

3. 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 is already there, but was 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 the asking.

The act of remembering is an instantaneous moment where we become aware of what we have forever had, and were. The memory is not some illusion from this dream, but the reality of Truth. Our you willing, ready and able to let go of perception for the return of your memory of creation? Are you willing to accept the Will of God as your will? Are you ready to state that only One Will exists? When you are ready, you shall be shown that you never were anywhere.

4. When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of reality precludes the acceptance of God's gift, because you have accepted something else in its place. If you understand that this is always an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why it is always fearful. If you further recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack yourself first.

Can you think of an attack as a denial of your Truth? Are you aware that with each attack you continue to teach yourself that you are something you are not? You are not who you are teaching yourself – you are created in the image and likeness of God. As God is, you are.

5. 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 choosing not to remember Him.

Any attack is seen as an attack at God, because any attack is seen as an attack against you. With each attack, you are stating that you are not the Truth you know you are, but instead this form you believe you are. Is it a matter of forgetting or one of be fearful of your Truth? And if you are fearful, you must be fearful of God. God has not left you, but you imagine that you left God.

6. 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 it can get you something you want. It follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will only 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.

Perhaps we don't immediately realize the chaos we make by this decision, but when we become aware that we are indeed in chaos, we have only to pause and know that we have chosen fear over Truth. And in the holy instant, we can restore all that we think we have forgotten. As long as we continue to believe we are this body, and this world we make is real, as long as we deny who we are in Truth, we will continue to place ourselves in chaos instead of the Kingdom within us. Do not fear God. Do not fear who you are in Truth. Instead love yourself in your Truth – love God.

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Section III. - The God of Sickness

1. 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 yourself, 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 very hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although those who make idols 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.

First person: I have not attacked God and I do love God. Can I change my realtiy? Can I will to destroy myself? When I think I am attacking myself, it is a sure sign that I hate what I think I am. And this alone, is what I believe I attack. What I think I am can be very hateful, and what this image I believe I am can do, can be very destructive. But that destruction is no more real that the image I think I am, although as I make an idol, I have tendency to worship it. The idols are nothing, made of nothing, but as I worship those idols, I am believing I am in sickness. God wills that I release those idols of sickness and return to the Memory of my Truth. God does not limit my power to overcome those idols of sickness. The power is within me as a gift from God. I have but to open it to use it.

2. 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. God's 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.

The Comforter – the Holy Spirit – is there for us when we worship those idols in sickness. He is there for us to see us in the Truth we forever are. As we accept the Holy Spirit, we all heal. As we all heal, salvation is known to all of us. Our minds – those of my brothers and me – and you – are One Mind – the Mind of God. We are not and could not be the separate minds we believed we were. As we become aware of the Presence of the Holy Spirit, we then accept our Truth once again. In our Truth we are healed. In our Truth we are whole.

3. 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 he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as part of God reminds him of 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?

This is a hard and difficult concept to readily accept in the Course by many. Sickness has been such a part of the world we make that we have come to believe in it strongly and have given it great value even. But for us to believe in sickness is like saying God does not exist. For us to believe in sickness is to deny God. When we believe in sickness we have forgotten our Truth. In Truth, we are as God is. Sickness is not known in our Reality. Illness is a foreign word to us in Reality. Death does not exist in Reality. When we believe in sickness, we believe that we or our brother can be less than God created us as, we are dreaming the impossible dream.

4. 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 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. Yet 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?

If we see another as being sick, we are seeing ourselves as sick also. We are worshipping the same idol – the god of illness. If we see another as sick we are nolt seeing them as the creation of God they are. In this world we make, sickness is a big topic in our daily lives. When we believe that sickness exists, we are believing we are able to give away some power we have from God, which is impossible. If you believe you are the image and likeness of God, know that God cannot be sick or less than whole. It appears that we must choose between the god of sickness and the God of Truth. If we pick the god of sickness, we experience fear. If we choose Truth, we experience Truth – we experience Love.

5. 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 an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist.

Yet but another thought to ponder when making that choice. Love or fear – those are our only options.

6. There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for everything that 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 yourself. 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 comes from God through me to you. It is for you although you may not ask for it.

That Peace that is offer is best taken now – why wait until you hear that old phrase, "Rest in Peace"? Ever notice when you believe you are ill, you experience anxieties, and fears of all sorts? When you are in Truth, you are resting in the Peace of God. In this paragraph we are being told to 'value' ourselves for the 'value' we are in Truth. We are told that when we choose sickness, we are no longer valuing ourselves – we see ourselves as less than we are. But we can never be less than we are, nor more than we are – we are the Oneness of God. In that Oneness is our healing and wholeness.

7. When a brother is sick it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore 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.

If, when we are in our Truth, we are also in peace, then why must we ask for peace when we believe we are sick? Could it be because we no longer see our Truth? We have chosen to see the idols of sickness instead? And yet we all having this knowing within that Truth is real, and all else illusions. As we deny the existence of illusions, the idols of sickness fall from their perch and vanish from our sight. As we deny the existence of illusions, we once again see the value within us – the powers given to us by God. As we deny the existence of illusions, we affirm our Truth.

8. 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, and offer them perfect freedom from all illusions because you heard His Voice. 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. Yet when they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attempted are nothing.

An important point here – we will always receive as much as we accept. How open are you to what is being presented to you? Peace is within your grasp right now – to share with all you see – if you accept the peace you hold for all of us. But as we accept what is being shown to us – we must let go of what we do not really see – but believe we do. We must cease to worship the idols of sickness – to believe that we can suffer – that we can die. We must stop believing in what we made to substitute for our Truth – for God. We must stop believing in the unreal and believe again in the real.

9. 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. Yet 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.

Many times in the Course, the word 'simple' is used – and immediately each time ego will tell us just how not simple everything is. Ego wants to constantly present anything and everything – actually nothing – to us in its routine chaotic fashion. The simplicity of this life is evident when we see life as presented to us by Spirit – when we let go of the illusions of ego for our truths.

10. 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. Yet they exist only because you honor them. Place honor where it is due, and peace will be yours. It is your inheritance from your real 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. Yet fear is not due them either, for nothing cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love because of its perfect harmlessness, and because of this fear you have been willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness and your own perfect Help.

Here is a point also to remember – God has but one Son and we are that one Son. There is but One God and we are of that One God. Nothing else exists. Everything else is but illusions we make as the ego we all too often believe we are. And we believe we are that ego more times than we are often aware of. And as ego we have made a multitude of gods we appear to value more than our Truth. None of those gods offers anything in Truth. None of those gods offer us peace, joy, happiness and love. What they do offer is a variety of fears as substitutes, and we accept many of those fears instead of Truth.

11. 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 the god of sickness anywhere, you have accepted 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 clear this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything to do with reality as you perceive it.

Very clearly stated is the fact of what we seek is already within us just waiting for us to arrive. We are so often called within and yet so often we do not hear the call. When we go within, we leave all illusions out. Nothing is within which is not Truth. And nothing 'out there' is Truth. If you believe you are sick or that you see another as sick, stop and go within for the cure.

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Section IV. - The End of Sickness

1. All magic is an attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be reconciled. Sickness and perfection are irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you are perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. God is not at war with the god of sickness you made, but you are. He is the symbol of deciding against God, and you are afraid of him because he cannot be reconciled with God's Will. If you attack him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.

Magic is seen as trying to make the impossible possible. Sickness is impossible and the perfection you are as God created you is not only possible, it simply is. Nothing changes what God created. When we believe we are sick, we are seeing gods of sickness – idols of dis-ease before us. And they obscure our vision of our Truth. But we are the one making the call here – to be sick or to be perfect. If we deny the gods of sickness, do you think we will still see them? Once denied, they are gone from our vision.

2. Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and cannot be known by part of a mind.

The world we make is not our reality. The Reality we seek is already within us just waiting for us to rediscover what we have long ago forgotten. Getting within depends on how willing we are to give up what is 'out there' for what is 'within". Our mind is clouded for sure when we believe in the illusions we make. However, when we let go of the illusions, when we let go of our belief this dream is real, we have cleared our mind so the Reality we seek can be seen.

3. The Sonship cannot be perceived as partly sick, because to perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is One, it is One in all respects. Oneness cannot be divided. If you perceive other gods your mind is split, and you will not be able to limit the split, because it is the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will. This means it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of reason, and then the mind does become unreasonable. By defining the mind wrongly, you perceive it as functioning wrongly.

First person here: We cannot be seen as partly sick, partly ill, partly dis-eased, because to see only partly is to see nothing at all. If we are One, it is One in all respects. Oneness – God – cannot be divided into parts. If I see other gods – if I see myself as sick – my mind is split and I cannot limit that split because I have removed part of my mind from the Mind of God, or so I believe. This definitely means I am out of control. When I see myself as being out of control, I see myself as being unreasonable. Because I see my mind incorrectly, I see my mind operating in that manner also.

4. God's laws will keep your mind at peace because peace is His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws cannot be understood together. The laws of God work only for your good, and there are no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawless and therefore chaotic. Yet God Himself has protected everything He created by His laws. Everything that is not under them does not exist. "Laws of chaos" is a meaningless term. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning because it is without God. You have "given" your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it from you, and you cannot give it to them.

Thank You, God, for the piece of good news about peace. Being of God, the Laws of God are not able to be changed in any way. They are forever the Laws of God. The Laws of God give me freedom, but I, in this dream, place myself in chains. But my laws and the Laws of God are not to be reconciled. What is not the Law of God is strictly chaos. What does offer me peace, is chaos. And chaos is false – it is not real and does not exist. The 'Laws of Chaos" mean nothing to me. When I saw myself sick, I believe that I gave my freedom to the gods of illness, but in Truth, I know now that I cannot give my freedom to an illusion.

5. You are not free to give up freedom, but only to deny it. You cannot do what God did not intend, because what He did not intend does not happen. Your gods do not bring chaos; you are endowing them with chaos, and accepting it of them. All this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever been, and nothing but His Will will ever be. You were created through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you a creator. What you have made is so unworthy of you that you could hardly want it, if you were willing to see it as it is. You will see nothing at all. And your vision will automatically look beyond it, to what is in you and all around you. Reality cannot break through the obstructions you interpose, but it will envelop you completely when you let them go.

The Laws of God forever stand. I can deny what God has given me, but I can never give the Gifts away. I was created by God in the image and likeness of God. This will never change, I will never change. I can think it will, I can think it has, but it will never be changed. I look upon sickness as something I made – something I conjure up from the chaos I have chosen. What I make is an illusion – a nothing that can never exist. I can clearly see what God has made is eternal – I am eternal. I can see beyond my makings – beyond my illusions – to the Truth that has forever been there for me. As I let go of the illusions of this world I make, the Reality that has forever been will be shown.

6. When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind cannot be in yours, because you are of one mind and that mind belongs to Him. It is yours because it belongs to Him, for to Him ownership is sharing. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His definitions are His laws, for by them He established the universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose between yourself and your reality affect truth at all. Peace is yours because God created you. And He created nothing else.

Read the last line a few times – 'And God created nothing else.' – We are that creation that is written about, talked about and discussed about – we are what God created, and we are created in the image and likeness of God. How do you see yourself? How do you see God? Are they the same image? Have you ever been so fearful you thought for sure life as you know it was over for you? And have you gone through that experience knowing afterwards that you were never once alone – that a Presence was present with you at all times? Such is the protection for the Creation of God by Its Source.

7. The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother can do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call that is strengthened by joining. Because the miracle worker has heard God's Voice, he strengthens It in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share. The power of one mind can shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere and it is eternal.

Simply by changing our mind about how we see our brother who believes he is sick, by that simple act we recognize our brother as being the Perfection he is. Simply by being with Spirit, we can see what our brother cannot see, but will soon be able to see. And the power of our mind is given to our brother so that he may recognize the power within his mind, and so the Light of the World is shining that much brighter in all of us.

8. In many only the spark remains, for the Great Rays are obscured. Yet God has kept the spark alive so that the Rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark you will learn of the greater light, for the Rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the light will create. Yet in the returning the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.

No matter what – within each of us burns the spark that can ignite the Light of the World. We may not see it everywhere we look – perhaps not even in ourselves at times, but know that the spark is every burning ready to ignite the Lamp of Love. Once lit, the rays of that Light will be seen by all and experience by all – and a healing of the mind will occur. Believe in your Truth, and the answers you seek will be given to you. Listen in the silence.

Chapter 10.

THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS

Section V. - The Denial of God

1. The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. Depression means that you have forsworn God. Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own Identity, and in this sense the wages of sin is death. The sense is very literal; denial of life perceives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. No one can really do this, but that you can think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute.

Read the last line carefully once again – 'No one can really do this, but that you think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute.' Whenever we are in the throes of sickness, the ritual we go through is one of 'torture' for us. To think that sickness is a thought we hold in our mind, then experience what we believe we are thinking can only be seen as an insane torture to the body we also believe in. Have you ever been 'sick' when you did not also feel 'depressed'?

2. Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others and not yourself have done this to you. You must receive the message you give because it is the message you want. You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them that would bring joy to you. It is the denial of the spark that brings depression, for whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God.

The more I project, the more I deny God. The more I project, the more I believe in what I think I see. I often wondered how I got whatever it is I think I had at the time I said I was sick. Was it 'caught' by something someone else did – sneeze, cough, etc.? And not only do I see myself as I see my brother, but I get the same message I give to him as well. No matter what is appearing to happen in my world, no one else has made it happen but me – I am the cause and the effect of what I experience. If I try to blame others, I fail to see any light burning in them for me to see my own. And it is this that makes for that feeling of 'depression' I believe I experience in sickness. If I cannot see their light, I cannot see mine, and I cannot see God.

3. Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to you. Unless you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly want them. Blasphemy, then, is self-destructive, not God-destructive. It means that you are willing not to know yourself in order to be sick. This is the offering your god demands because, having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea. He has many forms, but although he may seem to be many different things he is but one idea;–the denial of God.

Does it seem strange that even the 'religion of the ego' has us worshipping gods of idols instead the Source of All That Is? Why would we deny our health, our wholeness? Why do we deny our Truth? Why do we choose a god of sickness over our Truth? But the good news is that the gods of sickness we are worshipping are nothing more than our own making – simply nothing. All it takes is a little willingness on our part to see beyond them. More and more we shall become aware of the many devices made by us to keep us from seeing our Truth. And more and more we shall see beyond those devices to the Truth we are.

4. Sickness and death seemed to enter the mind of God's Son against His Will. The "attack on God" made His Son think he was Fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression. This was his alternative to joy, because he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created. Yet the Son is helpless without the Father, Who alone is his Help.

Whenever we feel helpless and hopeless – whenever we feel so alone – we have only to pause and know we are with the company of idols – gods of depression. In that knowing is our key to unlocking the door we placed before our Light. Open that door, and go beyond the illusion before you.

5. I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over nothing. Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it is. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created.

Here is some great advice for all of us: of ourselves we can do nothing because we did not create ourselves – we made this image we see, but we did not create ourselves. Because we can do nothing, we need not be troubled over anything – for nothing unreal exists. What is created by God is like God. What is made by us is nothing as we are.

6. Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. Yet this can be corrected and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. Your denial of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known. And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing.

Notice how many times we have been reminded that we cannot 'sin' – we only make mistakes which are correctible? Just say the word 'sin' once and be aware of all the words that come up in response to it. Is it any wonder we struggle at times with the unlearning process? And all the references to denial are also made so that we can go beyond that word as well. The good point made here is that in order for us to deny anything, we had to believe in it first. So that should confuse ego just a bit.

7. Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return. When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son. If you hear His message He has answered you, and you will learn of Him if you hear aright. The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

First person: God has not denied me, but I have often denied God. God calls to me to wake from where I never left, but I fail to hear often. I complain that God does answer me, but it is I who fails to make the connection. God calls to me from the body I see before me, but unless I see beyond the body, I will not hear. The Love of God – the Call from God – is everywhere I am, and yet I fail to listen. What fear holds me from responding to what I have been seeking?

8. Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him you will know that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment of you lies your being. You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated.

In my world, the god of sickness is there for one reason only – sickness. Healing or cure is not a gift from that god. Misery, suffering, pain are the gifts offered. If I seek healing, I seek my Truth. If I seek my Truth, I see my brother as One with me. If I see my brother as One with me, then I am in my Truth and I am healed.

9. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him? If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. Yet to do this you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father is the acknowledgment of yourself as you are. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.

Do you ever use the expression "What would God do right now?" Would God be sick? Would God be depressed? Would God be unhappy, sad, sorrowful, suffering? And of course the answer is obvious to all those questions. So if God cannot experience any of the above, why do you suppose that we think we can? And isn't that attitude that had us dreaming this dream to begin with? When we are willing to accept our Truth – that we as God is – then we will discover that we have no need for those questions.

10. You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. When you deny Him you are insane. Would you have Him share your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?

There is no way I can deny myself to God, no matter how I try or how many times I try. I am as I am because that is the way I was created by God. And this knowing is within me, and the many, many times, I deny God's presence, the knowing always has me looking again at my denial. To deny God is to be insane. To love God is sanity. God gave me All That Is – what reason could I possibly think of to deny God – to deny myself.

11. Out of your gifts to Him the Kingdom will be restored to His Son. His Son removed himself from His gift by refusing to accept what had been created for him, and what he had created in the Name of his Father. Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's Son. You are not at home anywhere else, or in any other condition. Do not deny yourself the joy that was created for you for the misery you have made for yourself. God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are.

And remember the last line: 'Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are." Notice how many times already in the Course we are told just to listen – to quiet our mind – to go within – so that we may hear. What we believe we left is still as It was when we began this dream. In our awakening we shall see it restored for us. And all the gifts from God are still stored within the Kingdom we have within us. Why not go there now and at least open one?

12. If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is. If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.

If God sees us as wholly (holy) sinless, wholly (holy) without pain, and wholly (holy) joyous, why do we pretend to see ourselves and others as less than God? Pain, suffering, depression – all are just illusions made to veil our Truth. Only you can take down the veil of illusion to see the Truth. And in Truth, you shall see yourself and others as the Oneness you know you are.

13. Do not perceive anything God did not create or you are denying Him. His is the only Fatherhood, and it is yours only because He has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like His, because they are given in His Name. That is why your creations are as real as His. Yet the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. You believe that the sick things you have made are your real creations, because you believe that the sick images you perceive are the Sons of God. Only if you accept the Fatherhood of God will you have anything, because His Fatherhood gave you everything. That is why to deny Him is to deny yourself.

So there is no better time to stop lying to yourself – to stop denying God in you and in your brothers. Look now at your brothers as see in them the God in you.

14. Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.

We all believe in time – it is all we have known. To drop our belief in time, is to drop our belief in a past and in a future – which leaves only this moment – this holy instant as all there is. And that is so. With practice we stay longer each time. With practice we shall stay there.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Introduction

1. Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is Fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, "Who is my father?" And you will be faithful to the father you choose.

Right now, how would you respond to the first statement? And another important message is repeated – 'partial allegiance is impossible.' The Course tells us early on and then repeats often, we cannot straddle both thought systems – we cannot listen to both voices and follow them both at the same time. If life is creation and everything alive is from God then where does that leave all the illusions of the ego? So is your 'father' your self or is your Father your self?

2. Yet what would you say to someone who believed this question really involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God's Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.

My Source is God so that the thought system of ego will gladly crumble. I am weary of being a follower of insanity when I could have just as easily chose Truth. Once I had a thought that I might be able to pretend to be God, and since that moment of thought, I have imagined so much more, but all of it is but illusion – insane illusion at that. I see now that ego would not know honesty if it were presented for the ego knows nothing. Because of its 'knowledge' of nothing, nothing is what is constantly offered me, and nothing leaves me empty. What God offers me sustains me.

3. You make by projection, but God creates 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. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and bravely hold it up to the foundation of the ego's thought system. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rested on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.

Look at the first line and remember it well. We project a thought – God extends a thought. What is the difference? The Thought of God is still part of God; our projection we believe is separated from God and us. Projection changes with each thought. God has but one thought and we are It. What we project is darkness; what God extends is Light. Within the darkness is fear; and within the Light is Love.

4. 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 in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you. I give you the lamp and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?

Not only are we a part of God, we are One with each other and God. When we look at ego, we see a beginning so an ending must also be in sight. When we look at our Oneness, we see no beginning, no ending, just eternal being with God. This path we all appear to walk, is a path to our remembrance of our Truth. As we remember, we begin to see ourselves as One walking the path. As we remember, we feel the presence of God with us. Wherever we are, God is.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section I. - The Gifts of Fatherhood

1. You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of the return to knowledge; the foundation on which God will help build again the thought system 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. You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.

I have learned my need of healing. Would I bring anything else to my brothers, recognizing that I am in need of healing myself? Herein lies the beginning of my return to knowledge; the foundation on which God will help me build again the thought system I share with God. Each and every stone I place upon this foundation will be blessed by God because I shall be restoring my holy dwelling place, where the Will of God would have me be. Wherever in the Mind of God I restore this reality, I restore it to myself as well. I dwell now and for eternity within the Mind of God.

2. 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?

To be that I can be alone, is to think that I am not One with God. Because of who I am and where I am, I can never experience 'aloneness'. There is no place that I believe I am that God is not already present. There is no place I could believe I could hide from God, that God would not already be there. And there is no place I could hide from my brother, for we are the Oneness we both seek, and in that Oneness is God as well. There is no separation possible from that which is All That Is.

3. 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 may arrest 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.

Within the Mind of God nothing could ever exist, because within the Mind of God is All That Is. The extension of All That Is cannot be stopped or hindered in any way, for nothing else is present. I can deny the existence of God, the Love of God and the Presence of God – but I can never change what I am in Truth – all that I try to deny.

4. 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 or 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?

Waiting could be seen as an illusion within an illusion, for time has no meaning, so waiting is without meaning as well. And yet, how important do we give to both? We believe we have placed limits on what God created and yet there are no limitations on Truth.

5. The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that 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. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for you.

Yes, you read that right! What holds for God, holds for you. However you think God, you are. Whatever you think God is capable of, you are also. If you think you are separated from God, then God must believe God is separated from you. The difference here is God knows that separation is not possible, you do not. If you can picture being all places at all times, then picture yourself there as well. If you believe God is without ending and beginning, the same holds for you. And the same holds true for all others you look upon, first seeing them as separated from you, then seeing them in the Oneness you all are. As you believe the Universe, God is and you are. And if you can't see it because you are looking through fear, then look upon your brothers and see what reflection is shining back to you. Remember first, if you must, by seeing them in their light, then see yourself in your light.

6. God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God's Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God's Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it is His.

Want to be more like God? Then begin giving without limit as God gives to you. Give to others as God gives for you are One with the Source. The one very slight difference often seen between you and God is that you receive, and God only gives. God is the unlimited Source of Love, you are the unlimited receiver and giver as well.

7. Could any part of God 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 wills to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His Will, yours must be the same.

Could anyone of us be without the Love of God, or could anyone of us be separated from the Source? If you understand the concept of 'inheriting' then think of yourself as inheriting all God is and you will be close to knowing your Truth. There is nothing that God is, that you are not. We are told that only God creates, and yet in the Oneness with God, we create with God. In this world we make, parents are important in our beliefs – knowing them is a great joy, even though we often judge our parents severely. In this world we make, we can believe that God is our Father, and we the 'Son' regardless of gender. The whole concept of gender is just part of the duality we have made here – in Reality, no gender exists – no name given to our Source, for we and the Source are but One and the same.

8. Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to "not know." God's Will is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God's Will is in everything, 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 have not recognized your will.

When we say we do not know God, we also say that we do not know our own will given to us by God. And the Will of God is that we are the Son of God, that we recognize our Truth. And we forget or deny this so many times that we feel like we are constantly asking Spirit to help us remember what God's Will for us is. We know that our will and God's Will are the same. If we remember 24/7 who we are in Truth, would we have the vision we see right now?

9. The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God's Will is outside yourself, and therefore not yours. In this interpretation it seems 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. Sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for himself. 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.

Why we continue to look 'out there' for what we seek is explained well in the first line here. It may seem possible, even appear possible that our will and the Will of God are conflicting, but in Reality, that is impossible for only One Will exists. God's Will for us is to be as God is and truly, nothing else is possible. We certainly appear to often go through this charade called life believing that it is. Even though we believe we live this dream, we have not left God. The presence of God is everywhere.

10. You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God's Will and yours, for otherwise His Will would not be 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.

We believe that happiness is out there and if we look hard enough for it, we shall find it. We look at a particular person in a particular relationship, we look to having a large amount of money, we look at many different ways of achieving happiness 'out there'. But, even if we find happiness for a brief moment or two, have we truly found happiness? The happiness from God is as eternal as its Source. The substitute we find 'out there' is short-lived at best. Many times, ego will have believing we are arrogant when we say our will and the Will of God are the same, but it is not arrogance – it is truth and ego knows nothing about truth. Is it arrogant to acknowledge who you are in Truth? Is it arrogant to say that you and God are One? Are sickness, illness and fear part of happiness? Then they are not part of God's Will for us. If they are not part of God's Will, then what are they? False Illusions Appearing Real.

11. 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 keeps, 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.

God's Will is not to be alone and God is not alone, for we have never left God as we believe we have. So if we experience the feeling of being alone, we are not aligned with the Will of God. How difficult is it really to be as God is? Is it not our true nature to be as God is, instead of being this body that doesn't exist but we believe it does? The more we believe who we are in Truth, the more we will follow the Will of God and the more eternal happiness we shall experience.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section II. - The Invitation to Healing

1. If sickness is separation, the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God has both Father and Son, because he is both Father and Son. To unite having and being is to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will. Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you.

If sickness is separation, then the decision to heal is like reconciliation perhaps. It is the beginning of the process of reclaiming our truth. Each thought of healing is a step ahead on the path, while thoughts of fear do not have progress at all. Like the concept of 'giving and receiving' we are now shown the concept of 'having and being' – what could we possibly 'have' that we are not already? Is there something more than God somewhere? Often times we behave in such a fashion as we search endlessly out there for what we already have within.

2. Healing thus becomes a lesson in understanding, and the more you practice it the better teacher and learner you become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you have than those who have been healed by it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them is your healing accomplished. Every miracle that you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought that you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God's Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and of your Sonship.

Perhaps you have believed that in healing, the sickness would go away – cease to be. While this might occur, the healing we speak of is the healing of the mind – the healing of the thoughts we hold of being separate from God. As we heal our mind, we remember more of the truth we have long forgotten, and as we heal our mind, the sickness we thought we had may also vanish. The more we heal our thoughts, the more we can teach/learn with others. This is what it is all about – we teach/learn with others of healing our mind and their mind.

3. And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of yourself, because the rest will seem to be separate and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning to you, you will not understand it. To deny meaning is to fail to understand. You can heal only yourself, for only God's Son needs healing. You need it because you do not understand yourself, and therefore know not what you do. Having forgotten your will, you do not know what you really want.

A point that is repeated many times – we can only heal ourselves, not another, but from our healing, others may heal themselves also. It is not so much about understanding as it is all about knowing the truth from the false. Only that which is real exists. And just so that we don't get more confused with healing (ego has its own concept) the healing that we do for ourselves takes place in our mind – our thoughts of fear are exchanged for thoughts of love. As our mind is healed, we perceive our body healed as well.

4. Healing is a sign that you want to make whole. And this willingness opens your ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, Whose message is wholeness. He will enable you to go far beyond the healing you would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own complete Will and make yours whole. What can the Son of God not accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you invite as your guest will abide with you.

Healing is only necessary because we believe we are separated from God and from all others. As we heal our mind, we see ourselves as whole once again. And being whole we are as God is, and what is it that could be then be seen as impossible? Knowing our Truth, inviting the Voice of God within, nothing is impossible.

5. The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, because He will not be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, only because your care is a sign that you want Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. He will remain, but you have allied yourself against Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.

Ever stop and see yourself as an 'unwelcoming host' to God? Ever wonder why you don't 'hear' the Holy Spirit and others claim they do? Ever been to someone's home where you felt unwelcome which made you extremely uncomfortable? When we believe in the thought system of ego – when we believe we are separate from God – from all others – we are thinking with ego. The Holy Spirit patiently waits for us to change, and that change can happen with but just the slightest notion of changing our mind – and within the flame of truth bursts open and the darkness vanishes before our eyes. Open your mind to the Holy Spirit – to the Voice of God – and welcome It into your chamber of stillness and silence of the soul. Listen carefully to what is 'told' you and experience the wonder of knowing that you are One with God forever.

6. You will never rest until you know your function and fulfill it, for only in this can your will and your Father's be wholly joined. To have Him is to be like Him, and He has given Himself to you. You who have God must be as God, for His function became yours with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your mind, and let nothing that obscures it enter. The Guest Whom God sent you will teach you how to do this, if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to let it grow. Your willingness need not be perfect, because His is. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly let it be increased. And by this increase, you will begin to remember creation.

First person:I will never rest until I know my function and fulfill it, for only in this can my will and the Will of God be wholly (holy) joined. To have God is to be like God, and God has given Itself to me. I who have God must be as God is, for God's function becomes my function. I gladly accept this knowledge back into my mind, and will let nothing that can obscure it enter. The Holy Spirit, given me by God, will have me remember how I am to do this. If I just recognize within me, the tiny spark and if I am willing to allow that spark to grow, the memory of what I have forgotten will be once again known. And my willingness does not need to be perfect – just an indication is all that is necessary for Spirit to begin the teachings. In my little willingness, I invite the Holy Spirit within and gladly allow Spirit to brighten up all the darkness there. In that Light, I will once again remember what it is I thought I had forgotten.

7. Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. Yet this is not real freedom, for it still depends on how you see it. The Holy Spirit is there, although He cannot help you without your invitation. And the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.

Funny thing about the word 'hostage' used here – 'hostage' is the combining of 'host' and 'age' – being a hostage to ego will have experience aging – being a host to God has me knowing my eternity. Knowing this, the choice of who I invite within is easy. I wish to see in truth – I wish to see in the Light – I no longer desire to sit in the darkness of fear when I can sit in the Light of Love. I no longer wish to experience insanity but desiring the sanity of Truth. I no longer desire to see any separation, only the wholeness I am.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section III. - From Darkness to Light

1. 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 hurt yourself 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. Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you.

Whenever we feel less than whole (holy) – less than complete – when we are feeling low, depressed and lost – just remember this feeling is our own choosing. No one can make us this way unless we allow it. And no medicine known to us, no quick fixer-up, will help us. We turn to the only Help that we know will restore us – the Holy Spirit – the Comforter of Peace. If we knew what would make us feel better, we would not be in this situation to begin with. This is a good example of how lost we truly are in this illusion we believe in. Pain, sickness, depression, anxiety are all gifts of ego to us. God offers us Love in their place. We are the Son of God we speak of – we are that which is in the image and likeness of God. As we remember, we experience no pain for the Son of God is free of pain – free of sickness, disease, illness and fears of all kinds.

2. 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 homeless. At home in God he is lonely, and amid all his brothers he is friendless. Would God let this be real, when 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.

Why is it that we seek comfort from Spirit? Because we wander as if lost in this dream we make where we believe we are separated from God and have a will of our own. If God made this dream, would God make it like this? If we are One with God, could we ever be separate from God?

3. O my child, 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 heart is not ready. Yet 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.

We all know at a deep level within us, what the Will of God for us is. Are we ready to let go of our concept of will for the knowledge of One Will with God? Are we ready to see what Heaven is and how Love appears? Are we ready to let go of the thoughts we hold of the world we believe in? Are we ready to surrender our illusions for Reality. Do we grasp the meaning of how we are denying what God has given us?

4. 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.

The way is not hard, but it is different, and different to some of us might mean fearful. But our way is one of pain, while the way of God is one of Love. Our way is in the darkness of fear, while the Way of God is in the Light of Love. As the Unity prayer tells us 'the Light of God surrounds us' and we are bathed in Its Love. Darkness is never present in the Light. Peace is always there. And the path is always clearly seen.

5. God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself. Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for God wills him to be glorious, and gave him the light that shines in him. You will never lose your way, for God leads you. When you wander, you but undertake a journey that is not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn toward the light, for the little spark in you is part of a light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever. For your Father is your Creator, and you are like Him.

God hides nothing from us and we can hide nothing from God, although we certainly believe that we do at times. But can the Light be hidden? We are as God created us – in the image and likeness of God – nothing else exists. But then we have this ongoing dream where we believe we are on this journey to find what we already are. This makes no sense but we still believe in it. On the journey we experience darkness which is not real, and yet we believe in it. And we believe the journey has an ending and yet we are eternal – without ending. What is it about being like God that we do not want to accept?

6. The children of light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is not in them. Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them enter the mind of God's Son, for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to deny Him remember that there are no other gods to place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace. For you cannot accept it otherwise.

We are often referred to as children only because we act like children most of the time. We act immature, not knowing right from wrong, fearful of darkness that is not real, and frighten of the shadows we see. As children we look for guidance from others, not trusting ourselves. As children we believe often in what we are told without question. But this not the 'children' we are – we are of God, as God, and One with God.

7. 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 His Thought and therefore does not belong to Him. And your mind 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.

The only Comfort we can find, the only Comforter we can seek, is the Voice of God within us. As we travel this journey of imagination, we cry out in the fears before us and we call for comfort from those fears. And the Holy Spirit always is there to show that the fears are nothing. And in showing us the comfort we seek, Spirit leads us within to the silence of our heart, to the stillness of our soul, to the sanctuary of our heart – and there we are in the Presence of our Truth and the Truth is made known to us. As the Truth is presented to us, we also present the Truth to our brothers, and the Oneness we have been seeking, is also known to us all.

8. 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.

First Person: In my mind I can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the light my Father gave it. Then I will be worthy to dwell in the temple with Him, because it is my will not to be alone. God blessed us forever. If I will bless you in time, you will be in eternity. Time cannot separate me from God if I use it on behalf of the eternal.
Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section IV. - -The Inheritance of God's Son

1. Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Self. As God's creation It is yours, and belonging to you It is His. Your Self does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation is. You are not saved from anything, but you are saved for glory. Glory is your inheritance, given you by your Creator that you might extend it. Yet if you hate part of your Self all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love. And since what He created is part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His Own altar.

First person: I will never forget that my brothers are my salvation, as I am theirs. My brothers are Oneness with God and with me. As my brothers are God's creation, so are they mine for that which is of God is mine as well, being also a creation of God. In Truth, I do not need salvation for there is nothing to be saved from. But within my mind, within my dream, salvation is a need I pursue. Glory is of God and glory is of me, being the Son of God. And because I am the Son of God, I extend my glory to all I look upon, knowing that they also are the Son of God. In my completeness is my Love extended; in my fears, I am as if separated from God and from all others.

2. Could you try to make God homeless and know that 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 to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace.

No matter how hard I try or how often I believe it, I cannot be less than what God made me – I cannot be less than the Wholeness of God. I can deny God but that doesn't mean God doesn't exist. I can believe that I can make laws contrary to the Laws of God, but that never changes the Laws of God. Because of the Truth I am, I can imagine anything, but never change who and what I am.

3. Your peace lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you share, and your Self must be unknown to you. Every altar to God is part of you, because the light He created is one with Him. Would you cut off a brother from the light that is yours? You would not do so if you realized that you can darken only your own mind. As you bring him back, so will you return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the Wholeness of His Son.

Each and every gift from God is limitless within itself. Nothing God gives has any limitation as there is no limitation in God. And being the creation of God, I too, have no limitation, only the illusion of limits I believe in. And knowing that my brother is as I am, he too, is without limits. So as we both remember our Truth, so we shall also see our Oneness.

4. 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 to oppose steadfastly, without exception. This is a crucial step in the reawakening. The beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within. It is difficult at first to realize that this is exactly the same thing, for there is no distinction between within and without.

Why would you want to deprive yourself of anything when you know at a deep level within you that you have all that God is? Depriving yourself is like saying "No Thanks" to God. Only an ego mind believes it can be deprived. Only an ego mind believes it can be in want of anything. Awaken to the realization that you have All That Is. Awaken to your truth and know that to be deprived is to believe in separation – in ego – in an illusion – a non-truth.

5. 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. That is why blame must be undone, not seen elsewhere. Lay it to yourself and you cannot know yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego defense as blaming others. You cannot enter God's Presence if you attack His Son. When His Son lifts his voice in praise of his Creator, he will hear the Voice for his Father. Yet the Creator cannot be praised without His Son, for Their glory is shared and They are together

What is blame but an action we take when we deny responsibility for ourselves. It is an ego ploy that leads to guilt – remorse – sadness. And the times we tried in vain to blame others, when all the time we experience the pains of blame ourselves. I like the expression 'self blame is ego identification'. If I blame others or myself, it matters not, for I am still attacking what is the Son of God. And if I attack the Son of God, I attack God as well.

6. Christ is at God's altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter. The door is not barred, and it is impossible that you cannot 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 that 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.

The Christ Spirit – the Spirit of God – awaits within in our sanctuary of our soul. In order to enter, we must leave behind us all our thoughts of this illusion we believe in. The door to the sanctuary is never locked to us, but we cannot enter with a thought of fear. Dropping all fears, dropping all illusions of what we think we are and the world we live in, will allow to enter with knowledge of our Truth – with the knowing of unconditional Love – with the Presence of the Christ Spirit within us. The door swings open at such thought and remains open forever.

7. At God's altar Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in you. God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the appreciation of His Son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as yourself, and of His Wholeness as yours. For Christ is the Son of God, Who lives in His Creator and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the Love and the loveliness of God, as perfect as His Creator and at peace with Him.

Upon the altar within us, awaits the Spirit of God, to be totally restored in us as the Source God is. God knows us to be as God is. The Spirit of God waits for our acceptance of God as ourselves, and the Wholeness (holiness) as ours also. The Spirit of God is the extension of the Unconditional Love God is, and as perfect as the Source It is.

8. Blessed is the Son of God whose radiance is of his Father, and whose glory he wills to share as his Father shares it with him. 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.

Blessed are we whose radiance is of God, and whose glory we will to share as God shares it with us. No condemnation exists for us, and no condemnation exists for God. As the Son of God, we share the perfect Love God is, for otherwise we would not know we are the Son of God. The Peace of God is ours as we rest in the knowledge of who we are and what we are.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section V. - The "Dynamics" of the Ego

1. No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The "dynamics" of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.

We all know from experience that we must first look at something before we can look beyond it...we must see that which we believe before we can not believe it. And so it is with the subject of ego – you – me – us – the bodies we believe in and the thought system that has dominated our minds since birth. For me, whenever I am able to see beyond what I think I see, I know that what I think I see is not real. When I look at truth, I cannot look beyond Truth.

2. What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of fear, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does not exist. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. If reality is recognized by its extension, what leads to nothing could not be real. Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot be seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.

This reminds me of the movie 'The Village' which we recently watched again with some friends. This movie shows that fear when not seen is very real to those who have been told of it, but fear is not real when it is seen for what it is – nothing. Fear is but a thought we hold in our mind and then give great value to it. As we begin to grasp that fear is extension of ego – an offering to us instead of love – we begin to see that fear then must be nothing – an empty nothing for the source of fear is nothing. As we walk through our fears we see that they are simply illusions of thought and that which is real is that which moves us through the fear – that which is within us forever.

3. Let us begin this lesson in "ego dynamics" by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. It contains the very contradiction in terms that makes it meaningless. "Dynamics" implies the power to do something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. Yet the truth is very simple:

All power is of God.

What is not of Him has no power to do anything.

If God is All That Is and Love is All That Is and we are as God is, then what we believe of ourselves regarding this body and this world we make, is simply false. Is this body of Love – is your world of Love – are both eternal happiness? Does this world change before your eyes? Does your body change also? Are you not always seeking something but yet never finding it? Love never changes – and you never change from the Truth you are.

4. When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering dynamics but delusions. You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if you recognize the ego's goal, which is so clearly senseless that any effort on its behalf is necessarily expended on nothing. The ego's goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself and independent of any power except its own. This is why it is the symbol of separation.

We have come far enough in the Course to know at a very deep level that we are separate as we appear – that we are not an individual as we seem to be. We have remembered that what we are is One with all we see. We are One with God. We have never left the Source we are, nor could we for only God Is, and we are as God Is.

5. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural outcome of what it is. Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. I said before that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. His Will is One because the extension of His Will cannot be unlike itself. The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego's idle wishes and the Will of God, which you share. Can this be a real conflict?

If every idea has as its purpose its natural outcome, then it should be no surprise to us that every idea from the ego system will be one of fear; and every idea from the Truth within us will be Love. And only Love is the Will of God, anything else is contrary to the Will and not real. Just think for a moment about every idea, not just a few, but every idea of ego is fear based.

6. Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy. Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares with you. By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on Him. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to Him Who wills not to be independent of you. He has included you in His Autonomy. Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, in which your freedom lies. The ego sees all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict.

The belief we hold of being separate from God and therefore from all others, is preventing us from the Truth we seek. It is not just that we are 'dependent' on God, but that we are One with God. Remember God does not see us as separate but forever One. It is only we who see the separation, which is Truth does not and could not exist. The ego enjoys having us independent of each other – in that way we will not share with others and therefore we will continue to have what we believe we have. Recall that ego believes that if we give, we have less. Ego also has believing that we can take what others have from them, thereby having more than others. All of this thinking has so preoccupied with the ego system that we do not pause long enough to remember that none of it is real.

7. The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it has the power to do this it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy is nothing else. The ego is totally confused about reality, but it does not lose sight of its goal. It is much more vigilant than you are, because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. You are confused because you do not recognize yours.

We always attack ourselves out of fear and thinking that we are right in doing it. Ego even has us believing that we can attack others. Speaking of confusion, this is it! The ego believe it knows what it is doing, but do we, in Truth, know what we are trying to do? And can we do anything or are we just being everything?

8. You must recognize that the last thing the ego wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. For if the ego could give rise to fear, it would diminish your independence and weaken your power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can give power to you. Without this belief you would not listen to it at all. How, then, can its existence continue if you realize that, by accepting it, you are belittling yourself and depriving yourself of power?

What powers do you believe you have that ego has given you? What powers do you know that God has given you? Have you even been in a situation where you suddenly realize that you fear yourself? Do you remember what happened next? When you pause and think of what you believe you have as ego compared to what you know you have in Truth, which looks more favorable to you to believe – you cannot believe both – one must be dropped.

9. The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, "lighthearted," distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved and even desperate, but not really afraid. Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego's constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?

And how do you feel about being as the ego allows you to be as stated in the first line? Can you be any of those without being fearful as well? In the world we make as ego, is there anything that is not either one way or the other? Is there anything that is just a bit of this without being all of this? Ego may attempt to minimize fear, but either fear is or it is not? Can you minimize Love? We have all those adjectives in the language we use but bottom line is fear is fear regardless of it appearing minimized or not.

10. Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it. Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power. Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. And no one wants to find what he believes would destroy him.

And again there is a reminder here about us fearing ourselves? Being in that belief is indeed frightful? If we fear ourselves, where do we go to get some help? Who do we turn to? Is not the very thought of being afraid of oneself insanity?

11. If the ego's goal of autonomy could be accomplished God's purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true. According to the ego's teaching, its goal can be accomplished and God's purpose can not. According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, only God's purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already.

So here you have it presented as simple as it can be presented: which teaching (teacher) are you listening to? Which one is providing your lesson for today? Are you believing in what is real or in what is false?

12. God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because His Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with Him, and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is given you to know that God's function is yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from Your joint Will. Recognize only that the ego's goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe. Yet God's Son is not insane, and cannot believe it. Let him but recognize it and he will not accept it. For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.

In the past that we believe in, has the happiness offered you by ego last long? Have you experience peach of mind in that happiness? What ego offers us is not real and the more we become aware of that, the less we accept its offerings. Isn't it time that we stop pointing our finger at others calling them insane, and accept that we are insane as well when we accept the offerings of ego?

13. The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.

Could this be as simple as knowing that each time we have to think first, we are believing in ego, and each time we gladly accept without question, we are with Spirit? We all know many people, and some of them ourselves perhaps, who analyze everything in life. When we analyze, we are in time. When we simply accept, we are in the moment. Where are you now?

14. The ego's interpretations of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's. The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake consistent truth must be meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error.

Of course ego and Spirit view in the opposite direction – such is the duality we have made. While the ego focuses on error and overlooks truth, Spirit does just the opposite: focuses on Truth and overlooks error. Error is a thought we hold in mind – why would we focus on a thought when Truth is present to be seen as well?

15. The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly. Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.

Ever remember demonstrating anything without understanding it first? Is this not insane thinking? And yet, just think of life in general as directed by ego – is this not happening?

16. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses are consistent. The case for insanity is strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. Yet reasoning without meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has denied? Its witnesses do attest to its denial, but hardly to what it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.

The question can also be asked if the ego can teach anything for it knows nothing? And if only Love exists, what can possibly be taught? Yes, we look constantly at God but we deny we see God as we deny ourselves the Oneness which lays before us.

17. Would you remember the Father? Accept His Son and you will remember Him. Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is the Father must be. Accept what God does not deny, and it will demonstrate its truth. The witnesses for God stand in His light and behold what He created. Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God's Son, and in the Presence of Christ they need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words they speak.

Want to see God? Look at your brother and then look beyond your brother and you shall see God. The body before you is not God, but the Truth within Is. And you see your brother, you shall also see yourself.

18. Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convinces you of what you want to perceive, and of the reality of the kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true. Every brother has the power to release you, if you choose to be free. You cannot accept false witness of him unless you have evoked false witnesses against him. If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him.

Who are you a witness to – the Presence within your brother or the image before you? Whatever you see depends on the thought system currently running in your mind. And if you can see within your brother your own Truth, then what you will hear will Truth as well.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section VI. - Waking to Redemption

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

Read the first line carefully – slowly – and let it just sit with you a bit. How we see – perception – is based on our experience, and everyone will have a different experience. How we see will become a belief so that the next time we believe we are seeing the same thing, we will see it as we saw it the first time, based on our beliefs. But do we truly see what we think we see, or is it impossible to truly see an illusion? How many times have we called to God to 'show me so I know it is true' or something to that effect. But this whole world we make is based on beliefs we have in illusions. But what then is our Truth based on? Could it be the knowing within each of us that communicates to us in many ways that what we think we are seeing doesn't exist. We might say that instead of believing without seeing, we could know without seeing.

2. Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you transcend your prison and ascend to the Father? These questions are all the same, and are answered together. There has been much confusion about what perception means, because the word is used both for awareness and for the interpretation of awareness. Yet you cannot be aware without interpretation, for what you perceive is your interpretation.

How did you answer those questions? Did you have to think first? You can not see the 'resurrection' nor can you see 'freedom' nor do you grasp the meaning of 'ascending' – but you can believe in those without seeing them. In your belief of them is your experience of them. We would be much better off if we did not try to interpret what we saw, and instead saw beyond the interpretation.

3. This course is perfectly clear. If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it. And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it. Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions. For perceptions are learned with beliefs, and experience does teach. I am leading you to a new kind of experience that you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only the distortions you introduce that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs that are unworthy of God's Son. For until Christ comes into His Own, the Son of God will see himself as Fatherless.

There have been a lot of times when I would say the Course is anything but clear and the interpretation that is presented to me is beyond my belief. And interpretation of the Course is a major issue for some students. But for me, I find that the Course is written to me personally – therefore it is as simple as I wish to see it – usually less thought is best. Rather than having someone tell me what it says, I 'listen' to what it is telling me. Just as the Course was given to Helen, with a lot of personal items included in the rough draft, so I feel the Course is given to me. One of the reasons I believe is because it is written to me so that I can the Oneness of all of us. If you see the Course written to each one of us, which it is, then one of the goals would be to have us see the Oneness – and that seeing is not perception. You all know of people who analyze the heck out of the Course, and it is an easy trap to fall into – been there and done that. And each time I realize that ego is just pulling me away from remembering my Truth.

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

Perhaps the first few lines are a bit confusing – try it in the first person: Jesus is my resurrection and my life. I live in Jesus because I live in God. And everyone lives in me, as I live in everyone. – for me, this is talking about the Oneness we all are – it is saying to me that the spirit of Jesus is one with me and with you and all of us, and we are One with God. Jesus the man is not my resurrection but together we are. And the last part – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be – says it all for me. I just have to remember it more often – and perhaps that is why the message comes up so often.

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

Maybe this will help here: I will not underestimate the power of my devotion to ego, nor the power of the ego has over me. I place myself many times at the altar of ego and at the altar of God within me. I can experience slavery or freedom depending on the god I choose to accept. Ego demands crucifixion, and its followers obey it. The God of Truth demands nothing of me. All that is asked of me to choose my Will as the Will of God, and follow it, not as a sacrifice or seen as a submission, but as the freedom I am.

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

Do you see a repeat of a prior message – salvation is not ours alone – with our brother we shall experience it. Resurrection is truly a symbol of joy. As the story goes, Jesus died and with his death, many dreams died as well. But with his resurrection, we saw those dreams but sleeping – suddenly they were waken and continue – death is nothing coming from nothing. What God has given the Son of God is eternal – and we are the Son of God.

7. You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God's Son, and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God's Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His guiltless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise?

And what might be the nails and thorns – but the thoughts of sin and separation we have clung to? The old beliefs we are reluctant to surrender? The past that is just that – past? As you help a brother remove the thorns and nails, so are you thorns and nails removed. This is what we must do together for we cannot do it alone. And why do you suppose we keep saying that? Could it be because the separation doesn't exist and we are not alone?

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

I think we have all done this at one time or another – hung ourselves on a cross to die just after we slammed a thorny crown in our head. Are we consciously reminding ourselves of something that needs our attention when we use the expression that someone or something is a thorn in our whatever? And how about the times when we utter those words like "I just wanted to die"? And those times when we played the role of victim so well, we were left 'hanging' out there alone?

9. You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within you. If I live in you, you are awake. Yet you must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. Yet it is done already, and unless you give all that you have received you will not know that your redeemer liveth, and that you have awakened with him. Redemption is recognized only by sharing it.

We are told here that we shall awaken when we respond to the Call within us, and yet we are awaken because of the Christ Spirit within us. We are awake and yet we dream. We dream and yet we are awakened. What was to have been done, was done already. We do not have to carry a cross, or be nailed to a cross or even die – we have only to 'resurrect' from this dream of death. We do this best by seeing our brothers as One with us.

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

' **There is no order of difficulty in miracles.' A message repeated to emphasize once again the importance of it. Within the dream we have – the world we make – we give much value to many things and live in duality that has us appearing insane. We have come to believe that everything has value and some things having more value than others. This is why this particular message is repeated so often – there truly is no difficulty in miracles – one is not of more value than another. We are saved if that word works for you – all we have to do to realize this is to demonstrate it to a brother and the thought of salvation will flow through all of us. Each one of us are but the One Son of God – as God is, we are. Is there anything impossible for us as the Son of God? Then why do we not stay remembering that we are the Son of God?**

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section VII. - The Condition of Reality

1. The world as you perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is not as you see it. God created only the eternal, and everything you see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world that you do not see. The Bible speaks of a new Heaven and a new earth, yet this cannot be literally true, for the eternal are not re-created. To perceive anew is merely to perceive again, implying that before, or in the interval between, you were not perceiving at all. What, then, is the world that awaits your perception when you see it?

One of the main points made by the Course – what you see is not real – what you see God did not create. So if God did not create what I see, who did? Who else is there but me? The world I see is one of constant change – constantly experiencing some phase of its death. Nothing lasts in my world. So if this is not the world of God, where is the World of God? It also is before me, but I fail to open my eyes to it. I believe in form, and the world of God is formless. I believe in limitations in my world, but the world of God has none. If it be before me, how can I see it?

2. Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is eternal. The loving thoughts his mind perceives in this world are the world's only reality. They are still perceptions, because he still believes that he is separate. Yet they are eternal because they are loving. And being loving they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die. The real world can actually be perceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, you are accepting both the false and the true and making no distinction between them.

And here is the answer: Every loving thought that I ever had is eternal. The loving thoughts my mind perceives in this world are the world's only reality. My thoughts are still perceptions, because I still believe I am separate. Yet those thoughts are eternal because they are loving thoughts. And being loving they are as God Is, and therefore cannot die. The real world can actually be perceived. All that is necessary is my willingness to see nothing else. For if I see both good and evil, I am accepting both the false and the true and making no distinction between them.

3. The ego may see some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for that you could not accept. But it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusion and reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusion, you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing that what you made is capable of being unlike Him. Yet everything true is like Him. Perceiving only the real world will lead you to the real Heaven, because it will make you capable of understanding it.

As ego, I will see some good but never will I see only good. And as ego sees good, it attempts to add to it – remedy it – make it better perhaps. And in doing this, I am confused as to what is real and what is not. I cannot believe in both truth and illusion. Everything God has created is real. What I have made is not. If I persist at seeing only the real world – holding only loving thoughts in my mind, I will be led to see the Heaven as it has forever been.

4. The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to recognize a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this is the condition of knowledge. Without this awareness you have not met its conditions, and until you do you will not know it is yours already. You have made many ideas that you have placed between yourself and your Creator, and these beliefs are the world as you perceive it. Truth is not absent here, but it is obscure. You do not know the difference between what you have made and what God created, and so you do not know the difference between what you have made and what you have created. To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You can know God because it is His Will to be known. The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is only what is true.

My seeing goodness is not knowledge, but my denial of an opposite to Truth allows me to see that opposites do not exist – opposites are not real. Many, many ideas I have held in my mind have been seen as a barrier between me and God, from my viewpoint. I have believed in those thoughts and therefore have denied Truth. I believe I can my world of reality, and believe I can know myself in the Truth I AM. The real world – the world of Love – of Truth – is presented to me by the Holy Spirit. It is my salvation, my Truth and it is all that is real.

Chapter 11

GOD OR THE EGO

Section VIII. - The Problem and the Answer

1. This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten; the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge.

Who among us does not need a Course which teaches that only reality is true? But the bigger question is as stated above: Do you believe it? We all see a world we project and we all believe in what we think we see, and yet here we are on a spiritual journey to a point where we have forever been, with a unexplainable knowing gnawing within us that what we see is not reality.

2. The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you, and if you will let Him interpret it, He will restore to you what you have thrown away. Yet while you think you know its meaning, you will see no need to ask it of Him.

I am never surprised when the message of being little children pops in my life – normally when I am pretending to be adult with wisdom of my world. With Spirit I see my world with the innocence of young child, and my reality is shown to me and I wonder at its marvels. Then with as much as blink of my eye, I am believing once again that I am this adult with wisdom and therefore I believe I know the meaning of what I think I see. What I think I see is nothing and nothing can have no meaning.

3. You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.

Perhaps the first two lines here are irritating to you, after all, who wants to be told that they know nothing – that not one thought they hold is true? And yet, we are told that this is our beginning where we embark upon letting go of what we believed and remember what we have forgotten. We have been moving through this life we make, as if we are blind, and we are blind to our Truth. We have followed a leader that is not real – that is nothing and knows nothing. What do you suppose we have learned thus far with this leader? But we have remember the Holy Spirit and we call upon It for our guidance; It will lead and we shall follow by the choices we make. And what Spirit shall tell us is all that we have forgotten – our Truth.

4. No one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will not refuse you the Answer He gave. Ask, then, for what is yours, but which you did not make, and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:

Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?

Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already.

And ask yourself this question many times in your day – as often as you feel yourself being pulled back into the illusion of your world. Ego will forever present you with a problem; Spirit will forever offer you the solution.

5. You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told that if you ask you will receive. The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you believe that the one is many. You may be afraid of His specificity, for fear of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing of God demands anything of you. God gives; He does not take. When you refuse to ask, it is because you believe that asking is taking rather than sharing.

Just how specific could a Course be? This Course constantly repeats a few messages and yet each time we read them, we believe we have not read them before. If we do as the Course requests of us, what the Course also tells us will be given. And here, I think, is an obstacle on many paths – giving and receiving. According to the Course they are one. According to ego they are opposite in thinking. But we are not ego – we are not this illusion we believe we see – we are One with God and we are being told that over and over. All we have to do at any given moment, is to simply ask Holy Spirit for assistance in anything, and that assistance is already received by the time we have the thought. As ego, we may not like the response – we may fail to see the response – but the response is given. As we ask of Spirit more and more, we see that asking is all that is required of us – nothing is demanded of us for God never demands anything – God only gives and we receive and then we give and receive...

6. The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours, and will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything, and you share it with God. That is its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills only to restore, be capable of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer? You have heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the question. You believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation.

We are far enough in the Course to recognize that whenever we feel deprived, whenever we feel we have a want or that we lack anything, we are thinking as ego. What Spirit offers us in each response is a glimpse of our Truth – our Reality – in which we have All That Is. The more we are shown, the more we believe. The more we ask, the more is shown to us.

7. Little child of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes, because you believe that you can get by taking. And by that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world as you see it, but the real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can only free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by His Being. Blessed are you who are willing to ask the truth of God without fear, for only thus can you learn that His answer is the release from fear.

And again we are reminded of being child-like. Remember early on in the Course where we were told that we would never understand the meaning of Love for that was beyond our comprehension? We are again reminded of that so that we stop focusing on trying to understand God – Love – Father – and just accept. In our acceptance is the knowledge of our Truth, for as God is, we are. We are the Creation of God. We are as God is. Nothing can possibly what God has created. We believe we see ourselves different from what God created, but that is but a thought we hold with the wrong teacher.

8. Beautiful child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Believe that the truth is in me, for I know that it is in you. God's Sons have nothing they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. Not one of us but has the answer in him, to give to anyone who asks it of him.

I think the Course is using the word 'child' or 'children' or 'Father' to have us go to a place where we drop our façade of being the adult of knowledge and recognize ourselves as the innocent child. The innocent child is open to Truth for it knows no opposite. Many of us have believed in Jesus as so much more than a Teacher – a man among us – but what Jesus had, we also have. The difference is that he realized what was within him and we are in the process of recognizing the same. What we forget all too quickly is that we are not the separate beings we believe we see – we are the Oneness we shall forever be. An innocent child has a better chance of grasping this meaning easier than a know-it-all adult.

9. Ask anything of God's Son and his Father will answer you, for Christ is not deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him. Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split you will heal yours. Accept him as his Father accepts him and heal him unto Christ, for Christ is his healing and yours. Christ is the Son of God Who is in no way separate from His Father, Whose every thought is as loving as the Thought of His Father by which He was created. Be not deceived in God's Son, for thereby you must be deceived in yourself. And being deceived in yourself you are deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible.

What must you be as you ask the Son of God a question? You must be the Son of God as well. When you see your brother as One with you, you may ask a question and receive an answer from God through him. If you see your brother separated from you, then the question you ask is but asked of an illusion by an illusion. And the answer can not be less than another illusion.

10. In the real world there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division. Only loving thoughts are recognized, and because no one is without your help, the Help of God goes with you everywhere. As you become willing to accept this Help by asking for It, you will give It because you want It. Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request. What problems will not disappear in the Presence of God's Answer? Ask, then, to learn of the reality of your brother, because this is what you will perceive in him, and you will see your beauty reflected in his.

If you can see the reality of your brother, you see the reality of you as well. In that reality is no sickness, illness, separation or death. Accept the reality shown you by Spirit and live in the perfection you are.

11. Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept your healing without his. For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing is yours. To love yourself is to heal yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your goal. Brother, we heal together as we live together and love together. Be not deceived in God's Son, for he is one with himself and one with his Father. Love him who is beloved of his Father, and you will learn of the Father's Love for you.

My favorite line here is: '...we heal together as we live together and love together.' It truly does not matter how a brother sees you, but it matters greatly how you see a brother. If I see a brother as the Love he is, as the Love I am, then I shall heal as I see him heal as well. My brother may not yet recognize me as that which is within him, but it my vision of him that shall us both.

12. If you perceive offense in a brother pluck the offense from your mind, for you are offended by Christ and are deceived in Him. Heal in Christ and be not offended by Him, for there is no offense in Him. If what you perceive offends you, you are offended in yourself and are condemning God's Son whom God condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove all offenses of God's Son against himself and perceive no one but through His guidance, for He would save you from all condemnation. Accept His healing power and use it for all He sends you, for He wills to heal the Son of God, in whom He is not deceived.

Perhaps this might be easier to comprehend – as you see your brother, you see God. Can anything offensive be of God? Could God possibly offend you? Ask Spirit to help you see your brother in the Light within you – in the Image and Likeness within you – so that you may see God reflecting back to you. In that image is all healing.

13. Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow, and his "dragon" into a dream he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear.

Are we not as frighten children when we belief in the fears we see before us? But the value of the fears was taught to us at some time. When we face fears without meaning, we go beyond them and recognize them for what they are – nothing.

14. You, my child, are afraid of your brothers and of your Father and of yourself. But you are merely deceived in them. Ask what they are of the Teacher of reality, and hearing His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding that frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly they are not afraid. And because of this they will ask for truth again when they are frightened. It is not the reality of your brothers or your Father or yourself that frightens you. You do not know what they are, and so you perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons. Ask what their reality is from the One Who knows it, and He will tell you what they are. For you do not understand them, and because you are deceived by what you see you need reality to dispel your fears.

Is there anything in our world we do not fear? We fear our brother – we fear God – and we fear ourselves. And yet, the fears we believe in are not real. When we ask for and receive at the same time, assistance from Spirit, we are shown our reality which is love. We are shown that the fears do not exist – only Love is real and only Love exists.

15. Would you not exchange your fears for truth, if the exchange is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself. Yet you can learn the truth about yourself from the Holy Spirit, Who will teach you that, as part of God, deceit in you is impossible. When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself.

Ask yourself if you would gladly exchange your fears for Truth, and listen to your answer and feel your feeling surrounding it. The Truth we seek is already within us. We only deceive ourselves when we deny Its existence. When we stop deny and begin to accept it, the real world is brought into our vision. And as we let go of all the beliefs we have carried with us, we prepare ourselves for the final step on our path – One which God takes for us.

Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section I. - The Judgment of the Holy Spirit

1. You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth.

Notice how often the subject of error comes up in the Course? Could be that it occurs so often because we have not yet convinced ourselves that error is nothing more than a belief we give –error is not real and yet we certainly go out of our way to make it appear real. But Truth is real and all else is false. Where does error show up? Probably our biggest obstacle is that we interpret everything we believe we see – we judge everything – as if we could decide what is right or wrong – but we believe we can. And the judgments we make – the decisions we choose – determine how we see what is before us. Surely, there must be a better way.

2. The analysis of ego motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego involvement. The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally. This would obviously be a split or an attack on the integrity of your mind, pitting one level within it against another.

That word 'understanding' comes up again – we truly believe we can understand this dream, and yet understanding an illusion is impossible – understanding itself is impossible. We analyze – we judge – we interpret – all the illusions we believe are before us. And then, because we believe in them, we react to them. If we could step back and observe ourselves, we would easily see how ridiculous this all appears.

3. There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit. Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent. If you believe that an appeal for help is something else you will react to something else. Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is, but not to your perception of it.

Within this paragraph is one of the most profound points of the Course – 'Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes." This is repeated because we forget it so quickly. We would rather judge than remember it so often appears. We would prefer to be deaf to a call for help than to respond with love. What thought do you hold when you see a brother – one of love or one of judgment? And if your mind holds a judgment of your brother, this judgment is yours as well. Is this how you wish to see yourself?

4. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own imagined need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to accept reality as it is, and which you therefore withhold from yourself.

Carefully read this first line several times – there is nothing which prevents us from hearing a call for help other than our own imagined need to attack our brother. And attack is in response to what – fear. If we fear our brother we fear ourselves. And from this fear of ourselves, we wage all the battles – with ourselves. Lay down your fear and the call for help shall be heard and your response shall not only be to your brother, but to yourself as well.

5. It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. To fail to recognize a call for help is to refuse help. Would you maintain that you do not need it? Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help and you will not recognize God's Answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His.

If we are not capable of understanding, and we are not, then how do we suppose we can judge anything? And if we fail to hear a call from help, we fail to hear ourselves calling as well. And by not giving the help, we fail to receive the help. If we hear the call, and deny it, we are denying God. When we hear the call, we also hear the Answer.

6. Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this. How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives them to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to "help" a brother in your way, for you cannot help yourself. But hear his call for the Help of God, and you will recognize your own need for the Father.

Gratitude should be constantly given to another, for by recognizing another in Truth, we give them the Love we are and receive the Love they are. What we offer them, we offer ourselves. And are you aware of how much effort we give in opposition to act of giving? There is no conflict in reality. There is but one Teacher in Reality. The word 'one' comes up so often so that will associate it with the Oneness we are. We need all the reminders that are given us. Our brother is truly One with us, and what we offer a brother, what we give a brother, we offer and give ourselves. Is the gift you offer your brother also the gift you want to receive?

7. Your interpretations of your brother's needs are your interpretation of yours. By giving help you are asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself you will be healed. For you will recognize God's Answer as you want It to be, and if you want It in truth, It will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to your awareness. For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer you.

First person: My interpretations of my brother's needs are my interpretations of my own. By giving my brother help, I am asking for help as well. If I perceive a need in my brother, I have within me, the same need. I recognize the Answer of God as I want that Answer to be and I want that Answer in Truth and so it is given me. Every call for help I answer in the name of Truth brings the memory of God closer in my awareness. For the sake of my need, I hear every call for help as what it is, so that the Answer of God may be given.

8. By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you. For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still translate the fear into truth. If you were left with the fear, once you had recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then. Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing fear really means. If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it. That is the ultimate value in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have already learned that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If only attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn on you. For fear is a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.

As I hear the calls for help from others, and as I also hear the Answer given me by God, I know that each answer is itself for me as well. With the help of the Holy Spirit, I shall hear either love or a call for love from others. Nothing else can be heard in Truth. And if I believe I see fear, sense fear, or hear fear, I will know the help of Spirit I will be able to move beyond those fears and see them for what they truly are – calls for healing and love. Others, including myself, may not be aware that their calls are calls for love, but Spirit shall have me hearing them and giving me the reply necessary.

9. Fear is a symptom of your own deep sense of loss. If when you perceive it in others you learn to supply the loss, the basic cause of fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist in you. The means for removing it is in yourself, and you have demonstrated this by giving it. Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial; and denial depends on the belief in what is denied for its own existence. By interpreting fear correctly as a positive affirmation of the underlying belief it masks, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses that do not work at all are automatically discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to clear-cut unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The veil that you have drawn across the face of love has disappeared.

The instant we began this dream, we had fear – fear that we had lost something that meant everything to us. And so we move through this dream with fear – our constant companion on our journey of darkness. With the help of Spirit – with the words of the Course reminding us of our Truth – we can remember that fear is but an illusion – not real. Fear is truly but a veil we have all made believing that we could hide Truth from ourselves. As we see fear for what it is, the veil is gone and only Truth is Present.

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

The reality of my world is love – it is the essence of what I am in Truth. Every defense that I believe is in my world as a defense against Truth, is but a call for love. As I respond to those calls for healing, I see my reality for what it is. As I ask Spirit for the response, the thoughts of fears are replaced with thoughts of love, and error seen as truth. And from that beginning, I shall see how I can change my dream from one of separation into One of my reality.
Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section II. - The Way to Remember God

1. Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are denying to themselves. If they knew the truth about themselves they could not be sick. The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth. The sick must heal themselves, for the truth is in them. Yet having obscured it, the light in another mind must shine into theirs because that light is theirs.

And the 'translation of denial into truth' is but what? A change of thought. So where we 'see' sickness, let us then see love. Those that believe in sickness are but calling for the love they forget they are. You cannot heal another but you can shine your Love to them so that they may see theirs. Their Light shall shine upon their Love and their Love shall heal them.

2. The light in them shines as brightly regardless of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it has none. For it has power only if the Son of God gives power to it. He must himself withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. You can remember this for all the Sonship. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is yours. But your remembering is his, for God cannot be remembered alone. This is what you have forgotten. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers with Him, and God's Answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.

The only power anything has is the power we give anything, and so if we believe we give power, we also can believe we can take it away. There is no darkness that cannot be lit by the Light within us. There is no darkness that we remain in forever, for darkness is not Truth. We remind our brother of this, and as he remembers, we also remember with him. And what we both begin to remember is the Truth within us – the Truth that holds all 'secrets' we quest for – the Truth of who and what we are. As we begin to see our brother healed, so shall we see ourselves. As we see others healing, we shall see others remembering their Truth – we shall all begin to remember God.

3. Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he really wants is to offer it unto yourself, for your Father wills you to know your brother as yourself. Answer his call for love, and yours is answered. Healing is the Love of Christ for His Father and for Himself.

If we believe we see sickness, we know we hear a call for healing and help. In responding to that call, we offer another the Love we are so that they may see the Love they are as well. Seeing Love is the cure for all illusions.

4. Remember what was said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish. But if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not understand what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do understand yours. Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.

Once again we are reminded that we are but little children – totally innocent, and yet pretending to be adults who understand fear. When a child asks for an explanation, and comfort in words is given them, they accept and move on. But if we don't ask for help – for explanation of what we believe we see – how do we ever move on? I cannot possibly explain to a brother that which I do not believe myself. If I do not respond to a call for love, I am acting like I hiding beneath covers of fear, cowering in the darkness myself.

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

So why do we 'save' this illusion of fears we call life, when we could offer it to Spirit so that it may be shown to us in Truth? Why do we insist on staying covered up in darkness when the Light is present if we but open our eyes? All the help we need is within us just patiently waiting for us to ask. As we ask for help, we settle into a stillness and sacredness that is all part of our reality. We begin to remember what we had long ago forgotten.

6. You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish it because it is His Will. Awake and remember your purpose, for it is your will to do so. What has been accomplished for you must be yours. Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for nothing can withstand the Love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's Love for Him.

Why do you suppose we choose to remain in a nightmare when happiness is just waiting for us to wake up and enjoy it? Why do we feel no-love when we are only Love? When will we accept that the Will of God is our will as well? When will we remember God?

7. A little while and you will see me, for I am not hidden because you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke for you. In my resurrection is your release. Our mission is to escape from crucifixion, not from redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father walked with me. Do you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with us on the journey?

Just because we believe we are hidden under the covers, the Truth of who we are shall also be hidden. We may hide from it but It never hides from us. We shall awake from this dream for that is what one does in a dream – wakes up. One does not die – one does cease to be in a dream, one simply wakes to find themselves where they have forever been. We may feel alone in this dream of separation but we can never change our Truth – we cannot be alone for we are One with God. We cannot walk this dream without God for God is the Presence within us. Wherever I am, God is also present.

8. There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making perfect to you what is already perfect in you. You do not fear the unknown but the known. You will not fail in your mission because I did not fail in mine. Give me but a little trust in the name of the complete trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the goal of perfection together. For perfection is, and cannot be denied. To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as to deny truth, and what we can accomplish together will be believed when you see it as accomplished.

So this might be saying something to the effect: we will believe in our Truth when we accept our Truth, and we will accept our Truth when we see our Truth, and we will see our Truth when we believe in our Truth. Let go of all of your beliefs as to who you think you are and let it be shown to you who you really are. Just reach out your trust, and you shall not be let go of by Spirit. The perfection we are shall be shown to us and never again shall we doubt for a moment our Truth.

9. You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded, but you who choose to banish fear must succeed. The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would you not exchange this awareness for the awareness of fear? When we have overcome fear–not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, and not by denying its full import in any way–this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacles to real vision without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against. If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, and He will judge truly. Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it from you.

We could not banish love regardless of how hard we tried or how sure we were of what we believed we saw – love is real and only love is real. Fear is false and can be and will be banished from our view. The Presence of God is within each of us, but we have yet to totally accept that. We appear to accept our fears easier than our truth. As we see an obstacle on our path – as we see what appears a fear to us – shall be judged by Spirit upon our request, and then we shall see the obstacle for what it is and not for what it was – and move on.

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

This is a good description to remember of the Course – 'an organized, well-structured and carefully planned program' in showing us how to surrender everything which is not real to Spirit. We have not yet remembered how to use what Spirit knows. All that is not real is no longer seen. We ask not how it was possible, but we merely utter a thank you.

Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section III. - The Investment in Reality

1. I once asked you to sell all you have and give to the poor and follow me. This is what I meant: If you have no investment in anything in this world, you can teach the poor where their treasure is. The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, and they are poor indeed! Because they are in need it is given you to help them, since you are among them. Consider how perfectly your lesson would be learned if you were unwilling to share their poverty. For poverty is lack, and there is but one lack since there is but one need.

It isn't necessary to give away your possessions to follow these teachings – it is only necessary to give up your attachments to what you believe are your possessions. In other words, release the value you have given the things you believe you have. Your treasures are not of this world, but they are within you now. These are the treasures you are asked to share with others. Share the Light within by demonstrating your Truth. See others as the Oneness we are. Only in a world of duality can there be judgments of rich or poor – wealth or poverty. In Truth, we have All That Is.

2. Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you think you do not want to do. His very insistence should tell you that he believes salvation lies in it. If you insist on refusing and experience a quick response of opposition, you are believing that your salvation lies in not doing it. You, then, are making the same mistake he is, and are making his error real to both of you. Insistence means investment, and what you invest in is always related to your notion of salvation. The question is always twofold; first, what is to be saved? And second, how can it be saved?

And another reminder of the value we give to our world – the word insistence – used by us on many occasions but will we use it again after we know that it means that we have an investment in something? We believe our salvation depends on doing what is insisted upon. What do you believe must be saved and how do you think you can save it?

3. Whenever you become angry with a brother, for whatever reason, you are believing that the ego is to be saved, and to be saved by attack. If he attacks, you are agreeing with this belief; and if you attack, you are reinforcing it. Remember that those who attack are poor. Their poverty asks for gifts, not for further impoverishment. You who could help them are surely acting destructively if you accept their poverty as yours. If you had not invested as they had, it would never occur to you to overlook their need.

Anger is any form is a sign that we are believing that this body, this ego, is to be saved and to be saved by attacking another. To be angry, to be in fear, is a sign that we believe something is lacking – we need something to complete us – to make us happy – and without it, we shall be poor at least in spirit. And what is this but a call for love – a call for healing and help. If you hear your brother call to you by means of attack, how will you respond to him?

4. Recognize what does not matter, and if your brothers ask you for something "outrageous," do it because it does not matter. Refuse, and your opposition establishes that it does matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have made the request outrageous, and every request of a brother is for you. Why would you insist in denying him? For to do so is to deny yourself and impoverish both. He is asking for salvation, as you are. Poverty is of the ego, and never of God. No "outrageous" requests can be made of one who recognizes what is valuable and wants to accept nothing else.

As one of the sayings of this life goes: 'Just do it!' Ever notice that when you do just that – when you just do something without thinking about it, how smoothly and quickly it is over? If we judge it first – look it over – weigh the pros and cons – discuss and argue its merits – it seems as if it takes forever. One of the things the Course teaches early and often – It really doesn't matter. Each time we think it does, we are denying our reality – we are denying God. Isn't it a great thought to know that God never denies us even once?

5. Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the only thing that can be saved and the only way to save it. Any response other than love arises from a confusion about the "what" and the "how" of salvation, and this is the only answer. Never lose sight of this, and never allow yourself to believe, even for an instant, that there is another answer. For you will surely place yourself among the poor, who do not understand that they dwell in abundance and that salvation is come.

Salvation is for the mind alone for the mind alone is in conflict and in need of peace. And this salvation we seek is but as close as the next thought – will your next thought be one of love? If you think thoughts of love, you will experience peace.

6. To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and make yourself poor. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived. What he experiences then is depression or anger, because what he did was to exchange Self-love for self-hate, making him afraid of himself. He does not realize this. Even if he is fully aware of anxiety he does not perceive its source as his own ego identification, and he always tries to handle it by making some sort of insane "arrangement" with the world. He always perceives this world as outside himself, for this is crucial to his adjustment. He does not realize that he makes this world, for there is no world outside of him.

When we identify ourselves as ego – when we believe we are this body we call a name – we are actually attacking ourselves and robbing us of seeing our Truth. Deprivation is an offering of ego, not of God. Depression, anger and fears of all sorts are offerings of ego, not of God. As ego, we have turned our Self-Love into self-hate and are confused because we believe them to be the same. As we project our thoughts to make the world we see, we see this world 'out-there' somewhere – appearing ever present and yet at times unreachable. As ego, we search that world for what we believe will make us happy – content – satisfied – rich and wealthy. We do this with an almost maniac-drive at times, always rushing around so that we will not take a moment of our schedule to simply sit with ourselves so that the silence within can be heard.

7. If only the loving thoughts of God's Son are the world's reality, the real world must be in his mind. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an internal conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed thoughts within itself is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, not the reality. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation. Yet consider what has happened, for thoughts do have consequences to the thinker. You have become at odds with the world as you perceive it, because you think it is antagonistic to you. This is a necessary consequence of what you have done. You have projected outward what is antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would have to perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that your hatred is in your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it; and why you must get rid of it before you can perceive the world as it really is.

As you practice the Course, have you ever been in a situation where you truly feared losing the identity you believe in as to who you are in this body? Was is a frightening thought that brought you back to ego, fearful of what could it be like not to have this identity? That image that you have is but a thought you hold in your mind. This is exactly like everything else you believe you see in your world.

8. I said before that God so loved the world that He gave it to His only begotten Son. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. For death is not of the real world, in which everything reflects the eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made out of your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if you could really separate yourself from the Mind of God you would die.

God so loves the real world that God gave It to us – but the word to remember is 'real'. What is real as defined in the beginning of the Course? Only Love. What else have we remembered is real – the Creation of God – the Son of God – us! Our real world – our Reality – is the Truth of us. God created us in the image and likeness of God – Love – Truth – Reality.

9. The world you perceive is a world of separation. Perhaps you are willing to accept even death to deny your Father. Yet He would not have it so, and so it is not so. You still cannot will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is not a world of will because it is governed by the desire to be unlike God, and this desire is not will. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of any kind. For it is made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind because you are afraid of it. Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker, along with his real salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind, since the mind is the mechanism of decision.

The world we see is one of projection – our projection of the thoughts we hold. And the thoughts we hold are of separation from God. We believe God is out-there and we are here and a great distance is between us. This is what those of us who believe in God in the first place. For those who do not believe in God, they simply believe they are it. In the world we make – the projection of our split mind – death is seen by many as real – but only Love is real remember. If God has not willed it, it is not real. And God did not will this dream nor the illusions within it.

10. If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ abideth is there. You have defiled the altar, but not the world. Yet Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar for you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as you project it, allowing the Holy Spirit to extend the real world to you from the altar of God.

Until we see that attack is but within our mind, we will never be able to cease its activity. Once seen in our mind as our thought, we can change that thought instantly. And in that change is salvation given us. Can you let go of the investment you have given your world to enter the World of God?

Chapter 12.

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Section IV. - Seeking and Finding

1. The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its judgment, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.

The very first time I read the line ''seek and do not find" I felt a great weight lifted from me. In the world I make, I constantly followed where I was led and when I believed I had found what I had wanted, it was pointed out to me, that more is to be sought and so I continued. Ever notice how ego has us on this 'treadmill' of life forever driving us forward it appears but never appearing to reach any destination? How very opposite this is the way Spirit advises us: what you seek, you will find within. And there truly is the 'pot of gold' we have searched for.

2. The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. Yet it is also your mind that has the power to deny the ego's existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey is on which the ego sets you.

Are you on a journey with an ending or a journey without a beginning? One is laid out for you as ego, the other given you by Spirit. But can you realize just a little that ego is nothing more than a thought you hold in your mind? It is your making – your projection – it is that which you have given great value to and yet it obviously is not eternal for it shall die at the end of its journey. You know that you have the power within you to change your thoughts – the change is what we have been calling a miracle. Changing your thoughts of the ego is no more difficult than changing any other thought – there is no difficulty in miracles.

3. It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love's presence, for it could not respond at all. Then, you would have to abandon the ego's guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response you need. The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will search for love, but will not recognize it.

Read this a few times and then ask yourself if you still desire to follow ego? Have you not had enough searches for love and never finding it to last you a lifetime? Must you continue to search what you would not recognize if you found it? Ego would disappear instantly if it recognized love – darkness is no longer when Light is present. So if you do not follow ego, Who else is there to guide you on your way?

4. Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, "Seek and you will find," and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God's Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father.

We have all been on those journeys of ego – forever seeking and never finding – forever feeling depressed and lifeless. But the way of the ego can never be less than that. A journey of insanity will never lead to sanity. So the opposite to that journey is the one guided by Spirit – one of love and joy and happiness. On this journey, you will seek and you will discover that which has always been within you. You travel no further than within to find what you endlessly search for out-there.

5. You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. And you will search for your home whether you realize where it is or not. If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission. As He fulfills His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your brothers home you are but following Him.

As with any journey, it is path leading to somewhere, in this case, back to what we have forgotten – back to what we have within. This world is not a home to us – we do not feel comfortable here – not accepted by all nor loved by all. There is no peace and joy in this world we make. Our journey will takes to where we never left. And Spirit shall guide us the entire way, for we have forgotten much in this world – in fact, we know nothing in this world. And as we are led by Spirit, so shall we lead others as well. Such is our function as it is His as well.

6. Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father's Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him.

Know that the Guide we have is the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God, directing our every move. As we move along this journey of no beginning, we remember more and more of the Truth we are. In this knowledge is the Love we are. Would we – could we – decline that Love for an illusion in this world we make? We have inherited All That Is and did not have to 'die' for it. Not only is there no value in death, but there is no value in the beliefs we hold here in this world.

7. The Atonement is not the price of your wholeness, but it is the price of your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to "sell" had to be kept for you, since you could not "buy" it back. Yet you must invest in it, not with money but with spirit. For spirit is will, and will is the "price" of the Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.

The Atonement – the Correction of Error – is not a price of our wholeness, but a price of our awareness of our wholeness. As we correct our thoughts, we become more aware of our Truth. And there is no price that could be offered for what we have. The treasures given us by God are ours as soon as we recognized that we let go of the treasures we thought we had in a world of illusions.

Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section V. - The Sane Curriculum

1. Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so. Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as weak. Because you attacked yourself and believed that the attack was effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and your brothers as equal, and regarding yourself as weaker, you attempt to "equalize" the situation you made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was successful in weakening you.

Only Love is strong and we are Love, and we are strong. We need not attack for there is ever a need to do so. As we think of the word 'attack' we are in a position of seeing ourselves as weak. Weak simply means we see the separation we believe in; we see our brothers different from us.

2. That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so important to the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, you will be demonstrating that nothing really happened. Therefore, by attacking you have not done anything. Once you realize this you will no longer see any sense in attack, for it manifestly does not work and cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have failed to weaken you, you are still strong. You therefore have no need to "equalize" the situation to establish your strength.

How difficult is it for you to readily accept the fact that you are invulnerable, especially when you spent a lot of this life thinking you are very vulnerable? Being invulnerable means you have no need of attack and attack itself has no effect. In attacking, nothing happens; nothing can happen. How do you feel knowing that nothing and no one can cause you any harm?

3. You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by recognizing that your attack on yourself has no effects. For others do react to attack if they perceive it, and if you are trying to attack them you will be unable to avoid interpreting this as reinforcement. The only place you can cancel out all reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the first point of your attack, and if this has never been, it has no consequences.

Only when we see that attack means nothing, that attack produces nothing, will we stop believing we can attack. If we believe we can attack others, they will respond as if they are being attacked. The only stop to attack is within your mind.

4. The Holy Spirit's Love is your strength, for yours is divided and therefore not real. You cannot trust your own love when you attack it. You cannot learn of perfect love with a split mind, because a split mind has made itself a poor learner. You tried to make the separation eternal, because you wanted to retain the characteristics of creation, but with your own content. Yet creation is not of you, and poor learners do need special teaching.

Recall the times when you have affirmed: "God is my Strength"? This is what this is about. The love offered me by ego is a poor substitute for that which I am. Every thing I believe I see in the world I make is from a split mind. No wonder confusion reigns and I feel less than complete. I am slow at remembering my Truth, but I am remembering my Truth. With each memory is an obstacle of ego overcome.

5. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction, provided by a Teacher Who can transcend your limited resources. He becomes your Resource because of yourself you cannot learn. The learning situation in which you placed yourself is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices as teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to them to establish the curriculum by which they can escape from their limitations. If they understood what is beyond them, they would not be handicapped.

What might be our learning handicaps? Could it be that we believe in what we think we see, and fear what might be beyond that illusion? Could it be that we are righteous in our thinking that we believe no one can have us learn anything new? Or do we choose a teacher who has not yet learned? We have within us a Tutor that will show us how to remember; will show us how to go beyond those illusions; will show us the Truth we are. Turn to that Tutor now within you and simply state "I do not know."

6. You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids are for? They do not know. If they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.

Remember very early in the Course we were told that we will not know the meaning of Love for that is beyond us here? And yet, ego has us chasing after what can never be simply because it keeps us busy – away from what we can know. There is no way one can teach what one does not know. If you come upon a teacher in the world you make, who says to you "I will teach you the meaning of Love", get beyond that teacher as quickly as possible. The meaning of Love is the meaning of God and that is beyond everyone's comprehension. And the meaning is probably not a meaning but a knowing which cannot be taught.

7. I have said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do not find." Translated into curricular terms this means, "Try to learn but do not succeed." The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all for facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? Such a curriculum does not make sense. This attempt at "learning" has so weakened your mind that you cannot love, for the curriculum you have chosen is against love, and amounts to a course in how to attack yourself. A supplementary goal in this curriculum is learning how not to overcome the split that makes its primary aim believable. And you will not overcome the split in this curriculum, for all your learning will be on its behalf. Yet your mind speaks against your learning as your learning speaks against your mind, and so you fight against all learning and succeed, for that is what you want. But perhaps you do not realize, even yet, that there is something you want to learn, and that you can learn it because it is your choice to do so.

There is that reminder once again – 'Seek and do not find.' That is ego philosophy and is taught at every class the ego attempts to teach. Everything that is presented to us will be interpreted first according to ego. We simply ask for and receive an interpretation from Spirit. Ever notice how the word 'learning' is a phrase of ego which implies our ignorance? Spirit has us 'remembering' which implies that we already know.

8. You who have tried to learn what you do not want should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

So how do we resign from being our own teacher? By affirming "I do not know" and allowing what you do know in Truth to be shown to you. The curriculum of what we call life is hilarious at best, when we step back and look. Do you want to learn over and over again how to chase your own tail? Have you not got that down pat yet? Resigning as your own teacher is sanity. Resigning as your own teacher is surrendering to God all that you are confused about – the world you make.

9. Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

Each time I read 'limitless' I know I am reading about my Truth. There is no limit set upon me by God, for there is no limit to God. As I allow Spirit to show me how to walk this path, I can also show others, for as I learn, I teach. There is never any division in Truth, only wholeness (holiness). What I must do is choose to follow Spirit in all things, and when I become aware that I am not following Spirit, I change my thoughts without missing a step on the path.

Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section VI. - The Vision of Christ

1. The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality by denying yours, and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable.

Remember the saying about 'selling your soul' – it is good to read that it can't be done, but I think we already knew that. But look at what you can 'sell' – your awareness of it. Would you really knowingly do that? What could you believe you could possibly gain in a world of illusion – a projection of thoughts? The only thing you could believe you gain is but more illusions, and don't you have enough already? There is nothing in this world we make to gain, and truly nothing for us to lose either – there is nothing in this world we make.

2. The Holy Spirit is your strength because He knows nothing but the spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself, and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember what you are. Because He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory because of Him. You chose to forget your Father but you do not really want to do so, and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours.

We remember God because the Holy Spirit reminds us constantly of God. Spirit sees us as we are and nothing else. He sees no form, no limits, no imperfections – only the Truth. And the Holy Spirit does nothing else but remind us of God – reminds us of our Truth – our essence – our Oneness. The Holy Spirit is the Voice of God and speaks only that which God has spoken. We may have chosen to forget God at one time but never again. It is a decision before us at every moment of this dream, and one we must choose carefully.

3. You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours is in you. As self-value comes from self-extension, so does the perception of self-value come from the extension of loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it belongs to you.

Not many of us would want the world exactly as we see right now. What part of your world do you see with love? What part of your world are you extending your Truth to? Make your world into a world of love and then you will want it exactly as it appears.

4. Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not lost their vision, but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Christ's eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept His vision as yours. The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you. He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to re-invest in himself. For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.

Within each of us is the Spirit of Christ – the Spirit of God. Within this Spirit are the eyes of the Christ Spirit with which we can see only Love. As we dream this dream, we are as if blinded by the illusion of darkness. When light enters, the darkness vanishes and we can see in the Light of Love. As we move about in this dream in a state of sleep, Spirit keeps the Eyes of Christ available for us to see when we wake. We wake each time we turn a thought of fear over to a thought of love.

5. When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will remember Us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping, and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of you. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would share with you because He knows of the Father's Love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours. In perfect peace He waits for you at His Father's altar, holding out the Father's Love to you in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self.

Once we have been awake enough to glimpse the real world seen through the eyes of the Christ Spirit, we shall remember that moment and desire for it to return. We can move through this dream of sleep in a state of awakeness, and it is a choice we make. The Christ Spirit within us never sleeps for It simply is ever present. God has never lost sight of us, but we have often failed to see God as we have looked upon our brothers. Now we can see within each brother, the reflection of God smiling back to us.

6. Every child of God is one in Christ, for his being is in Christ as Christ's is in God. Christ's Love for you is His Love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His Father's Love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge because perception has become so holy that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love transfers to love without any interference, for the two are one. As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of training under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God.

Every one of us is one in God, and God is One in each of us. God's Love is all that exists. God transfers to us and we become the One we are. As we look upon our brother, we shall become aware that he too, has become One with us. And then when we come to a state of total awaking – only the Presence of Love shall be seen.

7. What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself that is His Son. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God it must also be in you.

We know from the simplest of math, that one is one, and if we try to take a part from it, it is no longer one. The same is true for us. We are One with God, but the difference here is that no part of God can be taken from the One. The One is All That Is.
Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section VII. - Looking Within

1. Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible and what has been learned can be recognized only by its results. Its generalization is demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles when you apply them to all situations. There is no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to all situations you will gain the real world. For in this holy perception you will be made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from your acceptance of it for yourself to everyone the Holy Spirit sends you for your blessing. In every child of God His blessing lies, and in your blessing of the children of God is His blessing to you.

Note that again the theme of 'children' is brought up. We are the 'children' of God and we have to be reminded of that very, very often. Also note the reminder that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. How often have you said such things as "That's not possible, it's too much to ask" or "that is way more than I deserve" or similar negative sayings. One thing the Course has us do is to watch the words we use to express what we believe we feel or believe we see. At any breath, we can ask Spirit for guidance and instantly receive it. There is no question that we can think of which does not already have an answer waiting for us.

2. Everyone in the world must play his part in its redemption, in order to recognize that the world has been redeemed. You cannot see the invisible. Yet if you see its effects you know it must be there. By perceiving what it does, you recognize its being. And by what it does, you learn what it is. You cannot see your strengths, but you gain confidence in their existence as they enable you to act. And the results of your actions you can see.

What do you think of immediately when you read the word 'strength'? Does it have to do with your body and the muscles? How about the inner strength you have – the strength of Spirit, of Truth? Just saying 'no' requires a strength from within us. Simply to change a thought of fear to love requires a strength within us. This strength is not an illusion, but part of our Truth.

3. The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly not of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond all of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally know what He is.

Have you ever stopped long enough to consider that you also are invisible? We cannot see Spirit but we are witness to Its work through us. Have you personally or have you known of circumstance where someone has been given 'power' to do what is not 'usual' in this world? Some examples are running into a burning house and saving someone, and never being burned; or the strength to overturn a car and helping the people inside to get out; and being able to lift a heavy object off of someone pinned beneath. All these acts, and many more, are not of the world we make, but are Spirit given at the time. The words we choose to write, the meaning behind the words we hear, the sights we see in love – all are works of Spirit through us.

4. You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for His Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses that speak for it. For you can be aware of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you as its presence becomes manifest through you. Do the Holy Spirit's work, for you share in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth. As long as you believe you have other functions, so long will you need correction. For this belief is the destruction of peace, a goal in direct opposition to the Holy Spirit's purpose.

Do you feel any different knowing the Holy Spirit is working through you or when you realize that the Voice of God is working through you? By having Spirit work through us, we begin to remember what our purpose here is as well. As we allow Spirit to use us, we begin to see this world as if for the first time. Where we once saw fear, we now see love. Where once we saw separation, we now see Oneness. This is a healing of our world and of all we see within it.

5. You see what you expect, and you expect what you invite. Your perception is the result of your invitation, coming to you as you sent for it. Whose manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you will believe in what you manifest, and as you look out so will you see in. Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind, and your perception will reflect the guidance you have chosen.

Recall the old expression that 'I see what I want to see'? What is it that you truly want to see? Get that clear in you mind. What thoughts you hold in your mind will be the vision that you see. Two thought systems are in our mind – two opposing thought systems. Which one are you choosing now?

6. I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me it will be because you have invited Him. For He will send you His witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what you seek you will find. The ego finds what it seeks, and only that. It does not find love, for that is not what it is seeking. Yet seeking and finding are the same, and if you seek for two goals you will find them, but you will recognize neither. You will think they are the same because you want both of them. The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split and wants to keep the split, it will still believe it has one goal by making it seem to be one.

And here is the ego trap – we want it all – we want it both ways – we want love and fear – and ego tells us we can have it all. What happens when we have it all? We are confined to a life of chaos and confusion. We confuse love for fear and fear for love. We begin to think right is wrong and wrong is right. And the solution for us is as close as the next thought – we ask for and receive guidance from Spirit. Spirit shows us that only love is present – where we thought we saw fear, love now stands. Spirit shows us that right and wrong are not really options. Judgment by us is not required because we are not capable of judging, Spirit does that for us.

7. I said before that what you project or extend is up to you, but you must do one or the other, for that is a law of mind, and you must look in before you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing. And then you look out and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek. What you want in yourself you will make manifest, and you will accept it from the world because you put it there by wanting it. When you think you are projecting what you do not want, it is still because you do want it. This leads directly to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each perceived in a different place; separated from each other because you made them different. The mind then sees a divided world outside itself, but not within. This gives it an illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe that it is pursuing one goal. Yet as long as you perceive the world as split, you are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal, because you have accepted only one and want but one.

We talk a lot about projecting and extending, and here we are reminded that projection has to do with illusion, while extension has to do with the Love we are. We project our thoughts, but we extend our Love. The thoughts are within the split mind we believe we have, but the Love comes from within us. Have you ever experience exactly what you did not want to experience? And by holding the thought that you did not want that experience, you brought it to you – you projected it before you. How about any time that you have felt your heart opening up for someone in need – you just felt compelled to think loving thoughts about them? This comes from within you and happens before a thought. That which comes from within is Truth, that which you project from mine is thought.

8. When you want only love you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your mind and accepted opposition there, having sought it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the messages you gave them. Love, too, is recognized by its messengers. If you make love manifest, its messengers will come to you because you invited them.

And who might be the messengers of Love who come to you? Could they be the others before you constantly in your world? Do you see all others as messengers? Look again, for they are as much as you are a messenger to them. And what of the message they carry? Do you hear it because you are tuned into Love or are you deaf because you have tuned out Love?

9. The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. You can decide to see it right. What you made of it is not its reality, for its reality is only what you give it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything but love from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked within and thought you saw the power to give something else within yourself. It was only this decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision for what you sought.

This is one of the items ego would just as soon not discuss – the power we all have within us to break us from the chains we placed upon ourselves in this world we make. Did you ever think that the simple act of choosing is actually a power you have within you? You can oppose the ego thought system and choose instead, the system of Love. You have the strength within you that will enable you to do just that.

10. You are afraid of me because you looked within and are afraid of what you saw. Yet you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of God's creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace if you really looked upon it. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something that is not there. Yet in that same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind which created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to extend His peace through you.

If you looked within and was fearful of what you saw, then you were not truly looking within, but was given a substitute by ego for what you have within you. Ego will not go within because the Presence of Love is there, and where there is Light, darkness cannot be. Do not fear what you are in Truth – do not fear God – do not fear Love. This is the insanity of ego – for us to fear that which we are. It makes more sense to question what we think we are as this body.

11. When you have accepted your mission to extend peace you will find peace, for by making it manifest you will see it. Its holy witnesses will surround you because you called upon them, and they will come to you. I have heard your call and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me nor hear the answer that you sought. That is because you do not yet want that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that you do want only that. And you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the real world together. Through the eyes of Christ, only the real world exists and only the real world can be seen. As you decide so will you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision.

If we do not yet see peace as we look upon our world, it is because we have to accept our mission to extend peace. In our acceptance is our extension. We have heard the call many times and yet we may not have yet responded to it, but we all shall eventually. Ask for the guidance from within you, and you shall be shown your world in the Light of Love. Then gladly accept your mission and extend that which you are.

12. When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it you will see it both without and within. You will see it without because you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is your judgment it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit it will be right, for judgment is His function. You share His function only by judging as He does, reserving no judgment at all for yourself. You will judge against yourself, but He will judge for you.

I do not think we can be reminded enough times about the fact that we are not able to judge. Judgment is what we as humans do constantly. And it is judgment that causes us the stress and anxiety we experience in our world. Judgment is not of us, but it is of Spirit. As we allow Spirit to judge, we are free of stress and anxiety. Remember how we have been told that as we judge, so shall we judge ourselves? That alone should have stopping the practice.

13. Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only end with which it will be satisfied.

Ego denies death and yet it holds it over us as our own condemnation. What have we possibly done to condemn ourselves to death – to end? If death is the satisfaction of ego, then this world as made by ego must certainly be insane. As ego we had believe that hatred was love and love was hatred. In this confusion was the tormenting of our mind.

14. The ego is not a traitor to God, to Whom treachery is impossible. But it is a traitor to you who believe that you have been treacherous to your Father. That is why the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit's teaching. For as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve death. You will think that death comes from God and not from the ego because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe that you want death. And from what you want God does not save you.

The ego is not seen as a traitor to God because the ego denies the existence of God. But the ego is a traitor to us because we have believed in its existence and have been rewarded with its gifts of guilt, shame, hatred and fear. Within us the Voice of God – the Holy Spirit – the Link to God – and from this Link comes the knowing of our Truth and from this Truth we see the ego for what it is – an illusion – a nothing from nothing.

15. When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did not die. You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me. Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given me of the Father unless He had also given it to you? When you learn to make me manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless in yourself, and you will see only the eternal as you look out upon a world that cannot die.

When death often appears real to you, remember that we have been shown that it is not. We cannot die, we just continue in the eternity that we are. The demonstration of Jesus dead on a cross was viewed by many as his ending. But he, like us, have no beginning so no ending is possible. Death is an experience of ego, and we are not ego. We are all we seek, and we need seek no further than within us.

Chapter 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CURRICULUM

Section VIII. - The Attraction of Love for Love

1. Do you really believe that you can kill the Son of God? The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself, and kept him far away from your destructive thoughts, but you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them. You attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack and love will remain hidden, for it can live only in peace.

Thoughts of attack have us appear blind to what is before us, and who is before us. Attack is fear and so you see your world in only two ways – love or attack – love or fear. You say you look for love and yet you attack. You are blind to the love before you. Allow the Love within you to be shown and Love will flow to you as if for the first time – at least the first time you are aware of it. You can live in peace or you can live in conflict, the choice is one you must make alone.

2. God's Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father's protection and cannot fear. His Father's Love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing. Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you chose to attack him and he disappeared from your sight into his Father. He did not change, but you did. For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father, and could not live in the knowledge of Him.

We are safe within God and we have this knowing within us. We know that fear is not real and only Love exists. And yet a part of us appears to deny God, to attack God and that part of us sees only darkness. The split mind we believe we have in this dream is not a creation of God, but one of our own making. What God creates is Whole.

3. When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of reality is God's, not yours. He created it, and He knows what it is. You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion.

When we believe we see what we project, we fail to see what is within. We cannot see both at the same time. What is seen in Truth is seen by Spirit and when asked, Truth will be shown to us. The Reality of Truth is a Creation of God. We have the memory of It within us, and with the help of Spirit, we shall remember.

4. Because of your Father's Love you can never forget Him, for no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer. God would reunite you with yourself, and did not abandon you in your distress. You are waiting only for Him, and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always.

Because of God's Love – our essence – we can never forget God for that memory is within us as to who we are. We certainly can deny it, but that does not make it less than it shall be forever. Spirit will answer every question at the moment we ask, and our vision of what we think we see will be corrected to show what is real. God knows we are still complete, it is only us that believe we are separated from God. We see ourselves as waiting for God, while God is already within us. How difficult is it for us to go there and be with God?

5. You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and rejoice that it is not so.

Ask and you shall receive – seek and you shall find. A message repeated so many times, so many ways, and yet have you asked yet for your memory to be restored? When we ask we must also choose to have it – we must accept it. This means we cease to deny God, we cease to deny our Truth.

6. Son of God, be not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself.

This is not the first time we have been told all of this either. The Course repeats itself because we have yet to accept what is repeated so often. We can not be content with nothing and nothing is what is offered by ego in this world of nothing we make. At the beginning of the Course we read that only Love is real, nothing else exists. And that message has been before us ever since. What we think we see in this dream is not real – none of it. Any value that we may think lies with this dream is only value we have given, and nothing can have no value. This world is not our Truth, and we are not content with anything less than the Truth.

7. Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth. God's Son can be seen because his vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon him, and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfect in His sight, and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father. You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal, what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God's Being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.

What God has not given us can have no power over us. God has not given us this world, and therefore any power that we believe we see in this world is what we believe we have given. Would God create such a meaningless mass of chaos, present it to us, and tell us that what we see is happiness? God created us – the Son of God – from the Love God is.

8. The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error and perception has never been. Being corrected it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost. Your Father could not cease to love His Son.

Our Reality is given us by God and God asks of us that we let go of the illusion we believe we see for the Truth presented to us. The illusion is then invisible and only Love is present. Perception is laid aside and knowledge is revealed. The Atonement – the correction of error – shows us what was never there. We are the Love of God and nothing could ever change that.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Introduction

1. If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish denial, but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.

The last line 'it is guilt that has driven you insane' really resonates. The insanity we experience in this world we make is cause by the guilt we have for the thoughts of attack we have. Ego mind judges the other mind, and guilt is born. We then believe we are doomed to some punishment and thus fear God. Truly this is insanity.

2. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.

When we accepted guilt, we accepted the thought of separation as well. As one exists, so does the other. The end to this madness is the Atonement, the correction of error. The world we see is an illusion made by guilt. A close look and you cannot deny this. Our world is a symbol of punishment and death. We are taught that we are born into this world through pain of a mother, and from then on we continue to suffer and eventually will die in pain. Pain and suffering are what the world offers us. And we go crazy with these thoughts in our mind. We feel alone, isolated and forgotten. It is as if God does not exist for us.

3. If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no Father could subject His children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it. Adam's "sin" could have touched no one, had he not believed it was the Father Who drove him out of Paradise. For in that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who do not understand Him could believe it.

But if this world were real, God would indeed be seen as cruel. This world is not of God, God sees it not. This world is our making, ours alone. We drove ourselves from the 'Paradise' God has for us – and the doors are still open for us to return.

4. This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is not guilty. He deserves only love because he has given only love. He cannot be condemned because he has never condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.

First person: My world is a picture of my crucifixion. And yet until I realize that I cannot be crucified, this is how I shall see my world. And yet I will not realize this until I accept the eternal fact that I am not guilty of anything. I deserve only Love because I have been given only Love. I cannot be condemned because there was never anything to condemn for. The correction of error – the Atonement – is my final lesson I must remember, for it reminds me that, having never sinned, I have no need of salvation.
Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section I. - Guiltlessness and Invulnerability

1. Earlier, I said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wants only this, for sharing the Father's Love for His Son, He seeks to remove all guilt from his mind that he may remember his Father in peace. Peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son.

David Hawkins had a saying about teacher/pupil which goes something like this: you are a teacher to the one behind you and a pupil to one in front of you. The ultimate goal of all teachers is to make themselves unnecessary. What would it be like when teachings are no longer needed? Would we not all be in a state of awakening? Spirit desires to remove all guilt we have in our mind and this is accomplished for us as we surrender all guilt. Is there any guilt you want to hold onto a bit longer?

2. In the strange world that you have made the Son of God has sinned. How could you see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and God's Son is without guilt.

We believe we have made this world and all things in it. We have also made this world with the thought that the Son of God has sinned. If we believe that, we will never see another other than a separate body. We will never be able to see the Christ Spirit in them shining forth back to us. Now, could the Son of God sin? Could God sin? Only craziness produces guilt. Let's laugh at ourselves and know that we cannot sin and have not sinned. We are as guiltless as God created us.

3. As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have "sinned" in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.

Often times in this world, we look upon ourselves and feel a guilt over the thought we held or the action we believe we took towards another. Perhaps in this world guilt can be experienced, but like everything else in this world, it is just one of the many illusions we make. Perhaps we can see ourselves guilty in the time of this world, but never guilty in our Reality – our eternity. And re-read the line about sinning in the past. We believe we have sinned in the past, but the past never was. Time will at some point of our journey vanish, for it shall no longer be needed. While we walk in this dream, we often believe in time, and yet it too, is but one of the illusions in this dream. Is there anything in this dream that is not an illusion?

4. The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been.

Indeed, many times I have thought that this journey, this path I am walking is useless at best. Those are the moments when I have surrendered to God and then been shown what path to take and how to walk it in peace and joy. God is not cruel and I cannot harm myself. The punishment I fear for the guilt I have carried will never be, because Spirit has shown me my Truth. Spirit is standing at the end of time, not the beginning, and where Spirit is, there I am also. Standing with Spirit I begin to realize that time is but an illusion and I no longer believe in it.

5. You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being in him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God's Mind. God's Son will always be as he was created. Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.

When I remember that my brother is guiltless, I shall then see in him the reflection of the Christ Spirit shining back to me, and there shall I also see Spirit in me. Being guiltless, my brother and I as well, can step from the prison we have made to the freedom we are. My brother and I shall eternally be as we were created by God. We are guiltless.

6. When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there is no guilt in God's Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God's Son. You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father.

The key for me here is my acceptance of the Atonement – the correction of error. Once accepted, I shall see from within me – from within the Christ Spirit within and I shall only see the reflection of God – of Love wherever I look. Out of Love we were created, and in Love shall we forever be.

7. As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father for you. There is no road to travel on, and no time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God's Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours.

As I see all those who appear to travel on this journey without ending with me, I begin to realize that this is not a journey but an awakening of the sleeping Son of God. There is no path – no time to be in – no journey to anywhere. We waken to discover that we are One with God, and that what we believe was but a dream – we never left, nor could leave the Source.

8. You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No one who believes this can understand what "always" means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal because you are eternal, and "always" must be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego's continuity. For if what has been will be punished, the ego's continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant.

It is so comforting to be told again and again that we are invulnerable and guiltless. In the world we made, being vulnerable and being guilty were name-tags we all too often wore. Guilt made us feel we would be punished for what we were not sure. In the guilt we wore, we forgot the eternal being we are. We are immortal – we are eternal – we are as God is. Guilt is in this world so that the past and future will forever be obvious, but both are illusions of ego – neither exists. Our immortality is a gift from God. Ego's offering to us in time.

9. Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality is, for by accepting your guiltlessness you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless and will not be. The future, in time, is always associated with expiation, and only guilt could induce a sense of a need for expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God as yours is therefore God's way of reminding you of His Son, and what he is in truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless he is eternal.

As we accept the Atonement, the correction of our error, we remember what it feels to be immortal as we are in Truth. In immortality, no past can exist and therefore no future is possible. Time ceases to be and vanishes from our sight. We remember the eternal moment forever with God.

10. You cannot dispel guilt by making it real, and then atoning for it. This is the ego's plan, which it offers instead of dispelling it. The ego believes in atonement through attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack is salvation. And you who cherish guilt must also believe it, for how else but by identifying with the ego could you hold dear what you do not want?

Still holding onto your guilt? Any thought as to why? It is not real. Two plans available to us here – one having to do with time and the other having to do with being immortal. Pick one and believe in it.

11. The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty, and this must increase the guilt, for guilt is the result of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there is no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real there is no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, He knows that this is true. And being true for you, you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt attack is impossible. You, then, are saved because God's Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable.

With ego, there is no escape from guilt. With Spirit, the Atonement is available to us. How would you like to see yourself – as a guiltless example of an ego – or as guiltless Son of God? Remember, besides being guiltless, we are also invulnerable.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section II. - The Guiltless Son of God

1. The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt you find it intolerable, since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that you cannot resist it. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, you cannot be you. Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind.

If you remember nothing else from this chapter, you shall remember that you are guiltless – you are the guiltless Son of God spoken of here. Guilt is important to ego, but means nothing to Spirit. Guild often appears as the leash ego has us on, forever pulling us back when we desire to run away fear. Ego would like us to feel as if we did not have guilt, we would not be – guilt is our nature.

2. Yet consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing it. You do experience the guilt, but you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate it with a weird assortment of "ego ideals," which the ego claims you have failed. Yet you have no idea that you are failing the Son of God by seeing him as guilty. Believing you are no longer you, you do not realize that you are failing yourself.

Here is a great example of how we appear as ego – we believe we can project guilt to someone else, thereby relieving ourselves of it, but we continue to retain the guilt we thought we gave away. Ego has us often believing that we are failing in this dream – no matter what we may be doing – the feeling of failure will often creep in and guilt of failure is present. We forget then that this is a dream – a nothing of illusions – there is nothing to fail and nothing is here.

3. The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God's Son by condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the ego's destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it. It does not know who the Son of God is because it is blind. Yet let it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it because it is afraid.

None of us wish to admit that we all have within us this 'dark cornerstone' of guilt, but we all do. We believe that somehow we have betrayed God and betrayed our brother as well. Some of us have even believed that Jesus suffered and died in an agony on the cross because of us. Some of us can look upon our brothers and only see them as separate, different individuals, many of who we fear and hate, but do not know why.

4. Much of the ego's strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do not attack are its "enemies" because, by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent position to let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone in the ego's foundation, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence depends on keeping this secret. So it is this secret that we must look upon, for the ego cannot protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is dispelled.

Are you ready this moment to look at what you have been hiding all this time? Are you ready to have that secret exposed and even possibly seen then for what it is in Truth? Are you ready to let go of ego thoughts and realize other thoughts from another Source are also present?

5. In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have crucified God's Son. You have not admitted to this "terrible" secret because you would still wish to crucify him if you could find him. Yet the wish has hidden him from you because it is very fearful, and so you are afraid to find him. You have handled this wish to kill yourself by not knowing who you are, and identifying with something else. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncovered its source. For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it you must believe its goal is yours.

Suppose that ego is still searching for Jesus because it knows that death did not end his existence? And suppose ego is using you to locate and discover Jesus. And yet something else within you has you fearful of finding Jesus because something else within you has you knowing that Jesus is One with you. And suppose that all this time you have been looking as ego, for Jesus out-there while all that time, Jesus has been within you – a place ego will not have you look. This is self-destructive behavior looking to find and then kill that which is within your being.

6. I have said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego. When it was confronted with the real guiltlessness of God's Son it did attempt to kill him, and the reason it gave was that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God. To the ego, the ego is God, and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder. You do not yet understand that any fear you may experience in connection with this course stems ultimately from this interpretation, but if you will consider your reactions to it you will become increasingly convinced that this is so.

The very first thing I noticed when I walked into my first Unity Center was the absence of a cross of any kind. The cross is a symbol of ego and its thinking that death is final. Those of us who have been brought up with a religious background such as Catholic, remember only too well how great emphasis was placed on the crucifix, and the agony, suffering and pain associated with it. So much so that 40 days was devoted to it, while only one Sunday was given to the message of the Crucifixion.

7. This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace. Yet you are afraid of it. You have been told again and again that it will set you free, yet you sometimes react as if it is trying to imprison you. You often dismiss it more readily than you dismiss the ego's thought system. To some extent, then, you must believe that by not learning the course you are protecting yourself. And you do not realize that it is only your guiltlessness that can protect you.

It is strange indeed to be told that we fear happiness and peace, the very experiences we so strongly seek. Reading this Course, listening to the dialogue it presents to you, allowing yourself to be guided by Spirit as you request – will have you experience the freedom that you are. As with everything in the world we make, we are not usually aware of its opposite until we question it – and such is the duality of this dream – everything has an opposite. We dream of prison so long that we fear the freedom that is ours. And our guilt are the bars we see before us holding us back from our Truth.

8. The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct if it is understood. Yet even when I interpret it for you, you may reject it and do not accept it for yourself. You have perhaps recognized the futility of the ego and its offerings, but though you do not want them, you may not yet look upon the alternative with gladness. In the extreme, you are afraid of redemption and you believe it will kill you. Make no mistake about the depth of this fear. For you believe that, in the presence of truth, you might turn on yourself and destroy yourself.

This shows me how deep are the fears of ego we have adopted as our way of life. We are so accustomed to them that we fear their opposites. We know them to be fears, but we are yet fearful to see beyond them.

9. Little child, this is not so. Your "guilty secret" is nothing, and if you will but bring it to the light, the light will dispel it. And then no dark cloud will remain between you and the remembrance of your Father, for you will remember His guiltless Son, who did not die because he is immortal. And you will see that you were redeemed with him, and have never been separated from him. In this understanding lies your remembering, for it is the recognition of love without fear. There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. For the redeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of God, and to recognize him is your redemption.

Note again, you are being called 'little child' – just so you do not forget. With the innocence of a child, bring that secret to the Light within you and there let it be shown to you for what it is – nothing. And with that knowledge you will again remember the Oneness you are with God. The Son of God – the Children of God are guilt-free for all eternity.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section III. - The Fear of Redemption

1. You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement. We have said that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it. Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. You could look even upon the ego's darkest cornerstone without fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption.

Read the last two line again and slowly, allowing the words to flow into your mind and there rest so that you can think them again and again. We believe so strongly in what we have made that we fear that which we have not. It is not just the fear of death but what is beyond death. And yet with the Atonement – the correction of error – we can die in our ego thinking and be re-born in our Truth.

2. Under the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed. You realize that, by removing the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer His Call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevent you from this. For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide.

And what is our re-birth but our acknowledgment of who we are in Truth – we remember God. And ego has based its existence on our forgetting the Truth. It has placed a myriad of fears before us in an attempt to block our vision. We appear often blind, but only we because we have not awaken. Within each of us is a link to God – the memory of what was and is before we began this dream. And that link is not breakable – it is eternity. We can deny Its existence; we can deny God, but denial is nothing but a fear spoken.

3. In honesty, is it not harder for you to say "I love" than "I hate"? You associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real power seems to you as your real weakness. For you could not control your joyous response to the call of love if you heard it, and the whole world you thought you made would vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded.

Truly, has it ever been difficult, if not seemingly impossible, to utter the words 'I love you' instead of simply blurting out some anger you have within you? We were taught that to show love is to show weakness but it is just the opposite, as is any teaching of ego. Love is the strength of All That Is. Hatred, fear is a nothingness presented to us as a substitute for Love – there is no substitute for Love and there is no opposite to Love. Only the strong of heart proclaim to another 'I love you'.

4. You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God's Presence, and you would save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid it would sweep you away from yourself and make you little, because you believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur. You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.

So how deep does one go until one sees a Light in the darkness? Perhaps one goes as deep as they can until they open their eyes and notice the Light? We are told again and again not to be attached to the world we make for it is but an illusion of our mind. In the Light of God, our world will no longer appear as it does – no longer seen in fear and darkness. We can project a variety of shades to attempt to hide the Light, but the Light within us forever burns brightly. The very essence of us is Love – is God – and the memory of Love is eternal.

5. You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love because you did not. You would rather be a slave of the crucifixion than a Son of God in redemption. Your individual death seems more valuable than your living oneness, for what is given you is not so dear as what you made. You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But hatred can, for it enters of its own volition and cares not for yours.

The first line is one of those stoppers: I can accept the insanity of the world because I made the insanity; but I cannot accept Love because I did not make Love. There is the whole philosophy of the ego, believe in only that which I have made for all else is false. Just the opposite is Truth of course. Nothing I have made is real and everything I am in Truth is. So perhaps one should ask themselves if they see themselves at the bottom of the cross looking away or do they see themselves moving the stone of the tomb and walking free?

6. You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation. In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion on which the others rest. For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied. Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God's Son.

For us to see beyond the illusions we see, to see them as to the nothingness they are, is the beginning of the destruction of the ego foundation everything we believed in is based. As we see each illusion as a nothing, another block is taken away. As that foundation is dismantled, we see another taking its place, one of Truth and Love. And if pain is felt, we know too, that is one of the illusions of the illusions. We think it painful to let go of what we believe in, and so we fear the loss, we delay the departure, we hang onto the cross for as long as we can.

7. And yet he is not crucified. Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.

And hanging on the cross, we find that the pain we felt is now the healing we require. Slowly we open our eyes and see we no longer hang from a cross we made, but are in the arms of Love. We surrender our pain, our suffering, our guilt and our fears to God and they are taken from us. And the thoughts we held of fear are now thoughts of love.

8. Beneath all the grandiosity you hold so dear is your real call for help. For you call for love to your Father as your Father calls you to Himself. In that place which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father, in loving remembrance of Him. You will find this place of truth as you see it in your brothers, for though they may deceive themselves, like you they long for the grandeur that is in them. And perceiving it you will welcome it, and it will be yours. For grandeur is the right of God's Son, and no illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he is. Only his love is real, and he will be content only with his reality.

Remember how we read of the grandiosity of ego and the grandeur of God? We are told again of this, perhaps so that we can once again accept the grandeur as our Truth. Why hide in grandiosity when we are in grandeur? Nothing can hide the magnificence of who we are.

9. Save him from his illusions that you may accept the magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or you will be hiding a dark place in your mind where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And thus you will exempt yourself from His healing power, for by not offering total love you will not be healed completely. Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome.

The 'him' of course is our brother – we must save him from his illusions as we save ourselves from ours, and together we share the Peace of God. Over and over a message is repeated to us – we do not do anything alone, for we are not the lone entity we believe we are. We are One with a brother and he is One with us. What we do for us, we do for them as well.

10. You who prefer separation to sanity cannot obtain it in your right mind. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it for the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father Who truly loved His Son. Therefore you made of Him an unloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father could give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his real Father, having attacked his own glorious equality with Him.

Once upon a moment, we thought we asked God if we could be different from God, and God responded with approval. Since that moment, we try to blame God on this dream we are having as a reality we believe in. But none of this happened – we only dreamt it did – we are the dreamer and this is our dream and God does not recognize what is not real, and neither should we. We must begin to accept responsibility for what we see before us, and be willing to seek guidance so that we may see it differently. The fear we have is of ourselves, but ego has us believing we fear God.

11. In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he demanded everything and found nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, except by departing in peace and returning to the Father? If the Son did not wish to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness where it can believe it is where it is not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet you demanded that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so.

First person:In peace I needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war I demanded everything and found nothing. How could the gentleness of love respond to my demands, except by departing in peace and returning to God. If I did not wish to remain in peace, I could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and I must seek a place of darkness where I can believe it is where I am not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet I demanded that it happen, and therefore I believe it happened.

12. To "single out" is to "make alone," and thus make lonely. God did not do this to you. Could He set you apart, knowing that your peace lies in His Oneness? He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having given you creation, He could not take it from you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer that would abide with you in your insanity. And this He did. No one who hears His answer but will give up insanity. For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane. But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there.

Again first person:To be 'single out' is to be 'make alone,' and thus made lonely. God did not do this to me. Could God, would God, set me apart, knowing that my peace lies in the Oneness of God? God denied me only my request for pain, for suffering is not a Creation of God. Having created me, God could not take God from me. God could but answer my insane request with a sane answer that would abide with me in my insanity. And this God did. Not one of us who hears the Answer of God but will give up insanity instantly. God's Answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which I can look back on those illusions and see them for the insanity they were. I will seek this place and I will find it, for Love is in me and will lead to that place.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section IV. - The Function of Time

1. And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. For this is a course on love, because it is about you. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and you have no function at all in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. As long as it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.

When you first began to read the Course, did you experience a fear? Do you still have a nagging of fear within you about the Course? It is so simply stated here that this is a Course about Love, about you and me and all of us. We have already been told in the Course that our function in this world of illusion is healing, and our function with God is creating. And we can never have enough reminders of that. And yet we have believed that our function in this world is destruction, and that God has forsaken us. Is our world where nothing lasts seen that way because we believe in destruction? The offerings of God we know of, but look at the offerings of ego – oblivion or hell.

2. Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. Your definition of Heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours. If their reality is questioned, you believe that yours is. For you believe that attack is your reality, and that your destruction is the final proof that you were right.

Many of us have been or even still are, in that thinking that what we think is right and the rest of the world is wrong. We have become so confused with insanity that we believe it to be sanity. We choose hell for Heaven because we believe it is so. We believe so strongly in the world we make – in the illusions we project – that we actually believe we can protect our world, and with protection comes attack on those who try to tell us we are wrong. We have made a world of duality, of right/wrong – of good/bad that we know nothing less.

3. Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you were wrong? While it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there was life, no one would claim that it proves there is life. Even the past life that death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and needs this to prove that it was at all. You question Heaven, but you do not question this. Yet you could heal and be healed if you did question it. And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.

How open can you get your mind to be? Is there such a thing as being more open? Only in the world of duality. In our reality of Truth, our mind is open to Truth and Truth alone. So we say to ourselves that we were wrong in our thinking in this world, and we think other thoughts. What could possibly happen to us for having these thoughts? Nothing more than we would begin to see our world in a Light of Love instead of a depth of darkness.

4. The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.

And so one of the greatest of obstacles is being presented to us – time. Ever think what life would be like without time? It's difficult to imagine because we are so invested in time. Time is like an idol we worship most of the time and swear at others. Time for the ego is all about what is called the past – the 'time' when we did something which we now project and call the future. Based on how the past is presented to us, the future is either dreaded or looked forward to. Ego says the past is meaningful, but something in us says the past never was. Ego says the future is yet to come, but something within us tells us that the future never is. Ego recognizes the present but only as a step from which to leap into the future. Something in us tells us to stay in the present where the past is not nor the future could be.

5. "Now" has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego's dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is. And you will receive messages from him out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now.

Perhaps one of the reasons we find it difficult to get into the moment – into the present – is because ego does not want us to be there and if allowed to go there at all, it is very brief, only long enough to have the past brought up and confuse in the present. We all know the term 'letting go' from many books and programs on our path. 'Letting go' is not to be tolerated by ego, for it sees 'letting go' as losing something, and ego attempts to hold onto everything. Actually, the world of ego would vanish if we could let go of all in it – and all in it is nothing. When we come upon a brother, we are shown him from thoughts of a past that never was – and of course, we fail to see in him that which we have within ourselves. Not only are we blinded by a past that never was, but we are also deaf from the past that never was. How can we hear the message a brother has for us if we have judged him from some past?

6. The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. They carry the spots of pain in your mind, directing you to attack in the present in retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is one of future pain. Unless you learn that past pain is an illusion, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the many opportunities you could find for release in the present. The ego would preserve your nightmares, and prevent you from awakening and understanding they are past. Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the encounter holy, would be excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself, and the encounter is holy because you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be, and the present is without meaning.

So we talked about 'letting go' and here we are told to do just that – to escape from past thoughts we carry with us. Why do you suppose we carry thoughts as a past with us as we try to journey being in the now? Could the pain we experience at time, be the burden of the past we drag behind us? The past is an illusion, so the future is an illusion as well. Would you prefer to see nightmares when dreams of love are available? And can you have a holy encounter if you see from the past? You would not meet yourself there for you do not see yourself now. The holy encounter is a meeting with a brother who is seen as you, and the Oneness is then seen as holy (whole). The present is not only with meaning, the present is All That Is.

7. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time's purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary. He regards the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. His emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time that can extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. It is in the reality of "now," without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only "now" is here, and only "now" presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found.

Time as seen by the Spirit within us, temporary and unnecessary, and is used solely for teaching purposes of Truth. Now, we are shown, is the closest we can come to experiencing the eternity we are. Now contains no past, no future and is All That Is. Eternity is similar to now, but beyond comprehension.

8. The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, under its direction, is the only purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. Its continuity, then, would keep you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you from it. It is His interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept, if you would share His goal of salvation for you.

Time as seen by ego, is its life-line. It is a necessity to ego for its existence. It is the way we can feel guilt over a past that never was or anxiety over a future that will never be. Authors like Dyer and Chopra and Tolle speak of the gap – the space between notes or words where the Presence rests. Such is the now. Ego would prefer we notice no gap, no space and simply go from past to future. If we ask – if we are willing – if we surrender time to God – it shall be interpreted for us.

9. You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time as one of healing, you will emphasize only the aspect of time in which healing can occur. Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. This interpretation ties the future to the present, and extends the present rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as destruction, you will lose sight of the present and hold on to the past to ensure a destructive future. And time will be as you interpret it, for of itself it is nothing.

Many years ago, I practiced Touch for Health – kinesiology – where I helped others in the release of a past they thought they had and was held in the cells of the body. In helping them release the past, a healing would occur to them by them but only in the present. Healing is of the now. Healing releases a future that will not be and simply extends that which is the now. As long as we continue to see our world, we shall view time as well. How we view time is a choice we must make always.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section V. - The Two Emotions

1. I have said you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights that are not seen, and sounds that are not heard. They make up a private world that cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them.

Once again a reminder of the two emotions – love and fear. One you are and one you believe you are. One is eternal and given and received, the other shared with no one but yourself. One has form, the other formless. One is sane and the other insane. One has you believe in Truth, while the other has you believe in a world that does not exist.

2. Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ. Yet the figures that he sees were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers, and do not include their reactions to him. Therefore, he does not see he made them, and that they are not whole. For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only.

First person: I see my world with figures from my past, and because my past is mine alone, the figures I see as not seen by others. The figures I see were never real because I made them from thoughts I held of my brother. Because they are thoughts, I really do not see them, and yet I believe they are whole. But there are no witnesses to my figures, for they are but thoughts within my mind.

3. It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer them. And no one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again have you attacked your brother, because you saw in him a shadow figure in your private world. And thus it is you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others you are literally attacking what is not there.

It is not strange that these figures we see only relate to the world we project, for they are no where else. And each image we see is a thought of a past and we judge that image accordingly. We were taught hate instead of love, discrimination instead of communion, separation instead of wholeness (holiness). We believe we attack these images, but we attack our own thoughts we hold.

4. The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything is disordered, and where what is within appears to be without. Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot recognize.

We are the delusional and we are destructive in our world because we don't see that we have condemned ourselves. We don't wish to die and yet we hang onto condemnation which is our death decree. We also separate ourselves from each other in our private worlds, where everything is seen by us as chaos and confusion; where that which we think we believe we see in our world. But what is within those worlds we make, we do not see – the brothers we see are but reflections of ourselves and yet we deny they exist.

5. You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where when it comes it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred as your brother, you are not seeing him. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw away from it. Yet fear attracts you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your brothers offer you, you do not see.

We have only two emotions, and in the world we make, we have confused love as fear, and fear as love. And in the confusion we learn to love fear, and fear love. Our world is filled with figures we believe are fear, and the love that is within each brother is not recognized as such.

6. As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. You see what is not there, and you hear what makes no sound. Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone.

When our eyes are truly open, we will see the insanity before us. But until we open them truly, we shall not really see. Instead we see what is not present and we hear where no sound is. We manifest our emotions in opposition to themselves. We communicate with no one for no one is there, and we feel isolated in a vast universe of nathingness. What we believe is reality is illusion. God calls to us and we do not hear because our own voice is never silent. And the vision of Christ is not seen for we know not where to look. A brother calls and we see but a figure. A brother stands before us and we see a body.

7. Little child, would you offer this to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you are offering it to Him. And He will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is unworthy of Him. Yet He would release you from it and set you free. His sane Answer tells you what you have offered yourself is not true, but His offering to you has never changed. You who know not what you do can learn what insanity is, and look beyond it. It is given you to learn how to deny insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace. You will see all that you denied in your brothers because you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing nigh unto them you will draw them to yourself, perceiving them as witnesses to the reality you share with God. I am with them as I am with you, and we will draw them from their private worlds, for as we are united so would we unite with them. The Father welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should offer Him. For every Son of God is given you to whom God gave Himself. And it is God Whom you must offer them, to recognize His gift to you.

Again we are called 'little child' and the words simply melt away the façade of who we think we are. If this world you see is so valuable to you, would you offer this world to God as a gift from you? If you surrender this world to God, God will show you a world of Love – of Truth. God will show you what eternity appears as – what Heaven is experienced as – what those memories long forgotten are holding. Now then as a brother appears before you, see in him the reflection of your Truth in him.

8. Vision depends on light. You cannot see in darkness. Yet in darkness, in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams although your eyes are closed. And it is here that what you see you made. But let the darkness go and all you made you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision. Yet from denying vision it does not follow you cannot see. But this is what denial does, for by it you accept insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your own perception. Yet for this, light must be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see.

Remember those nightmares as a child where Mom would come into the room and turn on the light – and the nightmare was no longer seen? This is how we are in the world we make with the illusions we believe in. We move around in darkness, never seeing what lies beyond. But if are brave enough to stand in the darkness and truly open our eyes, we shall see that Light is present and darkness does not exist. What we feared we did not see because we closed our eyes.

9. Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness, and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your "vision" comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees for you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them to you. He loves what He sees within you, and He would extend it. And He will not return unto the Father until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him.

The eyes that are spoken of are the eyes of the Christ Spirit within us – eyes that open when we seek a different way of seeing. We see through the physical eyes but not with them. We see from deep within us to the love present before us. And we know this sight is Truth and not the perception of ego.

10. You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father for you.

And for review, we have only two emotions – one we made and one given us. With each we see but in different manners. With fear we see darkness; with Love we see Light. With fear we see a brother as separate; with Love we see that brother as One with us. Love is the vision of who we are in Truth. Fear is a vision of an illusion we made while in a dream.

11. The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw the Son, they have risen in Him to the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him. In the sanity of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.

The Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – is the Light in which the Christ Spirit within is seen. And this Christ Spirit is the Light in which we are seen as the One That Is. This Christ Spirit shines upon our brother and we see him in his Truth, and we see One. And this Christ Spirit within each of us shows us wonders we had within but forgotten.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section VI. - Finding the Present

1. To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own. But for this no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for reality leaves no room for any error. This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him now. His past has no reality in the present, so you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also not there, and if it is to them that you react, you see but an image of him that you made and cherish instead of him. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. If you remember the past as you look upon your brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now.

In discussing the present, we talk about not seeing a past that never was and yet we believed in. We talk about a future that is based on the past, and neither happen. When we discuss the present we talk about 'seeing' without judgment for judgment is simply bring up the past. This then leaves us confused as to how do we 'see' what is before us? How do we see our brother if we don't view him from our past? We see him as a reflection of that which is within us – we see him without a veil in front of him. We see him in the Oneness we are.

2. You consider it "natural" to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to the past, either his or yours as you perceived it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness with you, and by holding it in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight.

We have been using the past as a reference point because we knew nothing else, or at least remembered nothing else to use. But they key here is 'to use' – What is there we must use to see the present? Nothing but the vision within us. And that vision is the Light within us. In the Light we see no darkness – in the Light we see no past nor future only the now. Some of us may cling to a past for what we believe it holds for us, but it holds nothing for nothing is there. We cling to nothing while the everything we seek is before us, hidden from our view by the darkness we see.

3. This darkness is in you. The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for He is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. For if He is as He was created, there is no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself. To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God's Son to you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there.

The darkness we see is the darkness we hold in our mind. The Christ Spirit within us shows us that nothing is in the darkness – no past exists. We have all heard the expression 'to be born again' – here we are told it means simply our letting the past go and seeing the present as it is without judgment – here everything is new as a birth. We all have seen the cartoon character who walks around with a dark cloud over him constantly – as funny as that looks, that's as funny as we look for we walk with the dark cloud over us. We walk around and fear leaving that cloud to blow away because behind that cloud is simply light – and light reveals what the darkness hid. The Light is Truth, and the darkness illusion.

4. Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. Past, present and future are not continuous, unless you force continuity on them. You can perceive them as continuous, and make them so for you. But do not be deceived, and then believe that this is how it is. For to believe reality is what you would have it be according to your use for it is delusional. You would destroy time's continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so you are aligning past and future, and not allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to free you to be born again.

Time can be used for worthwhile purposes as the Holy Spirit has told us. We can use time to imprison us. We can become captives to a past that never was or a future that will never be. We become so focused on those two illusions that we overlook the present. We have believed that the past simply flows into the present and then projects into the future – a continuous flow of time or so we believe. But time is an illusion we have been told. Is the present – the now – part of time? The past is part of time and yet does not exist; the future is of time and yet, it also does not exist. The present then is without a past or thought of future – so the now could be seen as not being part of time. How long can you be in the now before the thoughts come back into your mind of a past you believed in? The present we are told is the moment of eternity that is our true reality – the timeless moment of all eternity.

5. The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him. And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the present, and you will find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds.

The miracle of the moment allows you to see your brother without a past – yours or his, and so you see him as if just born – new without a story. We allow no thoughts of past illusions to cast a cloud over him. We see in the Light he is. His Truth is the present. And as we see him, we see ourselves.

6. Judgment and condemnation are behind you, and unless you bring them with you, you will see that you are free of them. Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true. All healing lies within it because its continuity is real. It extends to all aspects of the Sonship at the same time, and thus enables them to reach each other. The present is before time was, and will be when time is no more. In it are all things that are eternal, and they are one. Their continuity is timeless and their communication is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the past can separate, and it is nowhere.

Read this carefully and you will see that judgment and condemnation are something we often choose to carry along on our journey – to do so is a choice. If we but choose to let them go, they are gone. Without them, we can easily focus on the now – the present. In this moment of moments, all healing takes place – all thoughts of fear are released and replaced with thoughts of love. Before time was a thought, the present already was, and long after time is gone, the present will still be now. This is eternal continuity and cannot be broken into bits and pieces.

7. The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you with them, and free you from the past. Would you, then, hold the past against them? For if you do, you are choosing to remain in the darkness that is not there, and refusing to accept the light that is offered you. For the light of perfect vision is freely given as it is freely received, and can be accepted only without limit. In this one, still dimension of time that does not change, and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ and call His witnesses to shine on you because you called them forth. And they will not deny the truth in you, because you looked for it in them and found it there.

Within the now is the Christ Spirit you seek out-there. It is visible to you in the now in the face of your brother, who is seen now as the reflection of the Light you are. In the now, darkness is not seen for only love is real. And what you see in your brother, you see in yourself – this is the gift of now to both of you.

8. Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God's guiltless Son is only light. There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. Each voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of light. The holy light that shines forth from God's Son is the witness that his light is of his Father.

What does 'now is the time of salvation' mean to you? What are you being saved from? Only the illusion and chains of time that have held you in a past that never existed. In the now is the timelessness we seek – there we see as never before have we seen. We look out and see no darkness – no error – no sin – no judgment – no separation. What we see is the Oneness we are with All That Is. And we become witness to the Witness.

9. Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, for you will remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. Those whom you heal bear witness to your healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own. And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will return your thanks in His clear Answer to your call. For it can never be that His Son called upon Him and remained unanswered. His Call to you is but your call to Him. And in Him you are answered by His peace.

Look upon your brothers and in them see the memory of God return to you. And those whose call you hear for Love, you answer with Love, and in that moment, they are healed as are you. And peace is given to all of you.

10. Child of Light, you know not that the light is in you. Yet you will find it through its witnesses, for having given light to them they will return it. Each one you see in light brings your light closer to your awareness. Love always leads to love. The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you who gave them joy. They are your guides to joy, for having received it of you they would keep it. You have established them as guides to peace, for you have made it manifest in them. And seeing it, its beauty calls you home.

You didn't missed being called a child, did you? Just a gentle reminder. In our innocence we do not know what is within us, but by extending love to another, what is within us shall be revealed to us. Love always reflects love. Those who call for love because they forget what they have, and grateful for what we have given them, and they take it within. Those who call for love are as guides for us to the peace we seek. They remind us of what we are and what we have to give others. And their innocence beckons us to the memory of what we have forgotten.

11. There is a light that this world cannot give. Yet you can give it, as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father and His holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them.

There is one thing this world can not offer you – the Beacon of Light which shines within you. You can offer this Light to all you see, as it is offered, it is received. With this Light shining before you, you move from a world of illusion to a world of Truth – you move from a past you believe in to a present you already know. And all you seek is within this moment – this present – the now. There is nothing beyond the now for nothing else exists.

12. Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love of your free will, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who accept love of you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is they who hold it out to you. In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation because your eyes are closed. You do not see your brothers, and in the darkness you cannot look upon the light you gave to them.

In the darkness of this dream, our eyes may appear open but what can be seen in the darkness but darkness? With the eyes of the Christ Spirit within we see a Light and we are led to it. The Light comes from a brother and shines on the Light within us, and our Light shines as well. As Love is willingly offered, it is willingly received. As it is received and given, the illusion of the dream begins to vanish from our sight. And all that remains is the Light within us.

13. And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares, and have been faithful in your giving, for you were not alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world for you when you awake. In your name He has given for you, and given you the gifts He gave. God's Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous with his Father, he has no past apart from Him. So he has never ceased to be his Father's witness and his own. Although he slept, Christ's vision did not leave him. And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept.

So even though we believe we sleep and dream of illusion, our Truth, our Reality is ever present. Even in our sleep of darkness, the Christ Spirit within us continues It's beacon of Light so that others may see theirs also. Even in our sleep of separation, the Oneness of us continues. Even as we sleep and dream of past and future, only the present is now.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section VII. - Attainment of the Real World

1. Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

Can you do what is being asked of you? Can you sit and tell yourself that what you see is not real – that all of it is just an illusion – a thought within your mind? Can you see your world as meaningless to you?

2. The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal.

In our world of duality, everything is in two's – everything has an opposite, including the world we think we see. What we see before is an illusion, and what is beyond it is yet another world – a world of Reality. But we can only see one of them alone. Can you deny that which you think you see now for what is waiting for you to be seen? The power of this world is only that which you have given it – the Power of the other world is the Power within you.

3. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into another world.

This has proven to be a difficult paragraph for some students. Here we are told we really do not want what we think we see because what we think we see has constantly disappointed us since our first recollection. The houses we live in have never given us the security we have sought. And everything we have made in this world eventually ends – nothing lasts forever. We are told not to cling to this world for it is a short duration. We are also told that this world has no effect on the real world. And within this world we make, there is no highway away from it.

4. Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here, because you love it. And what you call with love will come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every part of this strange world you made but do not want. All that you need to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn the one you made is false.

Yet within us is a power greater than any we can imagine in this world we make – a power so strong that it constantly pulls us to the other world – the World of Love. And from that power within us, we call for Love and Love responds. In Its response we see a Light that shines away all darkness of the world we made.

5. You have been wrong about the world because you have misjudged yourself. From such a twisted reference point, what could you see? All seeing starts with the perceiver, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false he does not see. You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment enters reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is there but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.

Remember not to take offense at being told we are wrong, for error is easily corrected. No matter how we judged ourselves, it would be wrong, because to judge is not possible, therefore wrong. As long as we judge, we are blind to the Truth before us. And being blind we do not see the Christ Spirit in front of us and therefore do not see It within ourselves. That Spirit is forever there in the quiet presence and the quiet present – the now – and waits for us to drop our past and come into the present.

6. No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him. Yet while he still lays value on his own, he will deny the vision of the other, maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and following not the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! As you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. You wait but for yourself. To give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but your will. And Christ will always offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him.

We have all caught a glimpse of Truth somewhere in our life – just perhaps a fleeting moment of enlightenment or a feeling a peace that suddenly flowed over us. And yet we continued to hold this illusion dear to us and saw no other. We have perhaps been shown a different path many times, but never recognized them. As we let go of the past, the present presents us with a path leading us to where we never left – to where we forever have been. And from within comes a knowing that this path is true – and so the journey begins. As we show the willingness to begin, the Will of God becomes known to us and we drop the thought of being alone, for the separation is no longer a thought.

7. It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him and within him. He must deny the world of pain the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. And from this point of safety he looks quietly about him and recognizes that the world is one with him.

Nothing touches us but the Love of God, for nothing but the Love of God exists. In this Love we are eternal safe from all harm, from all pain, from all suffering, from all fear. Nothing exists that can disturb the peace we exist in. We gladly deny the world of illusion for the world of Love, and we see that world in the Oneness it is.

8. The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past. Yet here it is, and you can understand it now. God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns his Father's Love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of the one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it will fade. But this one thing is always yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your one reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him.

Without our belief in the existence of time, understanding is given us. Without a past, we are the moment – we are the now – where nothing exists but the eternal Truth. We are the eternal Truth.

9. You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all perception is. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.

You might look upon this as being 'trade-in time' – the moment we trade in thoughts of a past for only the now and therein experience the Peace of God that has forever been present with us. Here we trade dreams of fear for dreams of love which lead us to the wonders of knowledge. Love simply waits for us to welcome it within, not in time, but in the now. As we gladly accept what is being offered, we begin the awakening to what we have forgotten.

10. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son. Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity? In your world you do need things. It is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself because you are lacking. Yet can you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy Spirit the answer would be no. Yet because of Him the answer is a joyous yes! As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you. Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. Possession for its own sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches it builds to itself. And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.

We are grateful for the sanity we have as the Son of God. God knows that we need nothing, having given All That Is to us. Heaven in here and now – not then or later. In the world we make, we constantly believe we need anything – something – and yet nothing. We have the thoughts of lack where no lack exists. We drive ourselves to possessing anything just for the sake of possessing it, and yet how we possess what is but an illusion? To possess is a creed of ego – more is better and more is never enough. And yet what have all the possessions of ego done for anyone?

11. Everything the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For although the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation it sees separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore ask not of yourself what you need, for you do not know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you.

Here is a great example of the insanity of our world – of the insanity we have come to believe in and cherish. Ego tells us we need something and so we go and obtain that something and we then value it. But the something does not last, and it taken from us and we feel sad and at a lost. And then perhaps, we feel some guilt over not having it any longer. And then ego will tells us we need something else to replace that, and the cycle continues. In Truth we lack nothing, need nothing and have everything.

12. Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light. And what else could you need? In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it. And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have been fulfilled. Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.

Recall that we have been several times now that we know nothing. And we are coming to believe in that statement. Spirit knows what we need before we have the thought, and those are given us so nothing blocks our vision of Truth. And in this world we make, everything is temporary at best, and what is given us by Spirit shall remain with us as long as we have need of it. So knowing that, we should give no value to anything and everything we believe we have in this world. As long as we use what is given us to the benefit of others as well, we shall continue to have them. As long as we share with others what we have, we shall continue to have them.

13. Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to hurt you. Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. God's Son is not a traveller through outer worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.

And so we surrender to Spirit all the needs we believe we have and know what we do need will be given us. We stop saying we need this or that, and simply become aware of all that is given us. And what is given is to be shared. And with His Guidance, we shall be shown the path and know that the goal is certain. We do not travel on paths in illusionary worlds; we journey to where we have never left. We have within us no needs, no wants, no desires for anything as we have All That Is present with us. With that knowledge we see the Light within us shining in the peace we are, and its rays of light extending to all and beyond.

14. Whenever you are tempted to undertake a useless journey that would lead away from light, remember what you really want, and say:

The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? What need have I but to awake in Him?

How do you answer those questions to yourself? Where else could you go and what needs could you believe you have?

15. Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you safely through all dangers to your peace of mind this world may set before you. Kneel not before the altars to sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. Content yourself with what you will as surely keep, and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.

How beautiful and comforting it is to be told that we have undertaken a quiet journey to the peace we are. We gladly lay down our insanity for the choice of following Spirit knowing He leads in safety through any dangers we can imagine.

16. In me you have already overcome every temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. Hold me dear, for what except your brothers can you need? We will restore to you the peace of mind that we must find together. The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us and to yourself. This is the only real need to be fulfilled in time. Salvation from the world lies only here. My peace I give you. Take it of me in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to take away. And we will spread it like a veil of light across the world's sad face, in which we hide our brothers from the world, and it from them.

It is said of Jesus that he has shown us in his short life that every temptation has been overcome. There are none for us to conquer. It has all been done for us and yet we believe we must still overcome what we perceive we see. Everything has been done for us. What we must yet do is to see who it is before us. In them does our salvation rest – in them are we saved from ourselves. In them is the peace we seek. In them is the peace we are but have forgotten. In them is the light which will shine away all darkness. In them is our reflection of the Truth we are.

17. We cannot sing redemption's hymn alone. My task is not completed until I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet it is not mine, for as it is my gift to you, so was it the Father's gift to me, given me through His Spirit. The sound of it will banish sorrow from the mind of God's most holy Son, where it cannot abide. Healing in time is needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to remember you. Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity.

We cannot sing to God alone, for we are not alone. We sing to God as the Oneness we are with God. And the sound of our song shall banish all fear from every being imagined. Healing shall take place in the moment – the now. And the now is where we rest in the eternity we are, for no other time exists. And we see that we travel but only now. And we give thanks for the knowledge given us in the memory of what was forgotten. We see ourselves as we have been created by God – in the image and likeness of God.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section VIII. - From Perception to Knowledge

1. All healing is release from the past. That is why the Holy Spirit is the only Healer. He teaches that the past does not exist, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore no one in the world can know. It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows also it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all. It therefore does not consider where it is, because the concept "where" does not mean anything to it. It knows that it is everywhere, just as it has everything, and forever.

All healing is our release from a past that never was – this is simply saying that healing takes place when we change a thought of fear to a thought of love – when we change our thoughts of a past to thoughts of the present. And we do this with the help of Spirit for we are unable to do this alone. If we could, we would no longer be in this world we make. We would be as we have forever have been instead of being 'where' we believe we are.

2. The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. You are an aspect of knowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. All knowledge must be yours, for in you is all knowledge. Perception, at its loftiest, is never complete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. Yet no perception, however holy, will last forever.

Look closely at the difference between perception and knowledge, and you shall find yourself there. There is nothing partial about knowledge but perception is but fragmentation of thought. Every aspect of knowledge is whole and complete of itself, and every aspect of our Truth is whole and complete of Itself. Therefore we must be knowledge as well. In Heaven, no perception is required. In Heaven, All That Is, simply Is.

3. Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with knowledge, making transfer to it possible. Yet the last step must be taken by God, because the last step in your redemption, which seems to be in the future, was accomplished by God in your creation. The separation has not interrupted it. Creation cannot be interrupted. The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, is needful here. Aspects of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of unreality. Aspects of reality can be seen in everything and everywhere. Yet only God can gather them together, by crowning them as one with the final gift of eternity.

So we go from perfect perception to knowledge to Heaven. And again, as we have read prior in the Course, we read that the last step will be taken by God, must be taken by God, because the last step was already accomplished by God in our creation by God. The separation interrupted nothing, for the separation itself is nothing. And miracles are only needed in this dream, they are unknown in Heaven. Various aspects of reality are seen in everything and everywhere, if we but look for them. God will gather them together as our final gift of eternity, that which God accomplished at the time of our creation.

4. Apart from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no function. He is not separate from Either, being in the Mind of Both, and knowing that Mind is One. He is a Thought of God, and God has given Him to you because He has no Thoughts He does not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and that is why Christ's vision looks on everything with love. Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. The golden aspects of reality that spring to light under His loving gaze are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them.

Besides us and God, the Holy Spirit has no other function. For God, It is the Voice of God. For us, It is our Guide, our Comforter, our Spiritual Eyes and Ears. With It we speak and hear Truth. Spirit is not separate from us and we are not separate from It or God – we are One. Spirit uses our illusion of time as It deems best. If the Christ Vision is not the Reality of Spirit, then Heaven must be.

5. This is the miracle of creation; that it is one forever. Every miracle you offer to the Son of God is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspect is the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is the same, perceived in the same light and therefore one. Everyone seen without the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and enabling the world to see. For light must come into the darkened world to make Christ's vision possible even here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet sight that makes them one.

Each and every time we offer love to a brother, we offer love to all brothers, and to God as well, for we are all One. Each time we see a brother without a past, we see a brother as One with us. Each time we see a brother without a past, we see a Light in the world of darkness and the darkness is no longer seen.

6. They are all the same; all beautiful and equal in their holiness. And He will offer them unto His Father as they were offered unto Him. There is one miracle, as there is one reality. And every miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the one reality of God. The only miracle that ever was is God's most holy Son, created in the one reality that is his Father. Christ's vision is His gift to you. His Being is His Father's gift to Him.

We are all the same; all beautiful and equal in our holiness (wholeness). And Spirit will offer us to God as we offered ourselves to Spirit. Every time we change a thought of fear to one of love, we have a miracle. Every time we see a brother without a past, we have a miracle. Every time Love is seen, we have a miracle. And we are the only miracle being the Son of God, being created in the image and likeness of our Creator.

7. Be you content with healing, for Christ's gift you can bestow, and your Father's gift you cannot lose. Offer Christ's gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles, offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, attune you to reality. The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you and where to find them. Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it and all of it need only realize that it is of the Father, not of you. Your role in the redemption leads you to it by re-establishing its oneness in your mind.

Isn't it beautiful – we can give Love and yet never has any less Love? As we extend Love to all we see – no exceptions, no conditions – we begin see our Reality – our Truth. The knowledge within me is not my concern, for I know It is there. I am a part and yet the wholeness (holiness) of knowledge. The knowledge within is God – the Presence of All That Is. Through my Truth, through your Truth, we once again unite in the Oneness of God.

8. When you have seen your brothers as yourself you will be released to knowledge, having learned to free yourself through Him Who knows of freedom. Unite with me under the holy banner of His teaching, and as we grow in strength the power of God's Son will move in us, and we will leave no one untouched and no one left alone. And suddenly time will be over, and we will all unite in the eternity of God the Father. The holy light you saw outside yourself, in every miracle you offered to your brothers, will be returned to you. And knowing that the light is in you, your creations will be there with you, as you are in your Father.

As I seek help from Spirit to see my brother in the Truth we are, I am made open to the knowledge within me. I am One with my brother, and he with me. Together we move through this dream seeing the Oneness in everyone we see. The Light within us shines on them as well so that their Light may also be seen.

9. As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven. You are the witness to the Fatherhood of God, and He has given you the power to create the witnesses to yours, which is as His. Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven. The miracle that God created is perfect, as are the miracles that you established in His Name. They need no healing, nor do you, when you accept them.

We are that miracle God created perfect – we are that which we speak of – you, me, all of us – we are the Son of God created in God's image and likeness. As we look upon and see with each one the reflection of our Perfection, we see no need for healing for we are perfect and whole (holy).

10. Yet in this world your perfection is unwitnessed. God knows it, but you do not, and so you do not share His witness to it. Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality is witnessed to as one. God waits your witness to His Son and to Himself. The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him. They witness to what you do not know, and as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. For never would He leave His Own beloved Son outside them, and beyond Himself.

This world we make, this world we see is what we call reality – we say it is real, but we know within our core that what we see is not real. Illusions are everywhere, and include us. When others see us as the illusion we are, the Perfection that is us in Truth is not visible. If we see a brother as a separate being, but change our thought of him and see him in his Truth, God rejoices at the miracle we have just performed. And God is pleased. If God is pleased with the miracles we have happened, why are we not as happy?

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section IX. - The Cloud of Guilt

1. Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon His Son. The guilty always condemn, and having done so they will still condemn, linking the future to the past as is the ego's law. Fidelity to this law lets no light in, for it demands fidelity to darkness and forbids awakening. The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore give no obedience to its laws, for they are laws of punishment. And those who follow them believe that they are guilty, and so they must condemn. Between the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you would free yourself. Atonement stands between them, like a lamp shining so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you bound yourself will disappear.

Guilt, we read, is the only shroud over our eyes preventing us from seeing God – preventing us from seeing our brother as he is in Truth. As long as we judge him, we continue with our guilt. As long we judge him, we keep him and ourselves in the darkness of fear. The laws of ego are strict indeed, and punishment is severe for any breaches. We are banished into the darkness and therein sit in the blackness of fear. But because we made this a dualistic world, there is an alternative to darkness. There is an alternative to ego that we can listen to instead. And the Laws of God are shown in the eternal Light of Love. And in Light, no darkness is thought of.

2. Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing. Make no one fearful, for his guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego's harsh commandments you bring its condemnation on yourself, and you will not escape the punishment it offers those who obey it. The ego rewards fidelity to it with pain, for faith in it is pain. And faith can be rewarded only in terms of the belief in which the faith was placed. Faith makes the power of belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. For faith is always given what is treasured, and what is treasured is returned to you.

Perhaps we forget, but we made the guilt we wear so well. And being its maker, we can release it and replace it with Love. A correction of a thought – Atonement – is all we need to do. In that moment, we stop condemning ourselves and begin loving; instead of accepting punishment, we accept Love. We replace the pain ego offered us with the faith of God within us. With that faith, comes the peace we seek.

3. The world can give you only what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it has no meaning apart from what you found in it and placed your faith in. Be faithful unto darkness and you will not see, because your faith will be rewarded as you gave it. You will accept your treasure, and if you place your faith in the past, the future will be like it. Whatever you hold dear you think is yours. The power of your valuing will make it so.

Early on in the Course, we read that the world we see is the world we make. Here is the same message repeated so that we absorb it deeper. The world we make can only give that which we give the world. If we were to give this world Love, then the world would give Love as well. If we saw the world in darkness of fear, then that is how the world would be – dark and fearful. But if we instead, gave the world Love, then the darkness disappears and the Light is shown to all. Which do you value more – darkness or Light?

4. Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish, for it is the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the false and the true, which you have accepted into your mind without distinction. Therefore you cannot value one without the other, and guilt has become as true for you as innocence. You do not believe the Son of God is guiltless because you see the past, and see him not. When you condemn a brother you are saying, "I who was guilty choose to remain so." You have denied his freedom, and by so doing you have denied the witness unto yours. You could as easily have freed him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him to it. And in his freedom would have been your own.

Many times we have to pause and re-evaluate all that we see in our world, and we can get help in this area by asking Spirit to see differently. With the help of Spirit we will be shown what we have given value to is an illusion, and by changing our thought, the illusion vanishes and Love is seen in its place. With Spirit we see that the past we hand onto so tightly never was and the future we so look forward will never be. We are frightened by this thought for but a moment, but then we see that this moment is the moment we were looking for – this is the now of eternity – our eternity. Now we see our brother as he is in the Truth we also are, and we see that he is free from all past we had of him, and we, too, are free of ours.

5. Lay not his guilt upon him, for his guilt lies in his secret thought that he has done this unto you. Would you, then, teach him he is right in his delusion? The idea that the guiltless Son of God can attack himself and make himself guilty is insane. In any form, in anyone, believe this not. For sin and condemnation are the same, and the belief in one is faith in the other, calling for punishment instead of love. Nothing can justify insanity, and to call for punishment upon yourself must be insane.

Nothing can justify insanity, nothing can justify the belief system of the ego we have believe in. The system that gives us suffering, pain, anger, and guilt to name a few of the many fears. We – our brother and us – are as guiltless as we were created by God. What God has created will never change. Why choose to follow sin and condemnation when love and peace are an option?

6. See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you. Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part. Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it is there until it is undone. Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. With everyone whom you release from guilt great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice.

For those of you who have the beautiful experience of 12-step programs, remember when you first started? Remember how you watched yourself as you regain your power minute by minute, and then hour by hour, then day by day to week to month to year? Recall the pride you had and the confidence that built within you when you accepted a medallion as a token of your achievements? Dropping judgment is the same practice. We admit we are powerless over judgment of others, and we begin to reclaim our power to see others in the Truth they are. And as we see them, we begin to see ourselves as well. And we will slip now and then, but we have had the experience of what it is to be guiltless – to be judgment free, and that feeling continues to drive us to the freedom we are after.

7. Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.

This reminds me of how we place a piece of material over the cage of a bird so it is quiet and sleeps. Have we also done the same to ourselves – we have place a shroud over the prison we made and there we sit in the darkness fearful and guilty and yet not really sure why. We can lift that shroud so that we can see the cage is not real, nor is the darkness. With the shroud gone, the Light is present and so are we.

8. Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.

Perhaps this is the reason some of us have difficult meditating, because as ego, we fear to look within because we believe that only darkness is there. Instead we look at our brothers and see in them the guilt we hold. Is this blindness that can be corrected by us believing we can see within, and there we see the Light of God shining brightly and beckoning us. And we see that same Light in our brother. When we see Light, it is not possible to see darkness. When we see Light we see our Truth, as well as the Truth of our brother. In Light we see; in darkness we believe we are blind.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section X. - Release from Guilt

1. You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt, from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful. You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of "sources," provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.

Where does the mind see the source of pain? In the body, not in the mind. We always speak of pain and the body, and yet only the mind holds a thought. Seeing the body has us believing in guilt as well. When we discover that guilt too, is but a thought in the mind, then we begin to question the belief system we have.

2. Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.

True relationships are seen in Truth, in the Oneness we are. We see in them no separation, no difference and no fears. Within them is sanity seen as well. Opposite of this is the relationship founded on guilt in which only insanity is seen. These relationships show us separation and differences between all. Remember the section of Holy Relationships – those relationships we offered to Spirit? This is where we use what we learned from that. In offering insane relationships to Spirit, we surrender that we know nothing of. Once we have released those relationships, they will be shown to us as they are without fear – without guilt, shame, blame and anger. They will be seen as relationships where Love is shared and all are equal.

3. In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.

Ever been in a relationship where guilt was present? Was it a happy relationship? Was it one of Love and Trust? Or was it one of depression, anger, blame, and fear? And was it one where one of you tried to take your guilt and give it to someone else, only to discover you still had it, and it was driving you more insane?

4. When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to "solve" the past, and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?

Perhaps nothing new is being given us here, but yet, another way to see what we are beginning to know as true. Any guilt we feel is not from the present nor a future, but only from a past we imagined. Now that should waken you just a bit more. The guilt you feel is from a past that never was. The guilt you feel is not from the present. If you feel guilt now it is only because you are choosing to live in a past that isn't there. What lies within you is the present and only the present. But we do not use what we have within, but choose to use what never was to see our brother, and therefore ourselves as well.

5. Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.

Choose to be not as you imagined you were, but choose to be as you are in the present. Use a relationship with your brother to affirm your presence and his presence in the now. And look at the statement that a minute or less is enough to free us from a past we imagined and give us the peace we are – a minute or less. Can you spare that much time for you?

6. As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

As long as we have but a speck of guilt in our mind, we are not able to travel that journey within us – we have blocked ourselves from peace. If we but hold one tiny thought that guilt is justified, that it has a purpose, we cannot enter. When we totally accept the insanity of guilt, and that we no longer believe in insanity, the doors for within shall be open and we can enter. The Atonement – the correction of error – the change of thought is like a key to the door.

7. The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. What He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.

It is not Spirit Who holds the thoughts of fear in our mind, but only us. Spirit takes those thoughts, shows us the insanity of them, and them shows them to us in the Light It is. Our Reality is Love, no guilt. Spirit sees no separation, and we will also be shown the same. Spirit teaches healing of our mind, and from Him we shall learn.

8. Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.

Spirit has taught us to heal and now we shall heal what we believe we have – guilt. We feel lost in a darkness where nighttime looks like day. We are wandering around in the black of illusions hoping to find some release. We feel pain from some source and yet do not see the source. When we tire of this charade of ego, we pause and notice a glimmer of light shining from within us – the very spot ego has been leading us from. And following the light inward, we discover a radiance, a brilliance beyond our imagination. What we see is not imagined. What we see is our Truth and we are in awe of our own Truth. We see no fear – no guilt – present in the here and now, only Love. And we feel a peace that we recognize as sanity instead of the turmoil we lived in insanity.

9. You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father's Love. And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him. Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep from you what Christ would have you see. His Will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every child of God, as He would have you do.

Perhaps they may be some of us who must turn our eyes away from the beauty and brilliance before us, for we believe this is not real, at least for us. This beauty and brilliance has us beginning to remember what we have long ago forgotten. But as the memory begins to trickle back to a mind that held guilt, we begin to see ourselves and our brother in a Light that is beyond description. We see within our brother a reflection of the beacon shining within us. In that reflection we see the face of the Christ Spirit in each of us, and we flow together as One.

10. Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. And as His Son loves Him. There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. You cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would remove only illusions. All else He would have you see. And in Christ's vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God's Son.

As you peer within you, you are releasing the insane system of thought you believe in, with it, goes the guilt you carried as well. All the fears of that system flow past you now. And you feel the Love of God as you remembered that Love, and you know you Love God as God loves you. That Love is One.

11. You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God's Sons unless you love them all and equally. Love is not special. If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal. You can love only as God loves. Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon himself. To him I say:

Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still.In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him.

Remember once again the section on special relationships? We cannot enter any relationship unless we love all others with the unconditional love we have within us, our essence. This means that no one individual can be excluded – all must be seen as the Oneness we are. We can only love as God loves us – anything less is not love. There exists no other love. To love as God loves does not allow for judgment of a brother, seeing one as guilty, seeing one as sick. Behold your brother and look upon him and his Truth and be still a moment. In that silence see his holiness (wholeness) and thank God that no guilt has ever touched him. And then know that as you see your brother, you also see yourself.

12. No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together and love him. For in love of him is your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.

No matter what ever thought we held about a brother, nothing has ever touched that which he is, nor can anything ever touch that. His purity, his innocence, his wholeness (holiness), his perfection can not be marred by guilt or fear of any sort. See your brother as One with you. See in him the guiltlessness you are as well. I thank God for the purity of my brother who God has created guiltless forever.

13. Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give my Father. My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that is of God.

What you treasure in Truth is what holds your faith and beliefs. This is one of those paragraphs where I feel you can read it as if you were saying it first person. The 'I' here is you and the 'you' is us. Try reading it like that and allow the feeling to flow through you.

14. Praise be to you who make the Father One with His Own Son. Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think of it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never more be what it was. Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of you. United in this praise we stand before the gates of Heaven where we will surely enter in our sinlessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lack faith in you and love Him perfectly?

Give yourself a hug for embracing your brother as being One with you; for seeing them as the Wholeness (holiness) we are. Together we are a Light of lights, shining a brilliance beyond imagination. Separated we are not but an unseen spark trying to glow in an ever-darkening darkness. Seeing the Oneness in each other has us experiencing this life to its fullest – everything we feel, we feel to the maximum. And we know that we all stand before God in guiltlessness and sinlessness. The gates of Heaven are wide open just such and entrance.

Chapter 13.

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

Section XI. - The Peace of Heaven

1. Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the ego's best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real. Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles if he himself perceives them as wholly without meaning.

Ego offers us forgetfulness, sleep and death as devices for dealing with guilt. Spirit offers us peace. Did you ever stop just once and think that if you did not believe in the conflict you think you see, that the conflict would then not be experienced? As long as we believe we are in war, we will believe in destruction and guilt. But if we see these battles as battles with ourselves, we see then that no meaning can be seen in them.

2. God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy" is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or will be. The war, the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.

Who could God have us do battle with, if we are but as One? Who is there here to wage a war against? The 'enemy' is me and the battle is useless at best. Even as ego, I look upon the war with me, and ask who can possibly win – me or me? But the war is over because the reason has been forgotten. And everywhere we look everything is returned to as it was before the battle. What destruction we think we saw never was. What past we believe happened never did.

3. When we are all united in Heaven, you will value nothing that you value here. For nothing that you value here do you value wholly, and so you do not value it at all. Value is where God placed it, and the value of what God esteems cannot be judged, for it has been established. It is wholly of value. It can merely be appreciated or not. To value it partially is not to know its value. In Heaven is everything God values, and nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth one response. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is.

And when is the time we unite in Heaven? Could it be as simple as right now – the present? The moment when we see the Oneness we are and value nothing of the world we made? Heaven is what Gold values, and does God not value the Oneness of us? Heaven is here and now, not there or there. No darkness is present, only light. No contrast is seen for no opposite is there for love.

4. Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared. Perfect perception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly shared. It can also show you the results of sharing, while you still remember the results of not sharing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference for you, allowing Him to demonstrate which must be true. He has perfect faith in your final judgment, because He knows that He will make it for you. To doubt this would be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. How is this possible, when His mission is of God?

Nothing of this world can give us the peace we seek, but what is not of this world is the peace we seek. Perfect perception – the perception of the Christ Spirit within us shows such peace to us. Spirit shows us the contrast and shows how to choose between the two. One peace is shown to us, nothing else is attractive. Once peace is remembered, nothing else is desired.

5. You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon himself. It is impossible that this mission fail. Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit's Voice may be, whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God's Will is done. You will find the peace in which He has established you, because He does not change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.

Very early in the Course, we read that God gave us Spirit as Its Link. With that Link, we are never to be alone, and from that Link we would be shown our Truth and we would recognize our Truth. What God has set forth no only will be but already is. Regardless of how we think we hear Spirit communicating with us, no matter what we believe we hear, no matter what attention we give this advice, we know that the Will of God is at work in us. We will locate the peace within us. We will be shown our Truth.

6. You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek. When you have learned this, you will find the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear. Truth comes of its own will unto its own. When you have learned that you belong to truth, it will flow lightly over you without a difference of any kind. For you will need no contrast to help you realize that this is what you want, and only this. Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. The Will of God can fail in nothing.

A description of Heaven could not be told, for Heaven Is. There is no contrast in Heaven for there exists no opposites. Only in this world we make of duality is there a need of contrast, of opposites. They are here as teaching aids for us and through them we shall discover once again the Truth within us. Once discovered, we have no further need for contrast, for opposites. Once discovered, Heaven is now – this moment – the present.

7. Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you from it, or it from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity because insanity is not the Will of God. If that suffices Him, it is enough for you. You will not keep what God would have removed, because it breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate. His Voice will be heard.

And all it takes from us is faith – faith is who we know we are. The Will of God has us in Heaven, and there we shall forever be. In our wildest imagination, we can believe differently, but nothing will have changed. Nothing is in opposition to the Will of God. Spirit shall restore our sanity for the insanity we held. What God has willed for us is All That Is.

8. The Communication Link that God Himself placed within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken. You may believe you want It broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known. Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him. Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from Him Whose Will is peace. You have it now. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it, and by extending it, to learn that it is in you. God willed you Heaven, and will always will you nothing else. The Holy Spirit knows only of His Will. There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is.

There may have been times in your dream when you wanted to disconnect from God because you felt that Spirit was interfering in the choices you were trying to make. But what has been given cannot be changed. Spirit is with us throughout this dream. It is the other part of the split mind we believe we have. We cannot believe in one part without acknowledging the other. Spirit is a channel to God – a link that eternally unites us with our Truth. It is our life-line that prevents from simply drifting out into a sea of darkness with no hope of discovery. With the Presence of Spirit within us, we have always a place to rest from the chaos we see ourselves in. We go there and listen in the silence for instructions. This is a place where ego will never enter for it is a place of light and love. Here we experience the Will of God and we experience the Oneness of the Will.

9. You will learn salvation because you will learn how to save. It will not be possible to exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wants to teach you. Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbs the mind of God's sleeping Son holds no power over him. He will learn the lesson of awaking. God watches over him and light surrounds him.

From Spirit we shall learn how to save because we believe in this dream that we must be saved. It is impossible not to have the teachings of Spirit given us – they are the Will of God. However we can deny them, refuse to accept them, only to have them presented to us again and again, until we accept them as the Love they are. How comforting it is to read even the darkest nightmare holds no power over us – even this dream we believe in has no power over us – it is all illusion. And we shall awake not in darkness but in the Light we are.

10. Can God's Son lose himself in dreams, when God has placed within him the glad Call to waken and be glad? He cannot separate himself from what is in him. His sleep will not withstand the Call to wake. The mission of redemption will be fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity. You do not have to know that Heaven is yours to make it so. It is so. Yet to know it, the Will of God must be accepted as your will.

We cannot lose ourselves in this dream we make because God has placed within us the ever-sounding call for waking – the Holy Spirit. We cannot separate ourselves from That which is within, when That holds our Truth. Even in our sleep, we hear the call for waking. We have no way of knowing that Heaven in ours in this dream, but all we are to do is just accept the Will of God as our will.

11. The Holy Spirit will undo for you everything you have learned that teaches that what is not true must be reconciled with truth. This is the reconciliation the ego would substitute for your reconciliation to sanity and to peace. The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of reconciliation in His Mind for you, and one He will effect as surely as the ego will not effect what it attempts. Failure is of the ego, not of God. From Him you cannot wander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers to everyone, for the salvation of everyone, will not be perfectly accomplished. You will be released, and you will not remember anything you made that was not created for you and by you in return. For how can you remember what was never true, or not remember what has always been? It is this reconciliation with truth, and only truth, in which the peace of Heaven lies.

Once we offer to Spirit, Spirit will undo all that we have learned in this dream. He will change those thoughts of fear to thoughts of Love. He will show us the fear we believed in is nothing but an illusion we thought within a mind that we saw as split between opposing views. Only ego fails, Spirit never. What is of God cannot fail. As we surrender to Spirit all that we cherished here in this dream, we will quickly forget the illusions we valued and see only the Love present. We cannot remember that which never was, only that which is.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Introduction

1. Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them, and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and only truth.

And now we shall focus on learning our Truth – remembering what we have forgotten once. It is always comforting to read how blessed we are and yet after reading, we go back to forgetting that. We have read a lot about the so-called logic of ego and have been shown examples. Now we are open and receptive to classes held by Spirit, and the classes could be listed simply as "Truth".

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section I. - The Conditions of Learning

1. If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless, and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away? That is why miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, unknown to you, unless you do what you would have to do if it had been done for you?

We are blessed but we forget it as quickly as we think it. So Spirit will have learn it again. How many times have you said or even thought to another – 'Oh, bless you' and then realize that if that be so, you also must have the blessing within you? We know by now that in order to give, we must have it to give. In having it, we accept it gladly. A miracle – a change of thought from fear to love – offers us the truth of our being blessed, for to correct a thought of fear is a blessing of itself. And if you can see that, then you can also see how blessed you are that you can forgive yourself those thoughts of fear you held. How blessed we are to know that we are guiltless.

2. Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if you realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.

Ever think of denial as a decision not to know, and yet how simple that sounds. To deny anything is but to affirm its existence. The logic of this dream of illusion has to be seen as nothing because illusions are nothing. To focus on the nothing will have you circling your mind endlessly. But in Truth, you are the Everything, you are All That Is, and denial of that keeps you in darkness while Light is only present.

3. Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.

We see always outward, but we always look within. If our thoughts were just ours, our world would forever be dark. But the thoughts we hold in our minds are held in the minds of all others as well. There is but One Thought and we are It. And that thought is shared with God. But we have other thoughts as well – thoughts we have made by ourselves and have believe in them alone. These thoughts God does not think, for they are within this illusion and God does not see this illusion. Those thoughts, those beliefs we have about what we believe we see can be surrendered by us but never taken from us.

4. Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father does not share with you. You have set yourself the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do.

Any direction that we head in that is not lead by Spirit, will lead us nowhere. Any truth we deny is denying ourselves and denying God. When we ask Spirit for lessons in undoing denial, we are taught our Truth. Read again the line that tells us that we were created to create, not to see or do. To see or do are not expressions of our desire to create – to experience the Will of God. We cannot share what we do not have in Truth, and soon we will begin to believe this about yourself.

5. The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your mind, cannot see through it. It deceives you, because you chose to deceive yourself. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seem to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

About here is where ego will be roaring – what do you mean I cannot learn? And yet we have come far enough in the Course to remember the many times we have repeated what sounds so insane at time "I do not know..." Is it that we cannot learn because we know All That Is? We find it difficult to comprehend that the mind we use holds thoughts of nothing in it. And we are reminded here of another fact – we choose everything we believe – we choose to deceive ourselves. If we so choose, we can choose again the opposite of what we had believed.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section II. - The Happy Learner

1. The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the "treasure" that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

So one might say that the first two 'lessons' by Spirit are: to realize that we are happy in Truth, and that we have given value to nothing and then believed that nothing has value. We have become so confused in our thinking that we actually believe misery is happiness – even that love is fear. And as a continuance of the confusion, we believe that the illusions we see have value to them – value that we have given them – and therefore we believe that nothing has great importance to us. And so we begin to see clearer the insanity of our thinking.

2. The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

So now that Spirit has shown us that He knows us better than we know ourselves, He begins with a 'fundamental' lesson for us. Being fundamental we expect the lesson to indeed by simple and easy. The fundamental lesson offered to us by Spirit is that truth is true. Simple in its statement but how many of you attached yourself to it on the first reading? And the second part of that lesson by Spirit is that it is only lesson we will ever learn. Why is it so difficult for us to grasp – Truth is true? It is because we have a most twisted system of thinking – we have come to believe that Truth is false and false is Truth. We have twisted everything before us until we have come to a point where we do not know what anything is any more – the perfect spot for us to learn again that Truth is true. Now we are open to this simple teaching – now we are ready to accept its simple meaning. Nothing is more simple in our life nor have more meaning than 'Truth is true'. Perhaps the reason we are confused about happiness is because we are confused about Truth.

3. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.

Truth is true and nothing else is, nothing else matters but Truth. We have placed our Faith in nothing instead of place it in Truth, which is everything. We have but to surrender our faith in nothing to the Holy Spirit, and He shall take if from us and place in the Truth. No deception is held in Truth, only Love. No darkness is seen within Truth, only Light. And we shall grasp Truth as if for a first time and bask in its radiance. We shall come to love Truth because we shall understand it in all Its simplicity.

4. Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see. They will be happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.

God is the Truth that is true, and only That Which is True is Truth. Spirit lights up the darkness with the lamp of Truth. And as that light glows, we see our light within glowing as well, and then the lights of all we see are glowing, and the many lights become One Light – One Truth. Within this Light is our happiness, and we gladly lay down our misery for happiness. The 'heavy chains' are seen as mere nothings and vanish from our sight. And then we see before us students and teachers, teachers and students – almost impossible to tell the difference. Hawkins tells us that we are a teacher to the one behind and a student to the one before us.

5. When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be a happy learner. You will never learn how to make nothing everything. Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. I said before, "Be not content with nothing," for you have believed that nothing could content you. It is not so.

Whenever we teach another, we learn that teaching as well. As we show another how simple it is to learn that Truth is true, we see how easy it also. And in this ease, we find great happiness. And being happy, we see how miserable we became trying to make nothing everything. This was our goal, and yet we never even came close to reaching it – because now we see that it is not possible – it is not Truth. How foolish we look as we recall those times when we tried so desperately to be content with nothing.

6. If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true. For what is builded there is true, and built on truth. The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back.

So let's focus on being a happy learner again. To be that, we must surrender everything – this includes all the nothings of value – to Spirit so that those thoughts can be corrected to Truth. But the key word here is 'everything' we are to hold back nothing literally. And as the doors of Truth open before us, we shall walk through and never look back at what never was.

7. The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom for you. For truth is true. What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is locked forever. You made this door of nothing, and behind it is nothing. The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light. For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep of darkness.

Ever had the thought – the dream – of you standing before the huge, mammoth door behind which you that Heaven is? But you feel so isolated, so lost, so separated, so guilty, ashamed, so miserable as the sinner you know you are, that you also know that the door will never open for you? You may even believe you see others enter, but never you. Such is the door of darkness is spoken of here. But here we are told, we learn, that the door is nothing made of nothing and that if we see that Truth is true, we can see easily beyond the image of the door to Light beckoning us there. Walk to the light not in sleep but as being awake – as knowing that Truth is true.

8. Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep. The vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. Where everything is clear, it is all holy. The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. For there is nothing else. God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything. Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?

See your brothers in their freedom of Truth and learn from them your freedom as well. The light in you shines upon them to reveal their light as well. See reflected in them, that which is in you. When the darkness disappears, and all is clearly seen, all is seen as the wholeness (holiness) it is. The simplicity of accepting "Truth is true" is received in the quietness of That Which Is Within. We accept the Truth knowing nothing else exists – the Truth is true and in that we rejoice as the Oneness we are.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section III. - The Decision for Guiltlessness

1. The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning. This is so essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns easily because his thoughts are free. Yet this entails the recognition that guilt is interference, not salvation, and serves no useful function at all.

We are not guilty about remembering what we have forgotten, instead we are happy to know again our Truth. Being in a guiltless world, we experience the freedom that is ours.

2. Perhaps you are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of guilt, and do not look upon it as having value in itself. You believe that guilt and guiltlessness are both of value, each representing an escape from what the other does not offer you. You do not want either alone, for without both you do not see yourself as whole and therefore happy. Yet you are whole only in your guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness can you be happy. There is no conflict here. To wish for guilt in any way, in any form, will lose appreciation of the value of your guiltlessness, and push it from your sight.

Is there ever a time in your life when you could possibly value guilt? Think about it because there are times when we have done just that. In this dualistic world we make we give value to both sides – guilt and guiltlessness. But the value we give guilt hides the value guiltlessness has for us.

3. There is no compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape the pain that only guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is being in Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to attract you, remember that if you yield to it, you are deciding against your happiness, and will not learn how to be happy. Say therefore, to yourself, gently, but with the conviction born of the Love of God and of His Son:

What I experience I will make manifest. If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear. I choose to testify to my acceptance of the Atonement, not to its rejection. I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and sharing it. Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father.

Whenever we experience pain, we are believing in some fear – guilt as an example. In guiltlessness no pain exists, nor could any ever. If you experience pain, you will manifest pain. Is this what you wish for in your life? Choose, instead, to experience guiltlessness and manifest the freedom that is yours. Know the peace that lies quietly within you.

4. Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide between is fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy.

Each instant – each moment – we must always choose between love and fear – Truth or false – ego or Spirit. Never is there a moment when choice is not an option for us. And the decision is ours alone to make – we have that power – the power to manifest love in our life or fear before us.

5. The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom and joy. It is not a cause, but an effect. It is the natural result of choosing right, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be free of guilt. Everyone you offer healing to returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether he does this or does it not will make no difference; you will think he does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty. The cost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.

' **The cost of giving is receiving.' This is a statement we would best keep before us often. It simply states once again that what we give, we also receive. Give love and receive love. Give guilt and keep guilt. Be in fear and stay in fear.**

6. No penalty is ever asked of God's Son except by himself and of himself. Every chance given him to heal is another opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love. If he refuses it he binds himself to darkness, because he did not choose to free his brother and enter light with him. By giving power to nothing, he throws away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power. And by not dispelling darkness, he became afraid of darkness and of light. The joy of learning that darkness has no power over the Son of God is the happy lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, and would have you teach with Him. It is His joy to teach it, as it will be yours.

Nothing is ever asked of us except that which we ask of ourselves. We are given all chances to heal and to replace darkness with light and fear with love. These chances to heal are not just for others, but for ourselves as well. As we do to others, we do it to ourselves. Which would you prefer for you – darkness of black, or Light of brilliance? You must have noticed many times that when you turn on a light in a room of darkness, nothing of the darkness is visible? Nothing of the darkness was ever there. And this is the lesson taught to us by Spirit – that darkness has no power over us except the power we have given it – and the power we have given is given to nothing. It is more than a pleasure to teach others this lesson – it is the joy of joys.

7. The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: Guiltlessness is invulnerability. Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to everyone. Teach him that, whatever he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed shows him that he is guiltless. He can do nothing that can hurt you, and by refusing to allow him to think he can, you teach him that the Atonement, which you have accepted for yourself, is also his. There is nothing to forgive. No one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is wholly without cause, and being without cause, cannot exist.

Remember early lessons in the Course – no one can harm unless we so allow it? No one can make us feel guilty unless we accept guilt. No one can harm or hurt us for we are the Son of God – guiltless!

8. God is the only Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach no one he has hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God has power over you. The causeless cannot be. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always that mind is one, and cause is one. You will learn communication with this oneness only when you learn to deny the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as yours. The power that God has given to His Son is his, and nothing else can His Son see or choose to look upon without imposing on himself the penalty of guilt, in place of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him.

God is the Cause, and we the effect of the Cause. No other Cause exists and no other Effect. Only what comes from the Cause is real, all else is illusion – fear – nothing. Choose to see your Truth and you shall see only the Effect of God.

9. Whenever you choose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively, and the decision will be wrong. It will hurt you because of the concept of decision that led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself alone. No thought of God's Son can be separate or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of.

Decisions made by ourselves are just that – made by our 'self' – ego. And choices of ego will always be choices of illusion. Choices of illusions will have believing that what we see is real. We know that we have but to ask Spirit for help in choosing, and the choice is given us to make with Him. No thought with Spirit will ever present us with anything less than Truth.

10. Those who accept the Atonement are invulnerable. But those who believe they are guilty will respond to guilt, because they think it is salvation, and will not refuse to see it and side with it. They believe that increasing guilt is self-protection. And they will fail to understand the simple fact that what they do not want must hurt them. All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is good. Yet will was given them because it is holy, and will bring to them all that they need, coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is nothing their will fails to provide that offers them anything of value. Yet because they do not understand their will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands it for them, and gives them what they want without effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding what they want and need alone.

Perhaps some of us have been in relationships where we took every opportunity to take guilt as it was offered us – everything seen and everything that was and everything that would come – was our fault – our guilt. And we carried that guilt around with us until perhaps the burden became to heavy a load to carry and we fell down to the bottom. Some of us needed to hit bottom before we began to see differently. In the bottom we see that what we thought was our way got us no where. In the bottom, we surrender, we give up to God all that we carry, and Spirit is there to lighten our load instantly. This is Atonement - this is our correction of thoughts we held in mind.

11. It will never happen that you must make decisions for yourself. You are not bereft of help, and Help that knows the answer. Would you be content with little, which is all that you alone can offer yourself, when He Who gives you everything will simply offer it to you? He will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourself. Instead, accept His answer, for He knows that you are worthy of everything God wills for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God He so freely and so gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him for you. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of it. God knows you are.

Read the first line again – it will never happen that we must ever make a decision alone. Help is as close to us as our next thought. And the answer is already waiting our question. We will never be judged by Him, simply responded to. We will never be questioned by Him as to whether we are worthy either. He is simply giving us what we already have but have forgotten.

12. Would you deny the truth of God's decision, and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself in place of His calm and unswerving value of His Son? Nothing can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it is wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for being of Him it must be true. Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan God set for its Atonement, relinquishing its own. You know not of salvation, for you do not understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask the Holy Spirit everything, and leave all decisions to His gentle counsel.

Ours is just to accept and ask not why or how – just have the faith in the answers given us by Spirit. And again an early message is repeated – 'I do not know'.

13. The One Who knows the plan of God that God would have you follow can teach you what it is. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what salvation is, and what you would be saved from. The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only Friend. He is the strong protector of the innocence that sets you free. And it is His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind.

Who else by the Voice of God would know so well the Plan of God for you? Certainly not you who cannot even make a decision without guidance. Spirit is the Voice of God, what better 'friend' could we seek in this dream? Truly no one else could possibly lead us except Spirit?

14. Let Him, therefore, be the only Guide that you would follow to salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. With Him you will not fail to learn that what God wills for you is your will. Without His guidance you will think you know alone, and will decide against your peace as surely as you decided that salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God gave it for you. He has not forgotten it. Forget Him not and He will make every decision for you, for your salvation and the peace of God in you.

We have all followed others but we have gotten no where with any of them, for they only no where to go – Spirit leads us to 'now-here' and there we learn of the Truth we are. Salvation is only required of ourselves. We need be saved from nothing else. We have but to only remember Spirit, and Spirit is here with us.

15. Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. The Holy Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. Never forget the Love of God, Who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from the loving Mind wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.

Ever look at the judgment of another as our appraisal of them? Another way of looking at judgment. And with what do we appraise them from, but a past that never was, from illusions that are not true. They are as guiltless as we are. As we see them, we see ourselves. And what cannot be true can have no effect. What is the only effect? Us from the Cause! God would never let us drift aimlessly in this dream, in a sea of guilt. This is not God's dream for us, but it is our dream for ourselves.

16. Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all you cannot know, when all knowledge lies behind every decision the Holy Spirit makes for you? Learn of His wisdom and His Love, and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and for yourself.

If you remember nothing else from the Course for today – remember this line and as you say it, feel the effects of your statement immediately: 'Decide for me.' That is all that is required of us to have Spirit give us what we seek. We do not need elaborate prayers, rituals, prolonged meditations and such – we simply utter – simply think these words: 'Decide for me." And it is done for us as we ask.

17. How gracious it is to decide all things through Him Whose equal Love is given equally to all alike! He leaves you no one outside you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it with Him. In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with Love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the decision. And everyone will be. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would you know this?

Emphatically NO! Spirit has seeing ourselves and others as the Oneness we are. He shows us no separation exists, nor could one ever be. He asks that we Trust in Him alone and never give another thought as to what is right or where we are being led. There is but One Way and with Spirit we shall be shown that Way.

18. You taught yourself the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with everything that is within Him, as it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.

Here we again read how we alone are responsible for this dream we dream. How we change our natural way of simply talking with God to denying ourselves access to God. Here in this dream we came to believe in separation and tossed aside our truth, but never to be lost.

19. Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and only this:

He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not. Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn. And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me.

Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is already there.

I am led by Spirit for He alone knows the way I am to go. Spirit will have me remember all that I long forgotten. And I have absolute faith is His Presence within me, and I know the Sound of His Voice. And with His Sight as mine, I shall see what I thought as guilt to be guiltlessness.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section IV. - Your Function in the Atonement

1. When you accept a brother's guiltlessness you will see the Atonement in him. For by proclaiming it in him you make it yours, and you will see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of your brother's guiltlessness shining within him while you still believe it is not there. His guiltlessness is your Atonement. Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered first to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and nothing but the First.

When I accept my brother for the Truth he is, then I shall see him my correction of error in him. And as I see him, I shall also see me. My brother is not guilty of a past that never was, nor am I. I see him in that light, and that light shall be in me as well. And we are all the First, never being a second or third. First is as It shall be for eternity.

2. You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. This state, and only this, must you attain, with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him. You can perhaps feel His Presence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. This cannot be taught. Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself.

I am that which is created in the image and likeness of God. And guiltlessness is my nature as nothing else exists. Knowing this knowledge, being this nature, is not to be taught me, but is to be remembered by me. In Truth I have never left God and know His Presence as my own. In this dream I can remember only that God is still with me.

3. When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be given. Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn. You will feel guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's Mind with all of yours. Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here?

Can you not learn to forgive so that your function here is complete? Is that too much to ask of the Son of God who thinks he is a body, separate from others? So much is ready to be shown you once you learn this simple lesson. Don't just talk about correction, do correction! Learn how to forgive as Spirit shall teach, so that you can forget how you taught yourself to judge. Guilt will forever be in your mind until forgiveness is learn and performed. This is within the Mind of God, shall you deny It's existence?

4. You need not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. When you release them they are gone. God will not fail, nor ever has in anything. Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. He created you out of Himself, but still within Him. He knows what you are. Remember that there is no second to Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son. For this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His.

Understand is a big word to ego, but it means nothing to us in Truth. Here we are reminded again that we need not understand to perform our function of forgiveness. Any barriers seen by you have been made by you. God makes no barriers. You are created by God and are with God. God knows what you are, have you yet remembered?

Just look at the results which await you learning and performing your function – only light where once darkness and deceit were seen. Our gift to God is ourselves offered as the guiltless, blameless Son we are.

5. Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided against your function in Heaven, and then consider carefully whether you want to make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt instead of love. Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father, and of waking gladly to His Love and Holiness that join together as the truth in you, making you one with Him.

In effect, we are being told to slow down here – look at how our decision not to forgive has presented to us – what is the result appears to you in the world you believe you see. We cannot decide alone – we need all the help we can get – and there is but one true Source for that help. 'Decide for me' is all that we have to utter – simply 'Decide for me.' In that one line is our complete surrender of what we hold onto as precious to us. In that one line are we saved from ourselves.

6. When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do. He knows. And He will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this.

He makes it sound so easy here – and what is there about this whole method that we think is difficult? Could it be that a part of us wants to decide 'alone' – we want to be in charge – we want to make our own decisions? Look where all that has got you. This life of ours can get no easier in following this – just give it up – give it all up and let Spirit decide for you – 'Decide for me.'

7. Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. 'Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen, and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes you understand. You made Him not, and anything you understand is not of Him.

First person: Unless I am guiltless I cannot know God, Whose Will for me is that I know God. Therefore, I must be guiltless for I believe I know God. Yet if I accept the necessary conditions for knowing God, I will be in effect denying the very existence of God. I will not recognize God when I look at another. God will walk past me and I shall not see. The 'necessary conditions' are just that I accept my brother as guiltless as I am in Truth. I accept my brother without a past to judge him and see no errors for none existed. It truly is impossible to see anything less than Love in my brother – anything other than Love is an illusion of a thought I hold – of a thought I hold of how I see myself.

8. Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourself away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourself. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothing except giving?

Reality is already present before me, and if I would stop playing at trying to make it, I would instead see it. We are told several more times we cannot understand – we cannot understand anything – period. But this is one lesson we are truly slow in learning.

9. The children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father, because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are, or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. His memory is yours. If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Him, and therefore in you.

We are the children of God and we do live in the light of God's blessing and we know deep within us that we are sinless. Notice how we say this, we affirm this and yet in the very next breath, we may deny all of it? Atonement – the correction – has been given to us not just to use one time – but is available to us at all times. Atonement simply corrects the thoughts we hold; it does not teach us who and what we are – Spirit does that. With Atonement we learn how to remove those stumbling blocks along our path; how to get beyond them. The memory of Spirit is our memory. If we remember what we have made, we are remembering nothing for we have made nothing in a world of nothing. If we remember our Reality, we are remembering as Spirit, as Truth.

10. The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making both 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.

We cannot communicate with a brother as long as we see the brother different from us. We will react as if foreigners to each other. 'Decide for me' will provide the translator needed. He will show that we are guiltless and One with each other. 'Decide for me' is the key that opens the link with God for us. We just have to say those three words and the connection is made.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section V. - The Circle of Atonement

1. 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? 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.

The only part of my mind that has reality is the Holy Spirit. Would you have it all transformed into one message to be shared with everyone? For sure! God has made that possible for us. We cannot deny the yearning we have for God anymore than we can deny God's yearning for us – it is deep within us and the essence of who we are. Are you ready to leave this world and all its possessions, including the priceless death we appear to favor and also fear? Are you ready to drop them all, and have Heaven shown to you? Then listen carefully to Spirit, the Voice of God. God speaks to us about us through Spirit. There is no guilt in any of us and there is none in God. As God, we are and will forever be.

2. Everyone has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each one is always the same; God's Son is guiltless. Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. Yet 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.

The Atonement is presented to all of us in different ways, but nonetheless, all meaning the same. We are guiltless. As each of us get our individual messages, we shall share them with all others, and they all be heard differently, but yet, once we all learn them we shall know – God's Son is guiltless. And the true function of each of us is the forgiveness of ourselves. Guilt is experience as a heavy load we carry, but God sees it not. The burden, like everything else we believe we see, is an illusion. God has a plan for us to be waken; the one we have will never work. We do not know what to do to awake, but God does. And the plan of God shall be shown to us by Spirit when we are ready for its acceptance.

3. 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.

We are indeed, the blessed Son of God and joy was created for us. Do you see how insane it is to deny ourselves joy? And there is nothing within the Mind of God that is not within our mind as well. Creation is the extension of God and we are that Creation. What is expected of us is this – to deny guilt in all its forms. How many forms of guilt can you name? As we learn of the Atonement, we naturally teach others as well. If we deny them this teaching, we deny this teaching to ourselves as well.

4. 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.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the right by inheritance of the Son of God. We have been told previously that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but to see it we must be free of guilt. Guilt makes us blind to what we already have. The Son of God, all of us, are the purity of God and we can never change that image. Many veils of many fears may be draped before us, but nothing can change what we are.

5. 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 that must have been denied to produce the need of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned how to exchange guilt for innocence, nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain be his. Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them.

We are all in the correction together, and nothing else exists that will unite us in this world. So in the Atonement, our world of separation slowly goes away, and the Oneness is again seen and experienced. Our change of mind shows us that guiltlessness was denied because we thought we heard a call for healing. Is there one of us who does not wish to be free of pain? Perhaps a person has not yet learned how to exchange guilt for innocence – how to change their mind; and so they required teachings from us. Instead of attacking as they had feared, they see forgiveness offered them.

6. Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the single purpose of release from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation. And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven, and the peace of God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome. The power of God Himself supports this teaching, and guarantees its limitless results.

We are all united in our efforts to have others know of their innocence, their guiltlessness. We teach, they learn; they teach, we learn. No conflict is seen in the teachings for although they may appear to be different, their goal is the same. There is nothing in our world that these teachings can ever fail to overcome.

7. Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must result in peace. No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this. You will not be exempt from the effects of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right of God's 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 the circle with everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace.

The circle of Atonement is viewed as the circle of love – we give, we get – we teach, we learn – and the circle ever continues. This circle is as if the power of God – for us to go beyond the circle is for us to imagine we can go beyond the power of God. Within the circle, we learn and we teach. The lesson is never just for them, but us as well. As we teach and learn more, we gather more into the circle and the circle continues.

8. 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 a teacher of Atonement, not of guilt.

If we teach peace, we shall see the purity of all we look upon. For perfect purity is what they are, we are. Within this circle of Atonement is all of God's Creations, within this circle is Love. The power of God attracts everyone to become one with the circle. You may stand within this circle and you will draw unto you, any trouble mind still out there.

9. Blessed are you 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 him. 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 power we feel in the moment of being in the circle is the Power of God. In our guiltlessness we experience God, and God knows us as the guiltless. We are called to the center of the circle and asked to teach peace with Jesus. We stand in the center of the circle experiencing the Power of God. There should be no doubt that we can teach peace for nothing is ever asked of us that we cannot do. Teach others of the Truth you are, so that they may also know theirs.

10. 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. Whom you perceive as guilty you would crucify. Yet you restore guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is always the ego's aim. It sees everyone 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 rebuilt through you. And everything you give to God is yours. Thus He creates, and thus must you restore.

There is no space in the correction of error for a cross to be hung. Only the joy of the resurrection is visible. Such is the symbols of our having the guiltlessness restored where once we carried guilt. The block has been removed and we come once again to teach and learn. What was once thought to be lost is now found. What once thought to be in ruins, is now seen as if rebuilt.

11. Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for 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 here 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.

And look at the decisions we must make – either to enter the circle with a brother or judge him and leave him and us outside. If we bring him in, we rest there in the peace with him. If we judge him and cast him out, we lay there with as well. In the quietness we seek, we say to Spirit "decide for me" and we bring our brother into the center of the circle and there we are with him as well.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section VI. - The Light of Communication

1. The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening because you do not understand its meaning. If you did, it would be clear and you would be no longer in the dark. Nothing has hidden value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared.

This is somewhat of a review, as are most of the Course: only love and fear exist; love is real and fear is false; love is light and fear is darkness. And the journey we all on one in which we remember all of this. And nothing you understand is fearful, but we have been told repeatedly that we understand nothing, so what we believe we see is fearful to us. When we begin to grasp that the only value anything has is what we have given it, we begin to grasp the meaning of meaningless.

2. The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will always yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.

I really enjoy reading the first line several times – what a great visualization: the quiet, silent light within is kept in perfect openness, no limits, no boundaries, no place that it is not. Being all light, darkness is not seen. Being all light, attack is not a thought. Being all light, it is extended to all others so that they also may see the light within them. There are shadows that we see that lurk outside the light – out-there – and we see them for what they are – illusions of nothing.

3. Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect; neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity only the light of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in light. Everything else must disappear.

Knowing that these shadows are but imagined illusions of nothing, will you continue to give them power, will you continue to fear them, fear for your safety, fearful of harm? They are but thoughts and they can do nothing to you. See them for what they are – know the source of these thoughts – and see light surround them as they disappear from view.

4. Death yields to life simply because destruction is not true. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are brought together, the truth of one must make the falsity of its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them both is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything. The other is wholly without sense of any kind.

Another reminder – you must choose between love or fear – you cannot choose both. You must give up one for the other. When seen side by side, the choice is simple for us – one is real, the other an illusion. One is guiltlessness and the other guilt. One is everything to you, and the other is meaningless.

5. You have regarded the separation as a means for breaking your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means of re-establishing what was not broken, but has been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He knows you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you think you are. All this and nothing else would He separate from you. The power of decision, which you made in place of the power of creation, He would teach you how to use on your behalf. You who made it to crucify yourself must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.

First person: I have regarded the separation as a means of breaking my communication with God. Spirit reinterprets that for me and it is seen as never being broken, only forgotten, cast aside. All that I believe I have made have a use to Spirit and His holy purpose. Spirit knows I am not separate from God, and He sees much in mind that convinces me that I am. Only this meaning and nothing else separates me from God. Once I used my power of decision when I was to have used my power of creation, and so Spirit shall have me remember how to use the power of creation on my behalf. I made the power of decision to literally crucify myself, and I shall remember with Spirit how to apply it to my holy (whole) cause of restoration.

6. You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather the disruption of communication. If the purpose of language is communication, how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through not communicating holds enough of love to make it meaningful if its Interpreter is not its maker. You who made it are but expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you are in perfect communication.

The words we use do not mean what they are heard as – our words are without meaning other than what we assigned to them, and notice how we change the meanings often. Words are disruptive in our communication – we speak and speak – and nothing is truly heard. And yet the love within is somehow communicated to others with these words. What we must do is to remember those three words we learned previously – "Decide for me." With those words communication will be perfect to others.

7. You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He will separate out all that has meaning, dropping off the rest and offering your true communication to those who would communicate as truly with you. You speak two languages at once, and this must lead to unintelligibility. Yet if one means nothing and the other everything, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but interferes with it.

Whatever we say, whatever we hear, we want to say and hear it through our Interpreter – through Spirit. "Decide for me" opens the line of pure communication for us. The garbled meaningless sounds we had heard are now given us in a manner of hearing their meaning.

8. The Holy Spirit's function is entirely communication. He therefore must remove whatever interferes with communication in order to restore it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Him and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, and cannot serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God's temple. Its gates are open wide to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon his Father's welcome.

The function of Spirit is communication – with God, with us, and with our brothers that we see separate from us. And this is all He is to do. He sorts out the garble tongues of others or even ourselves, and has them flow with meaning to others. He takes the words we believe will hurt us and show us that they are but words, and they contain nothing. We open our minds, our hearts and allow the Light of Love to enter – to sweep through and rid any darkness we hold only to have light in its place. And with Spirit we are shown the doorway to God – the entrance to the Truth we seek – and the door is forever open, even though we may think we have closed it many times.
Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section VII. - Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit

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

How do we know what we want? "Decide for me." Do we want darkness instead of light? "Decide for me." Do we want knowledge instead of ignorance? "Decide for me." With the help of Spirit, we see the opposites together and then we see that which is real remain while that which is not real vanish from our sight. But we must be cautious with our view – our perception – it must be one where we seeing through the eyes of Truth – we are seeing as assisted by Spirit. "Decide for me."

2. The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. Truth is. It can neither be lost nor sought nor found. It is there, wherever you are, being within you. Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to you. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you hid it and surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies hidden. Yet you cannot know this, for by hiding truth in fear, you see no reason to believe that the more you look at fear the less you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.

In our search for Truth, we discover that Truth is ever present before us, we simply have looked beyond not seeing it. We are more drawn to that which is not truth, than to truth. That way, we will continue to search for what is hidden by that which is not. However, the longer we look at what is not truth, the clearer we begin to see the truth that was hidden from our view. We need not look out there for what is always within.

3. 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 on 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.

Were we and are we now, those labeled the 'unknowing'? Unknowing is impossible in Truth of who we are. It is simply a point of view that we have taken as a belief, and now seeing that the belief is not true. We have given ourselves a definition when no definition of Truth is possible.

4. Our 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. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes 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.

We are in the process of bringing into the light that which we are finding undesirable – that which no longer is a belief we hold as true. We bring these thoughts to Spirit so that they may be taken from us. "Decide for me" becomes a mantra. We have believed that we can have it both ways, but now see that only one way is real, the other doesn't exist. If we believe we hide one from the other, the other is still there. We have kept those beliefs apart and they have made the separation even more real. But as we bring all beliefs together, we begin to see those which are our Truths, and those which are merely thoughts we held in mind split into two different thoughts systems.

5. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of your making. God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth only because you made them against it. 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 the Holy Spirit 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 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.

If we believe in darkness, we do not believe in light. In darkness we have need of defenses. We move about in a darkness and we believe we must defend ourselves against all that exists in the darkness. Upon the wall of darkness is the switch of the Holy Spirit – the switch of Light. Once we find that switch and choose to use it, we see that darkness to contain nothing – and this is what we were trying to defend ourselves against – nothing. In the darkness we utter those simple words – "decide for me" and the switch is in our hands. Our defense is now a call for help – a call for love and healing. And Spirit is there instantly with the response we are to hear. We do not know alone what decisions to make – what choice to make. Spirit is there for us as we ask of Him. What is given us to do by Spirit is always something we can accomplish – we are never asked to do more than we are capable of doing. Just follow, and He will lead.

6. The Holy Spirit 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. 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.

The Holy Spirit asks so little of us – only that we bring to It all that we have hidden away in the darkness we had believed in. All those thoughts of separation – of all the many fears we believed in. Don't you gladly offer all that so that it may be seen for what it all is, and then have the darkness gone and only Light be present? We hold the darkness and Spirit holds the light – as we bring the darkness closer, the light is shining through showing us the nothingness which we believed in.

7. 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.

As we join in union with Spirit, we shall share with It the interpretation of perception which will lead us to the knowledge within us. We cannot see alone. Our perception is clouded by the illusions of a past that doesn't exist. We see alone in darkness, and with Spirit, we see together in light. With the perception of Spirit, we begin to see the Oneness of it all – the Oneness with our brother. And we become aware of one single vision – the Christ Vision from within each of us. We gladly accept our will as the Will of God.
Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section VIII - The Holy Meeting Place

1. In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God. It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone. Whom He would save for glory is saved for it. He has promised the Father that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. To what He promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shares with God the promise that was given Him to share with you.

When we choose darkness, we cannot see all that God has given us, the power given the Son of God. All of that wonder lies hidden deep within the darkness, veiled in guilt and our denial of our innocence. We made the dark doors we see before us. We chose to close those doors beyond which nothing is, and believe that the nothing is of God. Nothing can truly hide the glory of God, and Its Creation – the Son of God. We gladly banish the darkness and choose the power within us. It is our gift from God and we gladly accept that gift, open it and share it with all.

2. 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.

Within us is the Altar of altars – the sanctuary of our heart – where we come with the false beliefs and gladly lay them down, gladly release them from our grasp. As we release, we receive from God. The darkness is replaced by light. The fears are gone and only love is present. Placing those false beliefs upon the altar is not an offering, but a surrender. We do not offer false beliefs to God, and we do not offer them to the Son of God. Within this Sanctuary of Spirit we come together with our brother, with God, and we are the Oneness we seek. In that Union all communication from God is given through Spirit to us. And that communication – that Love – flows through each of us and all of us.

3. Let your mind wander not through darkened corridors, away from light's center. You and your brother may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot join with anything except reality. God's glory and His Son's belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself.

First person: I will not allow my mind to wander through the dark corridors I had made, away from the Center of Light within me. I and my brother may choose to lead ourselves astray, but we can be brought together only the Guide appointed us – the Holy Spirit. Spirit will surely lead me to where God and my brother await my recognition of myself. They have joined in giving me the gift of Oneness, with which all separation ceases to be seen. I unite with what I am. I cannot join with anything except reality. The Glory of God and that of my brother belong to me as well in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else exists that I can bestow upon myself.

4. There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge, given you by God, into unknowingness. Everything God 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 Son with Them together. There is one link that joins Them all together, holding Them in the oneness out of which creation happens.

There is no substitute for Truth, there is no definition for Truth. Truth is. With Truth we shall see nothing else exists, no choice is offered us. Spirit will lead us with the Truth to where God is, and where God, we are. And that is Truth. Knowledge can never be changed to anything else. What God has created has no opposite. We are a creation of God – we have no opposite. There exists a link with the Creation of God and that link is Truth.

5. The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create 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 with it. Here your little 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 is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.

The Truth that links God with us can never be changed, can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is in union with us and with God. Heaven is the Will of God for us, and what God wills does not change. There is nothing but truth that we can lay upon that altar within us – truth we offer to God and truth that we offer to our brother – nothing else exists. God accepts what we have placed there and has given us back what we have given.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section IX. - The Reflection of Holiness

1. The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are. Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself. The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was.

The Atonement, the correction of error, the changing of our thoughts, does not make us holy for God created us holy and what God created will never change. As we offer our illusions to Spirit, they are then offered to God and Truth is seen where illusions once were believed to have been. We are safe with the knowledge of our Truth, who and what we are. We made time to deny our Truth. And with time, came past and future, both illusions. What we remember as past, never was and is really a denial of what was forever present.

2. Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will do for you.

As we bring illusions – all illusions – to the Light of God, we are shown what the illusions are – nothing. The Light shines through them showing the nothing they are. They are seen but for an instant and then they are gone. Our Truth, our Reality is as changeless as God is changeless, for they are but One.

3. Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift that you refused is held by Him in you. The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is Holiness.

Just by being who we are in Truth, are we released from that which is not true. The correction of error is ever so gentle that we are told but to whisper it, much like we have been told to show only a little willingness. "Decide for me" is our mantra. As we utter those words, we are shown our strength. We feel the Presence within us and we know we are whole (holy) and complete. The correction offers us Truth, offers us God. It is held for us by Spirit for us to behold in us. The Truth remains within us and is forever Present.

4. In the temple, Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of life. For God is life, and they abide in life. Life is as holy as the Holiness by which it was created. The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness created life, and leaves not what It created holy as Itself.

Within us, God is waiting for us to join in union. God knows that we shall return to out Truth. The Presence there welcomes us to our sanctuary, and gently replaces any pain or loss with the assurance of God's Love. Even the fear of death is replaced by the joy of life. Life is God and God is life. Life is as holy as God is holy. The Presence of God is alive in everything that God created, and is as holy as the Source.

5. In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the Holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven here. Yet no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of Himself can be perceived upon it.

For us to be this spotless mirror we must let go of all illusions, all heroes and idols we have made. We must lay down all beliefs of who we thought we are as we accept and acknowledge who we are in truth. Then we can look upon others and see the image we are reflecting back from them as well. What we see is what we believe we are. How clean is your mirror?

6. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves. The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear. Clean but the mirror, and the message that shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, no one can fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in him. He recognizes it because he has been taught his need for it, but knows not where to look to find it. Let him, then, see it in you and share it with you.

If your mirror is spotless, then the reflection of the Light within you will shine to be seen by others, and their darkness shall fade away as well. No one shall ask what they see in you, for they shall know the truth as it stands before them, as you shall know yours as well. The mirror is but a reflection of the Christ Spirit within you, the Presence within you, for all to look in and see themselves.

7. Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the image of the holiness that heals the world. The image of holiness that shines in your mind is not obscure, and will not change. Its meaning to those who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the same. All bring their different problems to its healing light, and all their problems find but healing there.

It is difficult for us to comprehend the healing powers held in our reflection in our spotless mirror, but we know that is true. And all others you see, shall experience the healing of the mind that you have, no matter what thought they held.

8. The response of holiness to any form of error is always the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. Its one response is healing, without regard for what is brought to it. Those who have learned to offer only healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the actual condition of what was but reflected to them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely reflect truth, for they are truth.

Holiness always correct error, always heals our mind, regardless of the thoughts we hold there. When we have learned to offer our thoughts to God for healing, we shall prepare ourselves for Heaven. In Heaven, holiness (wholeness) is a natural state as only holiness exists. And everywhere is the reflection of Love seen. God has no image and we, the Creations of God, have no image. In Heaven, Truth simply is and there we are.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

X. The Equality of Miracles

1. When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections you accept into the mirror of your mind in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond all time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven here, and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it they leave all reflections behind.

First person: When no perception stands between God and me, or between me and my brothers, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflection I accept into the spotless mirror of my mind in time only bring eternity nearer or farther. Eternity itself is beyond all time. I reach out of time and I touch eternity, with the help of the eternal reflection in me. And I will turn from time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls us all to lay all guilt aside. I reflect on the peace of Heaven here, and bring my world to Heaven. The reflection of truth draws me and my brothers to it, and as we enter we leave all other reflections behind.

2. In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in is a world of limits. In this world, it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that transcends order, being based not on differences but on equality.

Remember an early lesson, a very early lesson that stated there was no difficulties in miracles? That lessen is being repeated again so that we may once again remember it. Having Heaven reflected here, we see what is our truth. And with that truth we remember God and from that moment on, we will never be satisfied with anything but our truth. The world we make is one of limitation, boundaries, but our Reality is without limits and boundaries. There is in our world no difficulty in miracles. Spirit has brought from Reality to our world, a set of laws not our making. There is indeed no difficulty in miracles.

3. Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of difficulty that stamps the miracle as something that must come from elsewhere, not from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible.

A miracle is but a change of thought within our mind – how much easier can it get? There exists within our mind no competition, no limit on how many miracles we can have. There is no limit on the thoughts we hold, so there are no limits on how many can be changed. And looking at them, we see why no difficulty exists – they are but a change of thought.

4. Perhaps you have been aware of lack of competition among your thoughts, which even though they may conflict, can occur together and in great numbers. You may indeed be so used to this that it causes you little surprise. Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, larger or better, wiser, or more productive and valuable than others. This is true of the thoughts that cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but seems to think.

Competition is of ego, and ego has us constantly sorting out our thoughts as to which are more important than others, which are more dangerous than others, which will get us the most gains, etc. Miracles are classified nor could they be in truth. If we see classification of miracles, we realize that ego is once again sorting.

5. The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim, as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your mind. The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order that you establish. Yet the very fact that you can do this, and bring any order into chaos shows you that you are not an ego, and that more than an ego must be in you. For the ego is chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet though the order you impose upon your mind limits the ego, it also limits you. To order is to judge, and to arrange by judgment. Therefore it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's.

With the classes assign by ego, our thoughts swiftly pass on and our mind appears to never rest. We clean the mirror of our mind only to have it spotted quickly by the actions of ego. Where the light was in the mirror, now appears dimness and then darkness. And soon our mind is like a strobe light – bright and dark, dark and bright. But we can turn the strobe light off – we can slow down the show of light and dark – we can see that no order of difficult exists anywhere in our mind. No classifications are needed, no value to be given a thought. As the chaos ends, peace and order are seen. And we thank Spirit for responding to our call "Decide for me."

6. It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you the shining examples of miracles to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you. The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it is, and answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder or greater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and not of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and that is also why everyone shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone. There is no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help.

Just think for a moment what ordering of our thoughts is – simply judgment. Without judgment, no order of difficulty is ever seen. Every call we hear we give the same response without judgment. We hear the call and respond according to our Truth. And the Answer is Love. To see a brother with a past one moment, and then to see the same brother with no past the next, shows us the power we have within us – the power of God. As we see our brother as sinless – guiltless – pure and whole (holy) we are seen as well. Every call for help is answer with the same response – Love.

7. The only judgment involved is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love. You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love, or to believe that everything else is nothing but a call for love. You are too bound to form, and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it.

The only judgment possible – the only judgment involved is that of Spirit. When we declare "Decide for me" Spirit does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We hear the call of a brother but we are confused as to what the call is for. We do not know of ourselves how to respond because we still believe in form, separation. Spirit sees beyond the form for us and we are told how to respond.

8. The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. Otherwise it will attack the form. If you believe you understand something of the "dynamics" of the ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it. For of yourself you could not understand it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would "analyze" it, thus approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind impressive sounding words, but which lack any consistent sense when they are put together.

Once again we are told we understand nothing in this world we make, including that which we believe we are as this body. Ego sees form and form only. It does not go beyond form, it does peer into the form at all. And note the line that reads: "The study of the ego is not the study of the mind." All too often we are led into analyzing ourselves as ego and in doing this, we become lost in the illusion and fail to see ego for what it is. There is no meaning to ego.

9. This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought that arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.

You did catch the phrase 'when two or more join together'? Where have we heard that before? Before we began our spiritual journey, many of us felt that we were somehow lost in our own world, an insane thought for sure. We felt confused and utterly dissatisfied but did not know a reason. We felt as if everything in our world was chaotic at best with no meaning for anything. Then, once our journey began, we came to see what we were experiencing was the world of ego, a place of mayhem and madness, all to keep us from remembering our truth, for such truth would indeed set us free. We found that separation was lonely, but union with a brother was everything. We began to taste freedom, peace and joy.

10. It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it. Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold is for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find.

For us to be alone is truly impossible. We are forever with God so we cannot be alone. We are forever One with our brother so we can never be alone. Perhaps we can look at being One as being 'all-one'. In the Oneness is the Love we seek. In the Oneness is all we are.

11. As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit translate His communications through you, so you can understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being for all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit show him to you, and teach you both his love and his call for love. Neither his mind nor yours holds more than these two orders of thought.

We have forgotten how to communicate with God direct it appears, so the Holy Spirit was given us as the Translator we need. In Truth, no communication is experience as we are the Oneness of God. Nothing is hidden from us, and everything has already been given us. We are All That Is. We say this, but we need Spirit to lead us to the place within where we can experience this.

12. The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are. Earlier I said this course will teach you how to remember what you are, restoring to you your Identity. We have already learned that this Identity is shared. The miracle becomes the means of sharing It. By supplying your Identity wherever It is not recognized, you will recognize It. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the Love He holds for him. Nor will the power of all His Love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?

As we change our thought about a brother, we recognize the Truth in him and us. Where Love is, Truth is. Where there is a call for Love, there is in us a response of Love. We ask Spirit "Decide for me" and the response is given. And with the response we see the Oneness of us all. And we discover once again that no order of difficulty is seen in miracles, and no order is seen seeing our brother – we are the One.

Chapter 14.

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Section XI. - The Test of Truth

1. Yet the essential thing is learning that you do not know. Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourself 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 yourself has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not what it is, nor where. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it must fail you. For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond semblance of any kind. Yet all that stands between you and the power of God in you is but your learning of the false, and of your attempts to undo the true.

Heard the first line before? We may as well add it to our mantra: "Decide for me, for I do not know.' This is one of the more difficult items for us to let go of – ego is screaming constantly about how much it knows, or claims to know. Knowledge is power and all power is of God, therefore all knowledge is of God. We have that power within us but we forgotten how to access it. With each lesson we taught ourselves as ego, the power within become more obscure to us – we actually think that we have lost it. From the first few lessons to the present one, we keep repeating we do not know – not what something is or where something is – we simply know nothing believing that we are this body which is an illusion of nothing. The seeming wall between us as ego and the power of Truth within, is simply our remembering Truth and laying down our beliefs in the false.

2. Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourself how to imprison the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could ever dream of it. Can God learn how not to be God? And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you have and what you are?

Here again, we have to just be willing for all of it to be undone. Yes, we have to let go of it – we must surrender those old beliefs to God through Spirit. And we are more than glad, we are elated that we are not eternally bound to that which is false. And look at what we have taught ourselves – a lesson of insanity to be sure – we learned how to imprison ourselves and our brothers. Can we learn how not to be God? And can we, with all the power of God within us, learn to be powerless? Look again at what you have taught yourself and see if it is still worth keeping?

3. Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you taught yourself 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 yourself. Let it all go. Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or anyone in its "light," for the darkness in 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.

Atonement – the correction of error – teaches us how to forever escape from all that we have taught ourselves in a past that never existed. We see the present based on the learning from a past that never happened. Nothing of the past means anything to us in the present. We are told repeatedly throughout the Course to let the past go – to drop what we believe from something that never was. And once again we are told that we simply do not know – we do not understand for it has all been in the darkness. We have called the darkness light, but we did not see in it. Seeing in the darkness is never possible.

4. You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourself into 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. This lesson shines with God's glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares so gladly with His Son. Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light He will accept from you, because you do not want it. And He will gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson He has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Him means anything.

We cannot judge anything for we are still yet holding onto some of the darkness we taught ourselves. And at times, we do feel as God did abandon us, but will not abandon you. For us to learn of the happiness of God which is ours, we must willingly bring all the beliefs we taught ourselves out in the open, so to speak. We bring those lessons to Spirit and gladly rid ourselves of them – all of them. And through Spirit, God will take each and every lesson we offer from us and replace them with lessons of Love. Not one lesson we have taught ourselves holds any meaning to us.

5. 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 your own. Unless all this is true, there are dark lessons in your mind that 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, in one form or another. And each bright lesson with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not accept, teaches you that you will with the Father and His Son.

And there is but one test by which we can be assured that what we have learned is true. If we have no fear of any kind and if we see the reflection of a perfect mirror in all those we see before us, then we will know that we have learned the lesson of God and not our own. And if we fail this test, we know that we are still holding some dark lessons that we have taught ourselves. Unless we experience perfect peace as given us by God, we continue to think that we do will for our brother what God wills for us.

6. Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything that you have taught yourself. 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.

Our part in all of this is truly simple: we simply recognize, we simply acknowledge, that everything we have learned from ourselves we do not want – but it does mean everything. Ask Spirit for the teachings to be learned: "Decide for me."

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.

Note that we affirm but again 'we do not know' and surrender what we do not know to Spirit to have changed to that which we do know in Truth. We know nothing, how can we possibly teach ourselves anything? Spirit is the Teacher given us by God, and He teaches, we shall learn and remember all that we have forgotten.

7. 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 effects that only guiltlessness can bring, and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness must be.

We could not be a guide for ourselves, for we wander around this world as if lost. The Guide to miracles is just waiting for us to request His talents. There is nothing we believe we need that shall not be given or already has been given. And as we have been told to show a little willingness, now we are told to simply turn to God ever so little. But that is choice we make alone for we have free will. God will not lose Identity and we shall not lose our Oneness with that Identity. We ask Spirit for help 'decide for me' and we are shown what to choose, and thus the miracle happens in that holy instant of time.

8. How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That is impossible. But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it is impossible. It is only because you think that you can run some little part, or deal with certain aspects of your life 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.

It is impossible for us as we wallow in our guilt, to see ourselves as guiltless. We can not have a little guilt and be guiltless. We cannot see a little darkness and be in the light. We need all the help and assistance we can get, and the only Source is the Holy Spirit. Call on Him as often as you must, for He is there for that purpose.

9. Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you give He would withhold from you? You have no problems that 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 they never were. There are no dark lessons He has not already lightened for you. The lessons you would teach yourself 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.

There are no problems we can have that Spirit cannot solve by offering us a miracle – a change of thought. All problems are but thoughts. Every pain, every fear we have ever had has been undone for us. Have you accepted that or you holding onto some pain or fear yet? Why hold them when they can be taken from you, should you decide to let them go? All the lessons taught by Spirit are lessons of Love – of Light. There are no dark lessons taught by Spirit. They do exist in the Mind of God. The past means nothing to God, so it must mean nothing to you.

10. He Who has freed you from the past would teach 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 on Him in vain. He always gives His gifts in place of yours. He would establish His bright teaching so firmly in your mind, that no dark lesson 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.

The Holy Spirit has freed us from a past that never was, and He is willing to teach us that we are free as well. All of His accomplishments He would give us if we accept them from Him. All His accomplishments He did for us. And that makes them ours. He has freed us from what we made. Look at all He has done for us, but have we acknowledged and accepted all His efforts? We can deny Spirit, but we can never call on Spirit in vain. Each time we call to Him, he responds to us instantly. He would, if we allowed Him, remove all dark lessons – all lessons we have taught ourselves – from our mind. We are forever grateful of His Presence within us. And all He does He does for us. A miracle is offered us each time we ask for Him, as we simply state; 'decide for me'.

11. 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.

We shall forever be One – nothing more nor less, for neither is possible. The Holy Spirit is as God is, as is the Son of God is as God is. This is seen as the Oneness of us all. Through the Holy Spirit we shall learn of the Oneness. We go within to the sanctuary of the soul and there be in the stillness and silence to listen to the teachings of Spirit. And from these teachings, we learn of the Oneness of All That Is. What is of God is God and like God as God is. We, the miracle of creation will never cease, for we as immortal as the Source. Such is the Will of God, and so we are.

12. Those who remember always that they know nothing, and who have become willing to learn everything, will learn it. But whenever they trust themselves, they will not learn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they already know. Think not you understand anything until you pass the test of perfect peace, for peace and understanding go together and never can be found alone. Each brings the other with it, for it is the law of God they be not separate. They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absent the other cannot be.

Recall that test for perfect peace mentioned above. If we remember that we know nothing, and if we show that we are willing to learn everything, we shall learn everything. But if we trust ourselves even once, we must begin again for we then believe we know something. Until such time as we pass that test for perfect peace, and continue to past that test, we understand nothing.

13. Only those who recognize they cannot know unless the effects of understanding are with them, can really learn at all. 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 this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of Himself, fill every mind that so makes room for Him.

Unless we recognize that we cannot know anything unless the presence of Spirit is with us, we will not learn anything. Peace is what we want but peace is not ours while we believe we know anything. When we think we know, we have not asked for the presence of Spirit with us. Spirit is the Teacher of Peace. When we finally and humbly affirm that we know nothing, peace will return to us, the Teacher of Peace shall be present once again. It is ridiculous for us to call upon ego for anything, as ego is nothing and that is all it can teach.

14. If you want peace you must abandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher of peace will 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 His 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.

If we want peace, we must choose peace. If we choose peace, we have chosen Spirit as our Teacher. If we have chosen Spirit as our Teacher, then we have dismissed ego, we have no further need of it. The Holy Spirit shall never abandon us, shall never leave us under any condition. His presence is there within us because God so willed it. Spirit sees us in the perfection we are, and will show us that perfection is we listen and learn His teachings. Once we choose peace, peace shall come. We know how to reach for it 'decide for me.'

15. 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. Yet 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.

Do you have room in your heart for the Holy Spirit? Will you always find space for Him within you? The Power of Spirit is the Power of God and is the Power within you. You can know Him well for He is your Truth. Once you call upon Him and see His workings, you will believe you are working through Him instead of Him working through you. Keep Him with you always and the power within you shall be rediscovered by you, and together great things shall be accomplished. Remember you do not know and He does. Allow Him to decide for you – ask of Him to 'decide for me'.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section I. - The Two Uses of Time

1. Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. God's Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn.

Can you dream this big? Can you dream of no care, worries, anxieties? Just to be perfectly calm and quiet and peaceful at all times? This is what time is for according to Spirit, and He shall teach us that lesson. And when that lesson is learned, we will have no more need of a teacher or lessons.

2. One source of perceived discouragement from which you may suffer is your belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit's teaching are far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit uses time in His Own way, and is not bound by it. Time is His friend in teaching. It does not waste Him, as it does you. And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief in destruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which is its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end.

We are the ones who made time and the constraints it appears to have. What Spirit wants to teach us will not take a lot of time, nor will it be in a future that will not be. Spirit shall teach us that is not wasted unless it is spent with ego. Ego uses time to convince us of the goal in our life – death. Spirit will teach us that our goal is not death, but life.

3. The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate. The ego wants you dead, but not itself. The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace even in death, it offers you immortality in hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven?

Read this over carefully – what the ego wants of us is to be dead, but ego does not want to die. How insane is that? Ego has us believing that beyond death awaits a hell for us – a place of intense suffering and pain and madness – where we shall forever be. We have experience suffering, pain, and madness in our world – that must be hell. But we do not have to choose that scenario. Ego cannot offer immortality in hell, for we are immortal in God.

4. The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego's teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. Yet because you and the ego cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. Such is the ego's version of immortality. And it is this the ego's version of time supports.

If this is what time supports, then I want nothing of time. Heaven and hell are choices we make constantly in this world of illusions. Nightmares and fears are but the same – illusions of an illusion. Strange indeed is the thinking of ego. Strange indeed how what the ego perceives is always in darkness. Nothing is in darkness so what the ego perceives is nothing. It fears death and yet its goal is death, with the belief that it will continue on through the hell that awaits us for the guilt we carry. Now you should be able to see just how limited is the world of ego. There is no goal for it to obtain, there is no end to its insanity. And all of this insanity is supported by the thought of time we made. Remember without time, we have no fears, no anxieties, no worries – just peace and joy.

5. The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who thinks its is the only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is here as well, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. And even there, its only value is that it is no more.

When we have been at those points in life where everything appeared to be coming apart at the seams, total disaster appeared to be happening, ego would say to us that this isn't so bad – this is heaven compared to the hell that awaits us. This is a world where everything is upside down – everything is the opposite of what it appears. This is the world of ego. To the ego the past is everything, and yet it never happened we are told. Why would anyone believe in nothing?

6. How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! And how terrifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that it can offer them escape. But the belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of the future. For no one who considers himself as deserving of hell can believe that punishment will end in peace.

How insane to believe that punishment will end in peace. That reminds me of old religious beliefs where if I would do such and such for such a period of time, what I did to warrant this punishment would be forgotten. Now I know I never did anything that would ever deserve punishment, and punishment never leads to peace, only to guilt. Yes, I can see hell here, but I can also see Heaven.

7. The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego's use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.

Spirit is teaching that hell is the making of ego to take the place of the present, but can anything take the place of the present? And what the ego makes is nothing. Do we fear the present? Only as an ego. The present is all that Spirit sees – all It knows to exist. Ego thrives on a past and a future, neither of which exist. It fears the present because no past nor future is seen there. In the present, Heaven is presented to us – the peace we seek – the joy we long for – the Love we are – that is what the present is. Spirit uses time to teach us what we have forgotten. Ego uses time to maintain guilt and all other fears.

8. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. And the present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.

Spirit undoes all fear now – in the present – in the only time there is. Fear is not seen for the present is Light. Each and every instant of the present is free of ego teachings – fear. And the present is eternity – it is all the time there is – no further time is possible.

9. This lesson takes no time. For what is time without a past and future? It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time.

We read this message many times in the Course, many times by various authors (messengers) and a variety of posts – now is all there is. We take this present – this now – and we dwell there and bask in the Light of Truth – in the Light of Love – knowing that this moment is all there is in eternity. In this moment nothing can come to us for everything is here. In this moment we experience the nature of God – the freedom from limitations. In this moment we as we shall forever be – the Oneness of God.

10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. And Heaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation from change. Change is an illusion, taught by those who cannot see themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heaven because there is no change in God. In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering Him is to remember freedom.

Time as seen by ego is forever subject to change; time seen by Spirit is now – never changing. In this now is our Heaven. There is no change in now because there is no change in Heaven. There is no change in now because there is no change in God, and there is no change in us. In this holy instant of now, we see ourselves as we have forever been and will eternally be.

11. If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?" Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? He asks no more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer to teach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity.

We have mentioned before how much time does it take to change your thought; how close is your next thought? It is but an instant away. Can we not spare this much for ourselves so that we may experience what we are seeking – our Truth? Remember the now is the eternity we are.

12. You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of your release while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of theirs. For the instant of holiness is shared, and cannot be yours alone. Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a brother, that his instant of release is yours. Miracles are the instants of release you offer, and will receive. They attest to your willingness to be released, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it.

With our experiencing the holy instant – the now – comes our responsibility to share it with others, so they too, may experience their eternity. Everything we are, everything we have, is shared with others. These are the miracles we ask for and receive. These are the miracles that show our willingness to be released from time as we have learned it, to time as we know it now.

13. How long is an instant? It is as short for your brother as it is for you. Practice giving this blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time, and thus make time their friend for them. The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to you through your giving it. As you give it, He offers it to you. Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join with Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is your instantaneous escape from guilt. You must be holy if you offer holiness.

How long is an instant? That sounds like a Zen koan. But its length is the same for me and it is for my brother, for the holy instant is ours to share. Spirit give the holy instant to be shared with all others. Not one of us can have the experience of a holy instant alone, for we are not alone. Indeed, we must be holy (whole) to offer holiness.

14. How long is an instant? As long as it takes to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace and perfect love for everyone, for God and for yourself. As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations who share it with you. As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. Long enough to transcend all of the ego's making, and ascend unto your Father.

So how long do you think it will take for us to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace, perfect love? How long will it take for us to remember our immortality? How long will it take us to see our brother as One with us? How long will it take for us to exchange hell for Heaven? It will take all of a holy instant?

15. Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. He needs but very little to restore God's whole power to you. He Who transcends time for you understands what time is for. Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. There never was an instant in which God's Son could lose his purity. His changeless state is beyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and without variability. Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. And so it is no longer time at all. For caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God's creation, it is transformed into forever. Give the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered for you, in that shining instant of perfect release. Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit, and leave His giving it to you to Him.

When we believed we were ego, time was never seen as friendly to us. It seemed to go quickly so that we did not accomplish what we wanted to, and therefore felt guilty or perhaps sadden. Time has convince we are getting older and therefore certain conditions will exist as old age is experienced. Time certainly has not been seen as a friend most of our life. However, when Spirit uses time, he uses but a holy instant of it, and within that instant is All That Is. Time not only appears to stand still, time ceases to exist in the holy instant. Is time required in eternity? Be there, now, in the holy instant, the moment of your eternal Truth.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section II. - The End of Doubt

1. The Atonement is in time, but not for time. Being in you, it is eternal. What holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. No more are you. For unless God is bound, you cannot be. An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. In the blessed instant you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace. What can take time, when all the obstacles to learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time that all of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all.

As we are in the world, but not of the world, so Atonement is in time, but not for time. The correction of error is for our thoughts. Being of us, it is therefore eternal for we are eternal. The Atonement holds our memory of God which can never be forgotten in time, but can be instantly remembered with Spirit is It's use of time. The holy instant takes no time, for time does not exist. The holy instant is but now.

2. Do not be concerned with time, and fear not the instant of holiness that will remove all fear. For the instant of peace is eternal because it is without fear. It will come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher He has appointed to translate time into eternity. Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you because His joy is yours. Through Him you stand before God's altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be.

We are not to be concerned with time – a message repeated often for us. As ego, time is very valuable to us we believe. It is, basically, what this life appears to be governed by, seems to revolve around. And yet, time does not exist! We have given great value to what does not exist. As we allow Spirit to show us that the holy instant is the only 'time' there is, we begin to see within the instant is no fear, no past and no future – all being the same. Peace and joy is ours by having Spirit show us. In that instant Spirit shows us how the hell we believed in can be seen as the Heaven which is Truth.

3. How long can it take to be where God would have you? For you are where you have forever been and will forever be. All that you have, you have forever. The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass you. You who have spent days, hours and even years in chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.

How long can it take to be where God would have us be? No more than a holy instant, for we are where we have forever been. All that exists, exists now. We have used a lifetime chaining ourselves and others to an ego that never existed. In this holy instant is all that seen as never having been..

4. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support. As a result, they witness to the ego in your perception, and seem to provide reasons for not letting it go. Yet they are far stronger and much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And they support His strength. It is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you. And you will recognize which you have chosen by their reactions. A Son of God who has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother is always recognized. He cannot be denied. If you remain uncertain, it is only because you have not given complete release. And because of this, you have not given a single instant completely to the Holy Spirit. For when you have, you will be sure you have. You will be sure because the witness to Him will speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand. You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released through the Holy Spirit. And then you will doubt no more.

Recall the mantra: 'decide for me'? Here is the place for it to uttered. We are told here it is our choice whether our brothers support the thinking of the ego or learn the lessons Spirit teaches. How do you see your brother? How do you see you here? Now, in this instant of eternity, give the release you and your brother both require so that you all may hear Spirit, and then doubt no more.

5. The holy instant has not yet happened to you. Yet it will, and you will recognize it with perfect certainty. No gift of God is recognized in any other way. You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant, and will learn much from doing so. Yet its shining and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this world by its own vision, you cannot supply. And here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished and given wholly.

A short but very important paragraph for us. The holy instant has not happened to us, but when it does, there will be no doubt that it has occurred. But even though it has not yet taken place, we should continue to practice the method of being there – the manner in which we open ourselves up to the holy instant. Perhaps we will just be still a moment and drop the thoughts of the past, and forget the thoughts of a future. Perhaps we will just sit in the silence of our soul and therein listen to the Voice within speak to us of the Truth we are. And as we continue to affirm 'we do not know' – we do not know when the experience of the holy instant will be ours.

6. Start now to practice your little part in separating out the holy instant. You will receive very specific instructions as you go along. To learn to separate out this single second, and to experience it as timeless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate. Fear not that you will not be given help in this. God's Teacher and His lesson will support your strength. It is only your weakness that will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the power of God in you. Use it but for one instant, and you will never deny it again. Who can deny the Presence of what the universe bows to, in appreciation and gladness? Before the recognition of the universe that witnesses to It, your doubts must disappear.

Okay, so we begin now to practice what we must do in separating the holy instant from the time we believe in. And we will pay close attention to the instructions to be given us by Spirit. We begin by seeing ourselves, experiencing ourselves as not separate bodies, but as a Oneness with each other. And no need to worry about how we will do this – help will be given to those willing to accept it. And all we lose in this initial practice is our weakness – to be replaced by the power within us. Once we have tasted the sweetness of the Presence, we shall never again be satisfied with anything less.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section III. - Littleness versus Magnitude

1. Be not content with littleness. But be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you give yourself. You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it. Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will always choose one at the expense of the other.

Recall a section of grandiosity versus grandeur? This is a repeat of that message for we need to hear it often. There is no reason for us to settle the littleness of ego when the magnitude of who we are is just becoming known to us again. Littleness is what we offer ourselves; magnitude is what is given us as the Son of God. Our world, we are reminded, is made of littleness because it is how we think as ego. The magnitude of who we are in Truth is beyond the comprehension of ego – ego know not of Love. Littleness and glory are the choices open to us and we are told that we shall always choose one at the expense of the other. Not sure which choice to make? 'Decide for me' will help.

2. Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. You are free to try as 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.

So bottom line here is that each time we choose between littleness and glory, we are actually choosing how we will see ourselves. That should help us in making the choice we need to make. Is littleness satisfying to you? Are you content there? Or do you know from within that you are much more than that? Many substitutes will be offered so that we delay in choosing, but none of the choice except glory will give us what we have been seeking. We have been seeking the Truth we have long forgotten. It is before us ready for us to make a choice – the littleness of ego or the magnitude of God. Which one best describes you?

3. There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one you must learn to remember all the time. The lesson may seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it when you realize that it is true and is but a tribute to your power. You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision 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.

We have a responsibility to ourselves and one we must always keep in front of us. We are not the littleness we have come to believe in. We are not this body we think we see. We are not this illusion we move in. Our responsibility is to remember who and what we are, and never, ever be satisfied with less than our Truth. The reason we must see help in deciding is because we feel we are this littleness and deserve not much more. It is not about deserving as it is about who and what we are right now and forever more. We can escape from the littleness we have come to believe in. We can do that in a holy instant of time. We simply lay down all the beliefs we have come to believe in, for all the Truth we are.

4. 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 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.

If there is any doubt about what your function is, ask Spirit and you will be told. There is no doubt about the magnitude of who and what you are, for that is Truth. This is nothing we must work hard to get, simply stop and realize that we are there now. Can you present yourself in the magnitude you are in the world you believe in, as a tribute to you and not your littleness? Can you do that? But this is not something we must do alone. The Power of God within each of will be there for all of us. If we look for littleness we shall believe we have found it and it is us. If we look for the magnitude of who we are, we discover that it has been forever us.

5. I asked you earlier, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?" Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit 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 for Heaven or for hell, and brings you the awareness of what you decided for.

This is good for us to remember each time we ask 'decide for me' – each time we look at being a hostage to ego or a host to God. And Spirit will be there each time we have this thought, for that is It's function. We are forever host to God as God is Host to us. This can never change, but we can forget it. God has never left us, but we often believe we have left God. See the magnitude in you and you shall see it in your brother. See it in your brother and you shall see it in God. Each and every decision we make is always about Heaven or hell – and which one we choose to experience. Why choose the littleness of hell, when the magnitude of Heaven in your Truth.

6. The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your mind, 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. Decide for God through Him. For littleness, and the belief that you can be content with littleness, are decisions you make about yourself. The power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little, and believe that littleness can be blown up into a sense of magnitude that can content them. Neither give littleness, nor accept it. All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you, and in Whom you dwell. Touch no one, then, with littleness in the Name of Christ, eternal Host unto His Father.

Spirit will hold within our mind, our magnitude, clear, clean and perfect as it is, and it will not be touched by any gift of littleness offered us by our world. This is His part – our part is that we shall never deny what Spirit decides for us. We shall always decide for God through Spirit. We ask for help from Spirit and we must accept the help offered. Littleness is a result of our deciding on our own. Magnitude is our Truth. And we must never again see littleness in another, but only their magnitude. We neither give nor receive littleness.

7. In this season (Christmas) which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for 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.

When we are in the season of Christmas, remember that is a time celebrating the birth of our holiness, and that of our brother. Our task then or any time, is to see the holiness in our brother, to see the magnitude of who and what he is. God reaches us through our brother, and God reaches our brother through us. Such in the magnitude of our Truth.

8. Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind, and wander not in vain? It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it is sacrifice to accept anything less than glory. Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honor of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to understand its magnitude. Love is not little and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you give slip into nothingness.

Is it a chore for you to drop all thoughts of littleness from your mind? Is it difficult for you to want to wake in the glory of who you are in Truth? It is a sacrifice on your part to accept littleness when you are already magnitude. Learn with Spirit all that you have forgotten of how worthy you are to know the Love within you. The meaning of Love will never be yours in this world, and in Truth, no meaning is needed.

9. Holy child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace? Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.

Note that we again being called 'child of God' – just so that we do not forget we are but children with the innocence as only a child has. When do you suppose we will learn – we will remember – that the holiness of who we are within will give us the peace we seek? How long shall it take? Perhaps as much as a holy instant? We can learn to remember that the littleness we have come to accept is not what and who we are. We can learn also that the littleness we see of our brother is not his Truth as well. And again we are reminded that the Kingdom of God that is sought by so many, is present within us all, and has forever been.

10. Decide with me, who has 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 yourself, 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 needs not seek to find anything.

Nothing will ever content us except the Will of God, for the Will of God is our will as well. Our conflict is experienced because we think we have a will separate from God. That type of thinking is but of littleness. As God thinks, we think. As God loves, we love. Who God loves, we love. This is the beginning of our acceptance of our Truth – of our magnitude as to who and what we are. With this is our completeness known. No more shall we feel but a part instead we shall know we are the whole.

11. If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God and unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself, salvation will be given you. Yet think not you can substitute your plan for 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.

Remember how we continue to say "I do not know" in any situation? We do not know how to plan better than God – to will better than God – to be better than God, and yet we try again and again to do just that. If we but show a little willingness to release our plan of obtaining peace, we will be shown God's plan for us for peace. In that plan shall we be set free as we have forever been. In that plan shall we see other free as well. And we shall go forth and proudly proclaim so that all others may know as well. And in that moment shall we remember our Truth.

12. Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are. Hear not his appeal to 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.

See in every one the remembrance of God; see in them the Christ within them reflecting back to you. For as you see them, you shall see a reflection of you. Where you see others, you shall be there with them. As you hear the calls of others, recognize them as your calls also, and respond with what you are. Lay down all thoughts of littleness about you and your brother and the magnitude of you both shall be seen by all.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section IV. - Practicing the Holy Instant

1. This course is not beyond immediate learning, unless you believe that what God wills takes time. And this means only that you would rather delay the recognition that His Will is so. The holy instant is this instant and every instant. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness.

What is immediate learning to you? Is it meaning in the now, the holy instant of all that time truly is? Do you really believe that what God wills for you is hung in time? The holy instant is this instant and every instant. It is not something we believe was or might be later, it is now. Whenever you are ready for it, it shall be presented to you, you shall see it. And the decision for when it shall seen by you is yours alone to make. Just another decision for us to make, but we know how decision are to be made by now. How much do you want this holy instant? Enough to give up all thoughts you hold of the littleness you think you are/

2. Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God's. His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and no one beside Him.

Recall how we were told about the need for us practicing the holy instant – it all depends on our willingness to let our littleness go. It appears that so much always depends on our willingness. The holy instant we desire is as far as we wish to see it or as close as we can imagine it. Where is you desire? The more you will for it, the closer it shall appear. The salvation that we seek cannot be found in our own way of littleness. Any plans we may have had for salvation we gladly turn over to God and they shall be taken from us, assuming we let go of them. The peace we seek is of God and nowhere but in God shall we find peace.

3. Be humble before Him, and yet great in Him. And value no plan of the ego before the plan of God. For you leave empty your place in His plan, which you must fill if you would join with me, by your decision to join in any plan but His. I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom. Every allegiance to a plan of salvation apart from Him diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own mind. And yet it is your mind that is the host to Him.

We are called to fill our part in God's plan that shall release all littleness from our world. Will you answer the call? Do you really believe a better plan is available to you? Would the perfect host to the Perfect Host not abide in Truth? If in doubt, say 'decide for me'.

4. Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which your Father has placed Himself? This you will recognize in the holy instant, in which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but His. For there lies peace, perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its conditions. You can claim the holy instant any time and anywhere you want it. In your practice, try to give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. It is not there. Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know where it is, and can only deceive yourself.

In preparation for the holy instant, we are to show that we are willingly and gladly giving up all plans for salvation except the plan of God. We are also willing to meet the conditions of the plan of God. And again we are told we can claim the holy instant any time and anywhere we want it, but we must truly want it. As we practice, we attempt to actually give up every plan presented to us by ourselves for our salvation, and there are many plans already presented to us and yet to be presented to us. But in our practice, we continue to release those plans, and each moment of release, we affirm we truly want to experience the holy instant.

5. I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the extent to which you learn to accept me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours at once, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host of God depends on willingness, and not on time.

Do you accept again the call to make the holy instant yours immediately? All it requires is our own release from the littleness we believe in. It has nothing to do with time, but instead it is now.

6. The reason this course is simple is that truth is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious. You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of this reason, for if you do, it will be only because you prefer not to recognize it and not to let it go. The simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything.

This Course can be seen by some as simple and difficult by others. Truth is obscured by ego as it will do whatever it can to hold you where you now are – believing in the littleness you think you are. And we are told that there is a simple reason why we are not living in the holy instant right now and for all eternity – Do we give and receive perfect communication? Is our mind open only to receive and give Love? Do we see the Oneness of all others – no exceptions? Are you willing to accept everything and attempt to change nothing?

7. How can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them? The only way you could do that would be to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instant what it is. You believe you can harbor thoughts you would not share, and that salvation lies in keeping thoughts to yourself alone. For in private thoughts, known only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep what you would have alone, and share what you would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you, and with God Who surrounds all of you together.

You cannot answer any of those thoughts while you are still holding private thoughts – thoughts you believe are just yours – thoughts of separation. The holy instant is perfect communication – holding a thought of separation is not perfect communication. And there is the only reason you do not experience the holy instant now.

8. Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off, because you would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect communication while breaking communication holds value to you. Ask yourself honestly, "Would I want to have perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything that interferes with it go forever?" If the answer is no, then the Holy Spirit's readiness to give it to you is not enough to make it yours, for you are not ready to share it with Him. And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose it. For the holy instant is given and received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the single Will that governs all thought.

Each and every thought of separation you hold prevents you from the perfect communication waiting for you in the holy instant. And how do you answer the question asked above? How much do you want to have perfect communication and how much are you willing to let go to have it? And if you are not ready to release all you littleness, you are not ready for Spirit to show you how. And you cannot be the perfect host to the Perfect Host as long as you oppose the Plan of God for your salvation.

9. The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it. Atonement would not be if there were no need for it. You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is hidden from you. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself. Let the Holy Spirit's purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing.

Now how easy can it be for us? We can have thoughts not of love, but the key is that we are willing let them go. In our littleness we often believe we mush hold onto everything. As the children we forget we are, we have innocence. In our littleness we do not see ourselves as children so we are without the innocence. Innocence awaits us in the holy instant. If you think you can hide what you seek, you are believing in your littleness. You cannot hide from yourself your own Truth. But great resistance appears when you try to know your Truth. This is why Spirit is here for us – to have see differently – to show us our Truth and how to reach it – to show us to be a host to the Host and never a nothing to the littleness we saw ourselves as.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section V. - The Holy Instant and Special Relationships

1. The holy instant is the Holy Spirit's most useful learning device for teaching you love's meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understand anything. You would make no attempt to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not understand what anything means. You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.

We could say that the purpose of the holy instant to suspend judgment, to lay aside all thoughts of the past and future and then where would that have us be? Simply in our Truth – in Love – in the eternal that only exists. Without a past, we understand nothing, actually with a past we still understand nothing, but we believe we do. When we fail to judge, we simply are being our Truth.

2. The past is the ego's chief learning device, for it is in the past that you learned to define your own needs and acquired methods for meeting them on your own terms. We have said that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality.

Without a past, ego can teach us nothing. It does that even with the past, but we don't recognize that we are being taught nothing. From the past ego teaches us our needs, wants and the various ways of getting it all on our terms. When we enter a relationship with this attitude, we are limiting the love in that relationship. In the limitation of love, we experience guilt and guilt in a relationship makes it all unreal. We are told repeatedly that we cannot have it both ways – we must choose between love and fear –'decide for me'. If any doubt exists, separation is there, and with separation comes the feeling of being alone, even in a relationship. To feel alone is the denial of God, our brothers, and our Oneness.

3. You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can you understand it? To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation. For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies. How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can give you more than others? The past has taught you this. Yet the holy instant teaches you it is not so.

As long as we continue to love in a manner different from that of God, we will never understand the meaning of love. As long as we love others with conditions attached to that love, we are not loving as the Truth we are. As long as we attempt to find a special love in a special relationship, we shall truly love. Our salvation is not in a relationship, but within the Atonement. The past has taught us that we can love one brother more than another, but the holy instant shows us that this is impossible.

4. Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In His function as Interpreter of what you made, the Holy Spirit uses special relationships, which you have chosen to support the ego, as learning experiences that point to truth. Under His teaching, every relationship becomes a lesson in love.

Every relationship is a lesson in love. How difficult it is for us to accept that at times. Even those relationships you perceive as abusive were or are, a lesson in love. A special relationship – one in which we view another as separate – contains the ego version of love – a love which changes at any moment depending on the mood of either participant. This is changing love, so different from the love God has for us. When asked, Spirit will show us the relationship as a lesson in love. And if we decide not to learn that lesson in that relationship, we shall have the opportunity to learn it in another similar relationship. A point to remember in all relationships is this – there is within each of them a common denominator – you.

5. The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. Yet He also perceives that you have made special relationships, which He would purify and not let you destroy. However unholy the reason you made them may be, He can translate them into holiness by removing as much fear as you will let Him. You can place any relationship under His care and be sure that it will not result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness to have it serve no need but His. All the guilt in it arises from your use of it. All the love from His. Do not, then, be afraid to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship. Your only need is His.

Spirit sees us all as One. Spirit also sees the special relationships we have made and He will purify those relationships if we so ask. He will take the special relationship and show us a holy relationship by removing as much fear as we allow Him to take. How much fear are you willing to let go of? Spirit will take any relationship and assure us of no pain from it, if we offer Him our willingness to have it serve no other purpose than that of Spirit. Are you willing to let go of this as well? All the guilt in a relationship comes from our perceiving it as special; all Love comes from the relationship as Spirit uses it for teaching purposes.

6. Any relationship you would substitute for another has not been offered to the Holy Spirit for His use. There is no substitute for love. If you would attempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you have placed less value on one and more on the other. You have not only separated them, but you have also judged against both. Yet you had judged against yourself first, or you would never have imagined that you needed your brothers as they were not. Unless you had seen yourself as without love, you could not have judged them so like you in lack.

Over and over we remember that there is no substitute for love, and as long as we remember this, we shall see only love. When we forget, when we look to another for something we believe we are lacking, we shall not find love, only a poor substitute from ego. With any thought of lack, is the thought of separation. As we see a lack in another, we see that lack in us. Seeing lack is seeing no love.

7. The ego's use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes even farther; one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot find it because it is not real.

Seek what the ego offers and we shall never find it, for it is not real. It may appear like reality to us, but we quickly see that it is not. It is not Truth, not real.

8. Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present.

This is actually comforting to read – that everyone of uon this earth – in this world we make – has formed special relationships with others; it is what we do as we judge others. Special relationships are not known in Heaven, and Spirit sees none here as well. Spirit uses the holy instant to show the holy relationship, Spirit uses the holy instant to show us that without a past, there is nothing to judge another by; all are seen as the One we are. Spirit shows us what it will be like when we enter the holy instant – the moment of only the present.

9. God knows you now. He remembers nothing, having always known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instant reflects His knowing by bringing all perception out of the past, thus removing the frame of reference you have built by which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frame of reference is simply God. The Holy Spirit's timelessness lies only here. For in the holy instant, free of the past, you see that love is in you, and you have no need to look without and snatch love guiltily from where you thought it was.

God knows us now because only the now is. As we are now, we have forever been in the Mind of God. There is no past or future to God, for only this holy instant exists. In the holy instant we shall see what we have sought – our Truth – the Love we are – the image and likeness of God – the eternal being of All That Is. In the holy instant we have a contentment beyond all contentment – the Peace of God.

10. All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because the blessing is not limited. In the holy instant the Sonship gains as one, and united in your blessing it becomes one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it. God loves every brother as He loves you; neither less nor more. He needs them all equally, and so do you. In time, you have been told to offer miracles as I direct, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you. Yet in the holy instant you unite directly with God, and all your brothers join in Christ. Those who are joined in Christ are in no way separate. For Christ is the Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ.

Every relationship we have ever imagined is blessed in the holy instant for there is no limit to the blessing. In the holy instant all relationships become as One. And the meaning of love is the meaning God has for it. We may not yet know the meaning of love, but we know instantly when we are not experiencing the love of God. In the Unity we experience in the holy instant, we can not see, feel, or experience separation, for none exists.

11. Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has created It beyond judgment, out of His need to extend His Love. With love in you, you have no need except to extend it. In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs, for there is only one. For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God. And it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be understood.

Do you honestly believe you can judge God? Or any of the Creation of God? God created only Love. Can you believe you can judge Love? The holy instant will have us in eternity – our Truth – and there shall we know the meaning and understand love.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section VI. - The Holy Instant and the Laws of God

1. It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit's teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not, because you would have him so.

Ever done or seen it – where one person is played against another, and peace is present in both relationships? Impossible. As seen by Spirit, all relationships are equal and as such do not conflict with each other. If you have faith in you, you will have faith in the relationships you are in – if you have faith in you. If you have faith, then guilt shall not be present. And guilt will always be there as long we try to have someone be who they are not just for our happiness.

2. You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant we share our faith in God's Son because we recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our appreciation of his worth we cannot doubt his holiness. And so we love him.

Are you truly unwilling to accept that you are perfect love? And are you willing to continue to see out there for what you believe is out there to make you happy? Perfect faith is offered us in place of all doubt we hold. And the perfect faith in us is within our brother as well, or it would not be perfect. And in the holy instant we so love our brother.

3. All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness is power, and by sharing it, it gains in strength. If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses. Someone must always lose if you perceive yourself as weak. Yet there is another interpretation of relationships that transcends the concept of loss of power completely.

All separation vanishes as holiness (wholeness) is seen by all. Holiness (wholeness) is power, and it gains in strength as we share it with all others. In separation, we seek to gratify our needs through another, and our strength is then weak. And someone must lose something if we see ourselves as weak. But there is another interpretation of relationships which does not show any loss of power.

4. You do not find it difficult to believe that when another calls on God for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that when God answers him, your hope of answer is diminished. On the contrary, you are more inclined to regard his success as witness to the possibility of yours. That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict.

We believe that when another calls for healing and love, that we too, are calling. And we believe that God will answer the other and will answer us as well. We believe all this because somewhere within us we believe that God is but an idea, and we have faith in that idea, and we see our idea grow. We accept anything and everything about God, but we find it almost impossible at times, to accept that the idea that God is, we are also. And like God, we grow as well. And like God, we have no loss nor gain, simply eternal peace. As God is, we are. Why do you suppose we find that difficult to accept?

5. In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible. For gain and loss are both accepted, and so no one is aware that perfect love is in him. In the holy instant you recognize the idea of love in you, and unite this idea with the Mind that thought it, and could not relinquish it. By holding it within itself, there is no loss. The holy instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind, experiencing not loss but completion. From this it follows you can only give. And this is love, for this alone is natural under the laws of God. In the holy instant the laws of God prevail, and only they have meaning. The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning at all. When the Son of God accepts the laws of God as what he gladly wills, it is impossible that he be bound, or limited in any way. In that instant he is as free as God would have him be. For the instant he refuses to be bound, he is not bound.

In the world we make, in the world of ego, of scarcity and lack, love is without meaning and peace impossible to have. In that world we accept gain and loss as true. No one is aware of the perfection within them. In the holy instant, we recognize not only the perfection in us, the Truth within us, but the Oneness we all are. In the holy instant there is no loss nor any gain. And so we see the holy instant as a lesson for us as to how we shall hold them in our minds – as the Oneness we are. Within the holy instant as the Laws of God and only they have meaning. The laws of the world are in a past that no longer exists and therefore are meaningless. If we choose to accept the Laws of God, it will be impossible for us to feel the limitations of this world. If we choose – In the instant we refuse our own bondage, we shall be free.

6. In the holy instant nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed. Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside. No one who has not yet experienced the lifting of the veil, and felt himself drawn irresistibly into the light behind it, can have faith in love without fear. Yet the Holy Spirit gives you this faith, because He offered it to me and I accepted it. Fear not the holy instant will be denied you, for I denied it not. And through me the Holy Spirit gives it unto you, as you will give it. Let no need you perceive obscure your need of this. For in the holy instant you will recognize the only need the Sons of God share equally, and by this recognition you will join with me in offering what is needed.

All that is happens in the holy instant. Nothing happens that never was. The veil of darkness that attempted to hide the Light is lifted and we are drawn into that Light and we become One with the Light. Never doubt for a moment that the holy instant has been denied you. It shall be given unto you when you are ready for its acceptance. In the meantime, we know what we must do.

7. It is through us that peace will come. Join me in the idea of peace, for in ideas minds can communicate. If you would give yourself as your Father gives His Self, you will learn to understand Selfhood. And therein is love's meaning understood. But remember that understanding is of the mind, and only of the mind. Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in the mind with it. If you were not an idea, and nothing but an idea, you could not be in full communication with all that ever was. Yet as long as you prefer to be something else, or would attempt to be nothing else and something else together, you will not remember the language of communication, which you know perfectly.

Did you ever think of yourself as something other than an idea? Of course we all have. But we are but an idea within the Mind of God and because we are an idea, we can communicate perfectly with all others. When we believe we are more than an idea, we cease our communication skills and wander in strange lands with strange languages.

8. In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of communication with all your brothers is remembered with Him. For communication is remembered together, as is truth. There is no exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone, and with it goes the whole basis for exclusion. Without its source exclusion vanishes. And this permits your Source, and that of all your brothers, to replace it in your awareness. God and the power of God will take Their rightful place in you, and you will experience the full communication of ideas with ideas. Through your ability to do this you will learn what you must be, for you will begin to understand what your Creator is, and what His creation is along with Him.

First person:In the holy instant God is remembered by me and the language of communications with all my brothers is remembered as well. Communication remembered together is truth. There exists no exclusion in the holy instant because no past is present, and with the past goes the entire basis for exclusion. Without the past exclusion vanishes, judgment is no longer used. This permits my Source and the Source of all my brothers, to replace it in our awareness as well. God and Its Power shall take their rightful place in me, and I well experience the total communication of ideas with ideas – the total communication of my brothers with me. Through this ability in me, I shall learn what I am, for I shall begin to understand what God is, and what my brothers are along with God.
Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section VII. - The Needless Sacrifice

1. Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and always obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there is no other love. This is the only love that is fully given and fully returned. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the basis for any relationship in which the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks is special.

Ever been in a 'special relationship' where you were completely satisfied 100% of the time; where love was freely given and freely returned; where nothing was asked of you or of the other person? You will never find such a relationship in the ego world – your world you make. But that describes the relationships we have with God.

2. The ego establishes relationships only to get something. And it would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt. It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for the ego believes that anger makes friends. This is not its statement, but it is its purpose. For the ego really believes that it can get and keep by making guilty. This is its one attraction; an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all, except that no one recognizes it. For the ego always seems to attract through love, and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt.

Not new news, but it does need to repeated for us – special relationships are only for the purpose of someone getting something from them – no other purpose – no intention of unconditional love – simply what can I get from this relationship. We have all been in them – perhaps someone took something from us, or we from them. And these relationships, looking back on them, had anger in them, had guilt in them, and we often found ourselves asking why are we in them.

3. The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is, and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here.

So what is the pay-off for us in these relationships? What value have we given them that we find so attractive? The attraction of guilt is unhealthy for us. We know from experience that it will slowly eat away from the inside out. When we accepted guilt, when we entered into the special relationship, we did so in the darkness of ego, and not the Light of Spirit. "Decide for me" is key to unlocking the darkness we hover in guilt.

4. We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become.

Here once again is the lesson that what we hold within us, stays within us – we cannot give it away. We may think we can, we may try many times, but to no avail. You cannot give away your anger, guilt or any other fear to another. Ego will have you believe you can, only to discover later that you still are holding it.

5. It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it is this chain the Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who cannot make himself host to the ego. In the name of his release, and in the Name of Him Who would release him, let us look more closely at the relationships the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge them truly. For it is certain that if you will look at them, you will offer them gladly to Him. What He can make of them you do not know, but you will become willing to find out, if you are willing first to perceive what you have made of them.

Are you ready to let go of the chains you have made, holding you to the guilt you believe in? This is precisely what Spirit is waiting for – for us to offer those chains so the Truth may be seed. Spirit will take those chains instantly from you as soon as you so ask. Are you ready to release your hold on them? Are you ready to see no value in them.

6. In one way or another, every relationship the ego makes is based on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. The "sacrifice," which it regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. For it would prefer to attack directly, and avoid delaying what it really wants. Yet the ego acknowledges "reality" as it sees it, and recognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. Yet to make guilty is direct attack, although it does not seem to be. For the guilty expect attack, and having asked for it they are attracted to it.

Ever sacrifice something in a relationship only to become bitter later? Ever believe you were doing the right thing to make the relationship better and later couldn't believe what you did? Once in a 'special relationship" you receive guilt and then attract attack and wonder why.

7. In such insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do want. For each one thinks that he has sacrificed something to the other, and hates him for it. Yet this is what he thinks he wants. He is not in love with the other at all. He merely believes he is in love with sacrifice. And for this sacrifice, which he demands of himself, he demands that the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself as well. Forgiveness becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another is to lose him. It is only by attack without forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt that holds all its relationships together.

An excellent term 'insane relationship' for a special relationship. Ever found yourself so lost in the relationship that you forgot what it was that attracted you into in the beginning? And here is the one key we must hold onto – forgiveness does not mean to lose another. Forgiveness is merely our way of seeing the relationship in another light. We lose no one or nothing, for we never have anyone or anything.

8. Yet they only seem to be together. For relationships, to the ego, mean only that bodies are together. It is always this that the ego demands, and it does not object where the mind goes or what it thinks, for this seems unimportant. As long as the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego the mind is private, and only the body can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they bring the body of another closer or farther. And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as good or bad. What makes another guilty and holds him through guilt is "good." What releases him from guilt is "bad," because he would no longer believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be "gone."

Are any 'special relationships' ever together? Is not the holy relationship seen as One? Does the body have any meaning in a relationship? What is it about another that you find so attractive – the outer façade or the inner beauty?

9. Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would "bless" all unions. And those who are united at its altar accept suffering and sacrifice as the price of union. In their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness and yet dedicated to the continuance of loneliness, each seeks relief from guilt by increasing it in the other. For each believes that this decreases guilt in him. The other seems always to be attacking and wounding him, perhaps in little ways, perhaps "unconsciously," yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury of those joined at the ego's altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For what the ego really wants you do not realize.

Just reading the first line makes one stop and pause – these gifts that are offered you by ego are to be seen as a blessing? No thanks. Suffering and sacrifice are not reality to the Son of God – they are but illusions within a mind that is in darkness. Look at those relationships once again and ask yourself 'what is in it for me'? Do you get an answer you delight in? Do you want additional wounds and further attacks? What value are they to you?

10. Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship which the ego has "blessed," for anger is its blessing. Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the only basis the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remain attractive to you. Yet remember this; to be with a body is not communication. And if you think it is, you will feel guilty about communication and will be afraid to hear the Holy Spirit, recognizing in His Voice your own need to communicate.

If you discover that you are angry, rest assured you are in some sort of a 'blessed special relationship' offered to you by ego. Anger, we are told, comes in many forms and always brings guilt. We know we cannot give anger away so the resulting guilt is ours as well. Bottom line here is that we have no one else to blame for the anger and guilt we are feeling. Ego needs guilt, do you?

11. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear. And how can He communicate with you, while you believe that to communicate is to make yourself alone? It is clearly insane to believe that by communicating you will be abandoned. And yet many do believe it. For they think their minds must be kept private or they will lose them, but if their bodies are together their minds remain their own. The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which they would keep minds apart. For bodies cannot forgive. They can only do as the mind directs.

So again we must look at how we see bodies and what we believe their purpose is. The Holy Spirit uses the body as a means of communication. One body does not communicate with another. The mind is not ones alone but rather One Mind. We think we are this body and without we are nothing, but just the contrary is true: We are not this body and we are All That Is. The more we focus on the body, the less we see our Truth.

12. The illusion of the autonomy of the body and its ability to overcome loneliness is but the working of the ego's plan to establish its own autonomy. As long as you believe that to be with a body is companionship, you will be compelled to attempt to keep your brother in his body, held there by guilt. And you will see safety in guilt and danger in communication. For the ego will always teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the cause of loneliness. And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, many have learned it.

Do you really believe that another body is what companionship is all about? What happens when that body is not present with you? Does guilt ever solve anything? What is the answer to loneliness? And this Course is about 'unlearning' what we have come to believe.

13. Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt. It is the Holy Spirit's teaching function to instruct those who believe communication to be damnation that communication is salvation. And He will do so, for the power of God in Him and you is joined in a real relationship so holy and so strong, that it can overcome even this without fear.

' **Decide for me' is our constant request to Spirit – let us see the salvation in communication – let us see the holy relationship present before us.**

14. It is through the holy instant that what seems impossible is accomplished, making it evident that it is not impossible. In the holy instant guilt holds no attraction, since communication has been restored. And guilt, whose only purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here. Here there is no concealment, and no private thoughts. The willingness to communicate attracts communication to it, and overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your completion, in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. In the protection of your wholeness, all are invited and made welcome. And you understand that your completion is God's, Whose only need is to have you be complete. For your completion makes you His in your awareness. And here it is that you experience yourself as you were created, and as you are.

Only with ego, is the impossible impossible. With Spirit, nothing is seen as impossible, for everything is seen in love. Impossible is from guilt, anger and all other fears. As we allow ourselves to become willing to communicate with others, loneliness once felt is forgotten. We experience the wholeness (holiness) and completeness – our Truth.
Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section VIII. - The Only Real Relationship

1. The holy instant does not replace the need for learning, for the Holy Spirit must not leave you as your Teacher until the holy instant has extended far beyond time. For a teaching assignment such as His, He must use everything in this world for your release. He must side with every sign or token of your willingness to learn of Him what the truth must be. He is swift to utilize whatever you offer Him on behalf of this. His concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of your fear of forgiveness, which He perceives as clearly as He knows forgiveness is release, He will teach you to remember that forgiveness is not loss, but your salvation. And that in complete forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely.

First person: The holy instant does not replace my need for learning and the Holy Spirit will not leave me as my Teacher until the holy instant is extended beyond all time. Spirit will use everything in my world for my release. Spirit will side with every sign and token of my willingness to learn what my truth must be. Spirit swiftly uses what I offer for my release. Spirit's concern and care for me are limitless. In the face of my fear of forgiveness, Spirit sees my forgiveness as my release. From Spirit, I shall learn that forgiveness is not my loss, but rather my salvation. And that when I experience complete forgiveness where I recognize that there is nothing to forgive, I shall be absolved totally.

2. Hear Him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. You but seek in them what you have thrown away. And through them you will never learn the value of what you have cast aside, but still desire with all your heart. Let us join together in making the holy instant all that there is, by desiring that it be all that there is. God's Son has such great need of your willingness to strive for this that you cannot conceive of need so great. Behold the only need that God and His Son share, and will to meet together. You are not alone in this. The will of your creations calls to you, to share your will with them. Turn, then, in peace from guilt to God and them.

Listen, hear, and learn from Spirit that we have no need for special relationships. We see in those special relationship what we have thrown away. We enter in the holy instant making it all that there is by our desire. Our brother has such great need of our willingness to strive for this that we cannot begin to comprehend how great it is. We share this with God, we share this with all others, we share this as the Oneness we are. See only love where you look, and cast out all guilt you have been carrying.

3. Relate only with what will never leave you, and what you can never leave. The loneliness of God's Son is the loneliness of his Father. Refuse not the awareness of your completion, and seek not to restore it to yourself. Fear not to give redemption over to your Redeemer's Love. He will not fail you, for He comes from One Who cannot fail. Accept your sense of failure as nothing more than a mistake in who you are. For the holy host of God is beyond failure, and nothing that he wills can be denied. You are forever in a relationship so holy that it calls to everyone to escape from loneliness, and join you in your love. And where you are must everyone seek, and find you there.

What is it that will never leave you and you will never be able to leave? Become aware of your completeness and accept the salvation offered by forgiveness. Continue to be with Spirit for Spirit shall never fail you – Spirit can never fail you. Failure is of the ego, mistakes are easily corrected. In Truth we are beyond any failure. We seek the Oneness and therein never experience loneliness.

4. Think but an instant on this: God gave the Sonship to you, to ensure your perfect creation. This was His gift, for as He withheld Himself not from you, He withheld not His creation. Nothing that ever was created but is yours. Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. For all its parts are joined in God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. Christ knows of no separation from His Father, Who is His one relationship, in which He gives as His Father gives to Him.

Read this paragraph several times and allow its message to seep into your mind, holding onto its thoughts as long as you can. – God gave us the Sonship – the Oneness of us all – to insure our perfect creation. This is God's gift containing All That Is. Nothing has been withheld from us – nothing created by God is not already ours. Can you comprehend the totality of All That Is? Nothing exists that we already are not One with.

5. The Holy Spirit is God's attempt to free you of what He does not understand. And because of the Source of the attempt, it will succeed. The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God does, for He would teach you what you do not understand. God would respond to every need, whatever form it takes. And so He keeps this channel open to receive His communication to you, and yours to Him. God does not understand your problem in communication, for He does not share it with you. It is only you who believe that it is understandable. The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable, and yet He understands it because you made it.

You might see the Holy Spirit as the missing link we seek to discover in finding our Truth. Spirit was given us by God so that communication with God is forever open. God sees no problem in communication, only we do, and why is that not so surprising?

6. In the Holy Spirit alone lies the awareness of what God cannot know, and what you do not understand. It is His holy function to accept them both, and by removing every element of disagreement, to join them into one. He will do this because it is His function. Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it must be possible because it is the Will of God. And let Him Whose teaching is only of God teach you the only meaning of relationships. For God created the only relationship that has meaning, and that is His relationship with you.

And what is it that God cannot know? Could it be our belief in illusions? In fears? In everything that does not exist? God only knows of Truth. Spirit is here for us so that we can be shown Truth buried in our fears. Any time we say the word 'impossible' we will remember to also say 'Decide for me'. And from the teachings of Spirit, we shall remember the meaning of a holy relationship.
Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section IX. - The Holy Instant and the Attraction of God

1. As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift to vision that is accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it is needful for you to learn just what this shift entails, so you will become willing to make it permanent. Given this willingness it will not leave you, for it is permanent. Once you have accepted it as the only perception you want, it is translated into knowledge by the part that God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is the only step in it He understands. Therefore, in this there will be no delay when you are ready for it. God is ready now, but you are not.

There are but only two ways of seeing others – as bodies or in Truth. Remember those people who you can vividly recall their moments with you, but fail to remember what they looked like? Remember those you have seen and remember vividly everything about them? Those are the ones you judge and the others are the ones you saw beyond their outward appearance. Perhaps you remember the first time you saw the 'aura' of another – for that fleeting moment frozen in time. You saw the 'Great Rays' of light surrounding the form but not the form? Seeing others as beyond the form they appear as is what we are striving for.

2. Our task is but to continue, as fast as possible, the necessary process of looking straight at all the interference and seeing it exactly as it is. For it is impossible to recognize as wholly without gratification what you think you want. The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it impossible. For communication must be unlimited in order to have meaning, and deprived of meaning, it will not satisfy you completely. Yet it remains the only means by which you can establish real relationships, which have no limits, having been established by God.

We are told here that we must continue to look beyond the body – to see beyond the form – to see the Oneness presented to us. If we see a body, we see separation. If we see separation, we are still believing in what we are not.

3. In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you. But in order to see this, it is necessary to give up every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose you would share with it. For the ego would limit everyone to a body for its own purposes, and while you think it has a purpose, you will choose to utilize the means by which it tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment. This will never be accomplished. Yet you have surely recognized that the ego, whose goals are altogether unattainable, will strive for them with all its might, and will do so with the strength that you have given it.

To see beyond the body, the form of ego is our goal and like all goals of Truth, will be met with many obstacles of ego. Seeing the body for anything other than what ego says it is, is seeing beyond separation. Seeing beyond separation is seeing beyond ego.

4. It is impossible to divide your strength between Heaven and hell, God and the ego, and release your power to creation, which is the only purpose for which it was given you. Love would always give increase. Limits are demanded by the ego, and represent its demands to make little and ineffectual. Limit your sight of a brother to his body, which you will do as long as you would not release him from it, and you have denied his gift to you. His body cannot give it. And seek it not through yours. Yet your minds are already continuous, and their union need only be accepted and the loneliness in Heaven is gone.

Not a new lesson, but one needed to be repeated many times. We have to choose between Love and fear always. If we see our brother as a body, we see him limited in all ways. And if we see him limited, we see ourselves as limited as well. We seek from him as body something he cannot give as a body. Our minds are joined but we are not aware of the Oneness.

5. If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the eternal. No one can hear Him speak of this and long remain willing to linger here. For it is your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships that any limit is impossible. Would you not exchange your little relationships for this? For the body is little and limited, and only those whom you would see without the limits the ego would impose on them can offer you the gift of freedom.

Are you ready and willing to offer your thought of littleness, your thought of who you are not, to the Holy Spirit so that who you are can be shown to you? Within us all in the yearning to return to a peace beyond words, to a feeling beyond understanding. Are you ready for the exchange? Are you willing to let go of all fears?

6. You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception, and no idea of all the loveliness that you could see. But this you must remember; the attraction of guilt opposes the attraction of God. His attraction for you remains unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, you can turn away from love. What you invest in guilt you withdraw from God. And your sight grows weak and dim and limited, for you have attempted to separate the Father from the Son, and limit their communication. Seek not Atonement in further separation. And limit not your vision of God's Son to what interferes with his release, and what the Holy Spirit must undo to set him free. For his belief in limits has imprisoned him.

We truly have no idea of the limits we have made on our perception, and no idea of what we could be seeing. It is these limits that hold us in our world of darkness. It is these limits that prevent us from experiencing all that we are. We have but to look upon a brother and see him not in the body he believes in, but in the Truth he shall forever be. As we see him free, we too, are freed from our dark prison.

7. When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no value on it as a means of getting anything, then there will be no interference in communication and your thoughts will be as free as God's. As you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to use the body only for purposes of communication, and renounce its use for separation and attack which the ego sees in it, you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In the holy instant there are no bodies, and you experience only the attraction of God. Accepting it as undivided you join Him wholly, in an instant, for you would place no limits on your union with Him. The reality of this relationship becomes the only truth that you could ever want. All truth is here.

Re-read the first line several times. This is the pay-off for letting go of who we think we are as bodies – the freedom that we are in the Truth we are. Each time we allow Spirit to remind us what the only purpose of the body is, we will remember that we have no need for this body, this form that we have given such great value. When we no longer have a need for a body, we will no longer see bodies – we will see only the Oneness that exists.

Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section X. - The Time of Rebirth

1. It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit's function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.

You can tell from the writing that this was given to Helen around Christmas time. Within our dream, we have the power to delay the union between us and God. Within our dream is what we call time, in reality, in eternity, time is unknown. But Spirit will use what we have within our dream to lead us beyond its illusion. Christmas time – any time – is truly a time for celebrating our rebirth – our coming into the world of Love.

2. The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you.

Sacrifice is not required, nor has it ever been. Sacrifice is merely placing an imaginary limitation of ourselves, and this limitation hampers us from giving and receiving. Within the holy instant our unlimited power is again known to us. What greater gift could we possibly receive or possibly desire?

3. We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.

We can only give as we are – in the Oneness of Truth. When we accept that as Truth, fears of all types hold nothing for us. In the Oneness we see everyone joined in perfect union. We give that gift to a brother and receive as well for ourselves. And in offering it to one brother, we have offered it to all brothers.

4. It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.

No need to wait for the season – do it now! Make the time of Christ now. Only one shift in our perception is necessary – that is all it took to have this dream as well.

5. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

This is one of the more profound paragraphs for me in the Course. I am to look at everything – if I see love, it is real – if I see fear, it is unreal. And then I discover that only love exists and fear is only an illusion. Then I also discover that sacrifice is an act of fear, not love. All of a sudden I have a load of thoughts to lay aside – false beliefs I had believe in. And now I stand with but the one truth – Love – nothing else exists. It is either Love or it is unreal. No longer must I sacrifice so that another may get something. If I wish to give anything to another, I simply give without a thought of sacrifice.

6. As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. You are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear.

Read this carefully and then ask yourself if you wish to continue to play host to ego? Have you not had enough deceptions in your life? Have you not had your fill of guilt – and other fears?

7. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, perhaps, but the other to be destroyed. For you see love as destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you seem to be both destroyer and destroyed in part, but able to be neither completely. And this you think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you.

Here is a question many of us are even fearful of answering to ourselves – how much do we fear God? And then how about why do we fear God? When is the last time you chose God over ego and was disappointed in the results?

8. You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed the ego's treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from Him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.

And here is an ego tactic unveiled – no one demands anything of you, but you demand of yourself the sacrifice you believe is required. But you would rather give this blame to others than accept the insanity that produced it. Does God demand any sacrifice from you? Does God demand any sacrifice period? God is completely satisfied with you just as you are, why can't you accept yourself as well?

9. You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. Nor can you be partial host to it. You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make. And yet it is the recognition of the decision, just as it is, that makes the decision so easy. Salvation is simple, being of God, and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.

One thing we learn over and over is that no partiality exists in this dream – it is an either/or situation – either God or ego. We cannot play partial host to both. We must choose, we must decide 'Decide for me". What we seek is not out there, but waits for us within. All answers to all questions are forever present.
Chapter 15.

THE HOLY INSTANT

Section XI. - Christmas as the End of Sacrifice

1. Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making. And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where it is not. Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you. And you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the Thought that has been given you. When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.

Do you ever think of how many gifts you give because you feel you must instead of because you want to or can afford to give them? I remember from my religious prior belief system that one had to show up for church on Christmas and Easter or else – else what still is a mystery to me. And why only those two days? Have you ever given a gift to someone as bargaining tool perhaps, or as a show of anything but love?

2. The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there already, by recognizing that His Host is One, and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love must be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which He protects, and Whose power protects Him.

Within each of us is the 'star of Bethlehem' shining forever from within the Heaven we are. The Christ Spirit within each of us demands nothing of us, and we demand nothing of our brothers. No sacrifice is ever required of us, nor is one ever expected. As we see the Oneness of All That Is, we see within us the Presence of All That Is. In such presence no fear is ever possible. In that presence no harm can happen to the Son of God.

3. This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. And without sacrifice there love must be.

No need to wait until Christmas season as the calendar indicates – everyday is a day of celebration of life. Give to the Holy Spirit everything that would harm you. What can harm the Son of God? What do you believe can harm you? Give that to Spirit. Give it all, and leave no trace. As it is taken from you, pain and sacrifice and littleness are taken from you as well. And what remains is what will forever remain – Love.

4. You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invite them back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be. What you exclude from yourself seems fearful, for you endow it with fear and try to cast it out, though it is part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the "conflict" of Heaven and hell in him by casting Heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell, without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely?

Love brings peace, sacrifice brings guilt. What gift have you opened today? Who have you excluded from your celebration of life? Who have you judge unworthy to partake of peace? And then you ask yourself why life seems to be hell?

5. As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others. For who could thrust Heaven and its Creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And who could suffer sacrifice and loss without attempting to restore himself? Yet how could you accomplish this yourself, when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the deprivation? Deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack is justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love.

Here is but another example of insanity defined: you believe in depriving yourself – sacrifice – and then believe that attack is your salvation and then you see sacrifice as love. That is beyond thinking. That is simply not sane.

6. So is it that, in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it. Yet you find not love. It is impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. The meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning apart from you. It is what you prefer to keep that has no meaning, while all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe together in its meaning. Unless the universe were joined in you it would be apart from God, and to be without Him is to be without meaning.

So we seek love but do not know what to expect when we find it, so we believe it is sacrifice and then call it love. But this is not love. As long as we deny truth, we will not recognize love even if it is before us, which it is. We prefer to hold onto descriptions of no-meanings, while within us the answer to all things.

7. In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body's interference, and where there is communication there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed. Where, then, is sacrifice? The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself.

In the holy instant is the eternal moment of Truth. No thought of the body exists and only peace is experienced. Jesus was born into this world to once again teach love. And destroying a body in no way destroys love, as long you have given the body no value. Sacrifice of the body means nothing, and what is of the mind cannot be sacrificed. Sacrifice cannot be found anywhere – it does not exist – it is not real.

8. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son's creation.

This is truly the season of lights for darkness has no place in joy and peace. We demand nothing from others and give only love. Is there any gift greater than love?

9. God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and lets Him enter and abide where He would be. And by your welcome does He welcome you into Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome Him is returned to Him. And we but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves. Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them. And by allowing Him to enter, the remembrance of the Father enters with Him, and with Him they remember the only relationship they ever had, and ever want to have.

First person: God offers me thanks for welcoming God into my sanctuary of Light, and God enters where God has forever been. By my welcome God also welcomes me into God, for what is contained within God, is contained within me. And I celebrate the Oneness as I share it with all others. And those that welcome God within, experience the Oneness of us all.

10. This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say, then, to your brother:

I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself. I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together.

So how is this for a verse of your Christmas card?

So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different by making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.

You can start this new year resolution right now, you do not have to wait.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section I. - True Empathy

1. To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand. That is the ego's interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does not understand suffering, and would have you teach it is not understandable. When He relates through you, He does not relate through your ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, understanding that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion.

It is very clear that the empathy of ego is the opposite of that which Spirit will teach us. Can we possibly join another in their suffering? Do we want special relationships? Do you understand suffering? Does anyone? Can we possibly think that healing is not only of the mind?

2. The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people. These it selects out, and joins with. And it never joins except to strengthen itself. Having identified with what it thinks it understands, the ego sees itself and would increase itself by sharing what is like itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes to weaken, and to weaken is always to attack. You do not know what empathizing means. Yet of this you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relate through you, you will empathize with strength, and will gain in strength and not in weakness.

And again we are told we need do nothing – other than simply sit quietly and allow Spirit to work through us. Think about the possibility of the ego strengthening itself? Can nothing be strengthened by nothing? The ego is force, but you are Power.

3. Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything you value to come of a relationship. You choose neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from the past. And there is nothing from the past that you would share, for there is nothing from the past that you would keep. Do not use empathy to make the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let healing be done for you. Keep but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge any situation, and to determine your response by judging it.

This is what I must remember: I do not want anything of value to come from any relationship. I can neither hurt the relationship nor heal it. Why? Because I do not know what healing is. What I was taught in a past that never existed is nothing – no value. Would I try to take that of no value and believe it can do anything for me? And again I am told to simply step aside and allow the healing to be done for me. Focus your mind only on this:

I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest. I have invited Him, and He is here. I need do nothing except not to interfere.

I am not alone. I need do nothing. So simple to write and yet they appear difficult for me to remember.

4. 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. He will not desert you, but be sure that you desert not Him. Humility is strength in this sense only; that to recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize and accept the fact that He does know. You are not sure that He will do His part, because you have never yet done yours completely. You cannot know how to respond to what you do not understand. Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego's triumphant use of empathy for its glory.

True empathy is of Spirit only. I will learn the interpretation of Spirit as I allow Spirit to use me, to show my strengths and not my weaknesses. Spirit will not desert me and I know within me that I shall not and cannot desert Spirit. My humility is my strength, and to state that I do not know is to declare that Spirit does. Although there is a part of me that does not know if Spirit will do that Which It does, there is also a part of me that knows without doubt that Spirit will do what is required. I may not always do what I am to do, but Spirit only knows how to do what It does. I may not know how to respond because I do not understand, but Spirit understands for me. I need do nothing and I am not alone.

5. The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother. And yet you recognize no triumph but this. This is not knowledge, and the form of empathy which would bring this about is so distorted that it would imprison what it would release. The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet they have a Redeemer. Attempt to teach 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.

Do you see how easily we get confused by our roles here in this world? We all too often forget that it is Spirit that will teach us – will lead us, and not the other way around. We are His learner, and He our Teacher. What we think we know of the world we offer to Spirit and we are then taught by Him. It is His Perception we perceive with. It is His Strength that carries us forward.

6. The meaning of love is lost in any relationship that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there. The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God that 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. I have 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 merely because they conflict, since they always contain some 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.

Remember from the Introduction to the Course how we were told that the meaning of love is beyond us? Is it any clearer to you to be told that the power of love is it's meaning? But look at the power of love – within the strength of God. It is no wonder that we are unable to understand the meaning of love. And there is no reason for us to try to understand – anything! Acceptance is what we do in place of 'understanding' – simply accept what is being presented to us and learn from it. We need not judge the requests of others, simply accept them as they are – as we are.

7. You will attempt to do this only in secrecy. And you will think that by meeting the needs of one you do not jeopardize another, because you keep them separate and secret from each other. That is not the way, for it leads not to life and truth. No needs will long be left unmet if you leave them all to Him Whose function is to meet them. That is His function, and not yours. He will not meet them secretly, for He would share everything you give through Him. 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.

Could we possibly do anything in secret? When we have tried in the past to do just that, we believe we were separate from all others, which we know now is not true. Everything we are is shared with everyone else – it is all about the Oneness we know we are. We are not different from any brother – we are the same.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section II. - The Power of Holiness

1. You may still think that holiness is impossible to understand, because you cannot see how it can be extended to include everyone. And you have been told that it must include everyone to be holy. Concern yourself not with the extension of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand. Nor do you do them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you do not do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship when you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being part of them.

Each time I read 'holiness' I see 'wholeness' – that of being complete – being One. Wayne Dyer wrote that we pay electric bills and yet never see electricity. We know it is there but we cannot see it. The same is true here – we cannot see holiness but we see the results of holiness. We are told not to concern ourselves with the extension of holiness. Are we not used by Spirit as It's conductors of holiness – it simply flows through us to others. We are not to wonder how but to allow the process. To put it straight forward – all we have to do is nothing – not to stop the flow but to allow it.

2. There is a tendency to fragment, and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding, or looking away from the whole, to what you think you might be better able to understand. For this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding to yourself. A better and far more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do not understand them, either in part or in whole. Yet they have been done through you. Therefore your understanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something in you that does understand.

And that 'something' is our Truth – is the Holy Spirit within us. In this dream we make, we so often get caught up in bits and pieces and failed to see the whole picture. When we see the whole, we grasp the meaning. With fragments, there is no meaning. I have known students of the Course who have appeared determined to understand everything, thereby failing to see everything. Nothing in the life we dream can be understood – nothing has meaning.

3. To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity.

Are you getting the same message I am – to stop trying to understand that which has no meaning, and accept that which does? Remember this is a world of insanity – what we consider sane here is not. Truth is difficult for some of us to see – to feel – to accept. And a miracle is but a change of a thought within our mind, and yet we try to change those thoughts when all we need do is give those thoughts to Spirit and they are changed. And the miracle was done as we never knew when or how – and we never will nor need to do.

4. You have done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind and joined with it. When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as One has been made. When you have made this joining as the Holy Spirit bids you, and have offered it to Him to use as He sees fit, His natural perception of your gift enables Him to understand it, and you to use His understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to convince you of the reality of what has clearly been accomplished through your willingness while you believe that you must understand it or else it is not real.

The last line sums it up well – I have accomplished miracles – many miracles – but I fail to believe in them because the ego part of me wants first to understand. To understand as dictated by the ego simply means to stand where I am for understanding of this world is beyond words. I have joined my mind with another and I have felt the Oneness of it all. But I forget about understanding and simply accept what is truth.

5. How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on making it unreal? And are you really safer in maintaining the reality of illusions than you would be in joyously accepting truth for what it is, and giving thanks for it? Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do not understand it. Miracles are natural to the One Who speaks for God. For His task is to translate the miracle into the knowledge which it represents, and which is hidden to you. Let His understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn away from all the witnesses that He has given you to His reality.

Why is it that we continue to try to turn love into fear – truth into non-truth? Have you tried just once to step outside the illusion and experience the joy of peace? Honor and respect go together – we must honor ourselves – we must respect ourselves – for the truth of who we are. Miracles are a way of being for us in truth. Ask and then receive the guidance from Spirit when you need it so that you may be a messenger of miracles to others.

6. No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do not want. Yet your relationship with Him is real. Regard this not with fear, but with rejoicing. The One you called upon is with you. Bid Him welcome, and honor the witnesses who bring you the glad tidings He has come. It is true, just as you fear, that to acknowledge Him is to deny all that you think you know. But what you think you know was never true. What gain is there to you in clinging to it, and denying the evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce it now, and you will yield to its compelling attraction. You can delay this now, but only a little while. The Host of God has called to you, and you have heard. Never again will you be wholly willing not to listen.

Okay, you can delay responding but only for a little while – meaning that sooner or later you will respond to the Voice of God and you will have no fear is listening and following. This is the Voice given you while in this dream. This is the Voice given you to lead you out of the dream to the awareness of your truth. You may try to not hear the call of the Voice within you, but it will be there until you listen. There is no avoidance.

7. This is a year of joy, in which your listening will increase and peace will grow with its increase. The power of holiness and the weakness of attack are both being brought into your awareness. And this has been accomplished in a mind firmly convinced that holiness is weakness and attack is power. Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teach you that your Teacher is not of you? But remember also that whenever you listened to His interpretation the results have brought you joy. Would you prefer the results of your interpretation, considering honestly what they have been? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom God loves with perfect Love?

Take that first sentence as a promise to you – this is the year in which your listening to that still, small Voice within you will increase and you will experience peace beyond your thoughts. Can you make such a promise to yourself? When you have listened in the past, you have experienced a joy not found in this illusion. When you have not listened, you have experience continued chaos and never peace.

8. Do not interpret against God's Love, for you have many witnesses that speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them. This year determine not to deny what has been given you by God. Awake and share it, for that is the only reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard, because you have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster you have made. Today, let us resolve together to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real and that reality is not disaster. Reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. For love asks only that you be happy, and will give you everything that makes for happiness.

Do not attempt to say what is God's love, for that is beyond the words known to us. This year you will cease to deny who you are in Truth and deny that which you have thought you were. You will awake in the Light of Eternity – in the Peace known only by God. Let us all affirm that what we think we see in the world we project, is not our reality but our dream – our illusion. It is not real. What is real is the Truth within us that others will begin to notice. And in this, we shall have a happiness beyond what we have dreamed of in this dream.

9. You have never given any problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved for you, nor will you ever do so. You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought these facts together and made sense of them? This is the year for the application of the ideas that have been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces, to be used and not held idly by. They have already proved their power sufficiently for you to place your faith in them, and not in their denial. This year invest in truth, and let it work in peace. Have faith in Him Who has faith in you. Think what you have really seen and heard, and recognize it. Can you be alone with witnesses like these?

In the past that never was, no problem was ever given to Spirit that was not resolved, and it will forever be just that. We have come to Spirit with those problems only after countless efforts of our own to resolve them, but never succeeding. And we continue to do the same for we are not so much slow learners, as we are fearful learners. We know of our truth and the power therein. This is the year we shall begin to use our power as it was intended – to give love – to extend God to all we look upon. This is an investment in ourselves for as we give, we receive. In giving, we have no wants, needs nor desires. This is the year we shall have faith in our truth – in who we are.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section III - The Reward of Teaching

1. We have already learned that everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. You may have taught well, and yet you may not have learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught, and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to realize that your Teacher came from beyond your thought system. 4 Therefore He could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue. He must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system, and one with nothing in common with yours. For certainly what He has taught, and what you have taught through Him, have nothing in common with what you taught before He came. And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared to be replaced by joy.

Ever been in that situation where someone compliments you over and over again for what you supposedly did for them, to them or said to them? Most of have experience a discomfort in hearing them, and yet all they are telling us is that what we did or said was sufficient for them to choose again. In those moments of discomfort, simply say nothing and know that Spirit has worked through you. How about those times you spoke or wrote and then paused long enough to hear or read what you said, and you were in awe of your own words – or rather the words of Spirit flowing through you. We all of are Teachers of God – Teachers of Love – for that is what we are – Love – God.

2. You may have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. I said earlier, "By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves." For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching. The ego's teaching produces immediate results, because its decisions are immediately accepted as your choice. And this acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Cause and effect are very clear in the ego's thought system, because all your learning has been directed toward establishing the relationship between them. And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses, and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and its effects.

Remember we are free to leave the prison we made for ourselves, but only if we open the door and walk through it – a simple task at best and yet one we appear to claim ignorance of. We like it in our prison where we can sit in our cell and remember all that we have been taught. But have you noticed that in your prison there are those who you do not wish to be around for they speak of freedom – they speak of love.

3. Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you that you do not perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you do not regard yourself as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly without conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be outside of you. You could never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it. And it must be that what you taught came from yourself. Yet this Self you clearly do not know, and do not recognize It even though It functions. What functions must be there. And it is only if you deny what It has done that you could possibly deny Its Presence.

Notice that when we deny anything, the subject of our denial continues to be around? Whatever we deny goes nowhere. It remains to be dealt with. Denial is nothing more than procrastination. When we deny the existence of God – when we deny that our brother is One with us – every brother – we simply choose not to acknowledge our own truth. Nothing changes. For we shall be as It Shall Be forever.

4. This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you. You have been very careful to avoid the obvious, and not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. Yet within you is everything you taught. What can it be that has not learned it? It must be this part that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in truth. And it is this part that you have taken in that is not you. What you accept into your mind does not really change it. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved by separating yourself from the illusion and not from truth.

This is the middle of the Text and here we are told that this Course is a course in knowing ourselves. Are you ready for that? Would you have started the Course if you knew ahead of time that it was knowing yourself – knowing yourself in truth? Some may have decided to stop there and go on. Many persons fear knowing themselves in truth, for it means to drop all thoughts we have of who we think we are, and accept all those thoughts we have of who we know we are.

5. Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is part of you. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. For God's Answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations and you together, keeping one with you what you would exclude. And they will take the place of what you took in to replace them. They are quite real, as part of the Self you do not know. They communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer gladly to your teaching of yourself, who is their home. You who are host to God are also host to them. For nothing real has ever left the mind of its creator. And what is not real was never there.

Read this one slowly and allow the thoughts to penetrate deep into your soul, which will rejoice in the knowledge given here. You are not this body you think you are – you are of God – the Holy Spirit is of God, and is also of you –making you God and Spirit as well. How does that knowledge sit with you? Only the ego believes in the separation. Only the ego believes in illusions. We are as we shall forever be – as God is, we are – and no dream will ever change truth. We think we are in this dream, but we are as we have forever been.

6. You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold Him and whom He holds are the universe, all else must be outside, where nothing is. You have taught this, and from far off in the universe, yet not beyond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and God's to strengthen your faith in what you taught. For what you taught is true. Alone, you stand outside your teaching and apart from it. But with them you must learn that you but taught yourself, and learned from the conviction you shared with them.

Alone we stand within this dream. As One we are as we are forever. Alone we believe in what we have taught ourselves. As One we remember all that we have forgotten.

7. This year you will begin to learn, and make learning commensurate with teaching. You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is in the learner, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude, and shares it with him. As you learn, your gratitude to your Self, Who teaches you what He is, will grow and help you honor Him. And you will learn His power and strength and purity, and love Him as His Father does. His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal. All this is you, and nothing outside of this is you.

So a new year for us in on the horizon. Allow this message above to also penetrate deep within you. The thoughts offered as but seeds we plant within our minds. These seeds will push through at the appropriate time and we will become aware of our teaching and learning. We will teach others because we willing offer what we have to them. And we are grateful to all the teachers who offer us their teachings as well. We go through our day simply repeating 'Thank You, God' for every thing that occurs. What is our truth is within us. What is false appears outside of us.

8. To your most holy Self all praise is due for what you are, and for what He is Who created you as you are. Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge, which carries him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it. His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven, and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined within it. And so the one who would cross over is literally transported there.

Can you picture this bridge between yourself and yourself? See it in place over the abyss of fear, over the depths of depression, over the gorge of guilt. You have within you what it takes to cross that bridge. Why must you cross it? So that the truth within you will be on both sides.

9. Your bridge is built stronger than you think, and your foot is planted firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across. For you will come where you would be, and where your Self awaits you.

This bridge will not collapse – you will not fall through – fall of the sides. You walk this bridge without fear. You walk this bridge in truth and Truth is waiting for you on the other side as well, drawing you ever closer.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section IV. - The Illusion and the Reality of Love

1. Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love, except for this. For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of love is hidden, is undertaken solely to offset the hate, but not to let it go. Your salvation will rise clearly before your open eyes as you look on this. You cannot limit hate. The special love relationship will not offset it, but will merely drive it underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it into sight, and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate with love that makes love meaningless to you. The extent of the split that lies in this you do not realize. And until you do, the split will remain unrecognized, and therefore unhealed.

Many spiritual writers have reminded often that it is because of darkness that we perceive light, and so it is with hate that we can see love. A special relationship shows us that love does indeed exist but not as it is presented by ego. Hate is love to ego which is keeping in line with its insanity. From the special relationship we shall see the Oneness that we are – that we are not separate but One.

2. The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed, and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now; you are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love will never satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.

Do you know a symbol that represents God? Or do you know of a symbol which means Love? Symbols have meanings we have given, but Love or God are without any explanation we can try to come up with. Look carefully at the 3rd line here – "I will go beyond the last undoing unharmed and I shall then be viewed as myself." Going towards our Truth shall never present us with any danger. Our path shall cross that bridge and we shall cross it as well in perfect safety from any harm we could have imagined. Such is the power of Love; such is the power of our Truth.

3. The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise above the storm, into the sunlight. On the contrary, it emphasizes the guilt outside the haven by attempting to build barricades against it, and keep within them. The special love relationship is not perceived as a value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart. The special love partner is acceptable only as long as he serves this purpose. Hatred can enter, and indeed is welcome in some aspects of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on the grounds of disillusionment.

Have you ever experienced a peace and safety in the special relationships you have entered? Was not the thought of 'what if' or 'yah but' linger in the back of your mind? Special relationships are indeed illusions of love for love is not to be found there. Ego offers you another version of love called guilt or shame or unworthiness or even abuse. Only that which you are offers you the peace you seek.

4. Love is not an illusion. It is a fact. Where disillusionment is possible, there was not love but hate. For hate is an illusion, and what can change was never love. It is sure that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living, and use them for any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to live with guilt rather than die of it. This is the choice they see. And love, to them, is only an escape from death. They seek it desperately, but not in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly to them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the love relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. When the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in and hatred triumphs.

Remember in the beginning of the Course where we are told that only love and fear exist? Here is another gentle reminder of that statement. Love is not an illusion – fear is. God is not an illusion – ego is. Love is ever-present – eternal and constant. Fear is a fleeting thought of ego to blind us to which is forever before us.

5. There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is at all concerned with the "triumph of love." The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of making both illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choice remaining possible is which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict in the choice between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between illusions, but this choice does not matter. Where one choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision must be one of despair.

Love can never triumph over anything for that would make love as the 'anything' is. Love simply is – a fact so simple and yet one that irritates ego beyond our imagination. We are not the complex thought we think we are – we are but Love and Love simple Is. It is truly amazing that we try so hard to hide that fact from ourselves.

6. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.

One reason it is not necessary to seek for Love is because Love is ever-present. As we are told above, we instead seek the barriers we have made to the ever-present Love and remove them from our mind. We do this by seeing them for what they are – illusions of nothing.

7. Recognize this, for it is true, and truth must be recognized if it is to be distinguished from illusion: The special love relationship is an attempt to bring love into separation. And, as such, it is nothing more than an attempt to bring love into fear, and make it real in fear. In fundamental violation of love's one condition, the special love relationship would accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion could this be done? It is essential that we look very closely at exactly what it is you think you can do to solve the dilemma which seems very real to you, but which does not exist. You have come close to truth, and only this stands between you and the bridge that leads you into it.

Do we always know Love when it is presented to us? Do we always see Love in the faces of those we see? Do we see Love as we walk through this life or are we so engrossed in our illusion of a world that is not real? What do we expect Love to look like to us? If we are not this body, how do we look? Within a special relationship are the paths to these answers. The special relationship is to be recognized as an obstacle blocking us from seeing ourselves in Truth. Our Truth is within us – it is that close for us to experience. It is but one thought away.

8. Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help you cross and welcome them. For it is they you seek. You seek but for your own completion, and it is they who render you complete. The special love relationship is but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in truth, not in illusion. Your relationship with them is without guilt, and this enables you to look on all your brothers with gratitude, because your creations were created in union with them. Acceptance of your creations is the acceptance of the Oneness of creation, without which you could never be complete. No specialness can offer you what God has given, and what you are joined with Him in giving.

Without seeing your own reflection in another, you remain in the thought of separation. Seeing in another the Truth of you enables you to experience the Wholeness of both of you. Never in a special relationship can you find that which shall make you whole and complete.

9. Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly in God, willing for nothing special, but only to be wholly like to Him, completing Him by your completion. Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain and where everything fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon all illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and only this, there is God completed, and His Son with Him.

The 'bridge' is mentioned several times in the Course. It is as if crossing it is the last thing we do in this dream. We are told several times that God will take our hand and lead us on the last step. As we visualize God taking our hand, we sense the completion of ourselves once again with God. We experience the Oneness we have been seeking. For us to do any of this, we must be totally willing to abandon all of the dream – and that is all that we have been also told many times – just to show a little willingness and the rest will be taken care of.

10. The bridge that leads to union in yourself must lead to knowledge, for it was built with God beside you, and will lead you straight to Him where your completion rests, wholly compatible with His. Every illusion you accept into your mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense of completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father. Every fantasy, be it of love or hate, deprives you of knowledge for fantasies are the veil behind which truth is hidden. To lift the veil that seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful to value truth beyond all fantasy, and to be entirely unwilling to settle for illusion in place of truth.

When you first read this you get the feeling of being separated from God – that we are being led to God in Whom our completion rests. In this dream remember, we believe we are indeed separated from God – and from all others. We are reminded often of this so that we become more aware of our Truth – the Essence of our Being. When we finally place truth before falsehood, the veil which had appeared before us shall rise and we shall then see what has forever been.

11. Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and nowhere else. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love is wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In your completion lie the memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not.

Read the first line several times and allow yourself some time to respond to it? This dream we are having is a dream of fear – an illusion of falsehood. Are you willing to walk through this dream to discover what has forever been within you? We hear often the call for Love from a brother but do we answer that call each time? The call of hate is called as frequently as the call for love, it is our choice alone as to which we respond to. If we ask for guidance, we shall receive guidance but the decision is still ours to make. There is no illusion in Love – there is nothing but Love in Love for nothing but Love exists. Sometimes you might think of the call from a brother for Love as a reminder from God as to who you are in Truth.

12. Your Father can no more forget the truth in you than you can fail to remember it. The Holy Spirit is the Bridge to Him, made from your willingness to unite with Him and created by His joy in union with you. The journey that seemed endless is almost complete, for what is endless is very near. You have almost recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from all illusions now, and let nothing stand in the way of truth. We will take the last useless journey away from truth together, and then together we go straight to God, in joyous answer to His Call for His completion.

God forgets nothing for God is All That Is. Do you realize that the ending to your journey is only a thought away? You do not need to die – to experience death – to experience your Truth. There is a hand extended to you to hold as you let go of who you think you are to you who you know you are.

13. If special relationships of any kind would hinder God's completion, can they have any value to you? What would interfere with God must interfere with you. Only in time does interference in God's completion seem to be possible. The bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time into eternity. Waken from time, and answer fearlessly the Call of Him Who gave eternity to you in your creation. On this side of the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing. But as you step lightly across it, upheld by timelessness, you are directed straight to the Heart of God. At its center, and only there, you are safe forever, because you are complete forever. There is no veil the Love of God in us together cannot lift. The way to truth is open. Follow it with me.

Think about anything that might slow down your awareness of your everlasting completion and see the value that you have given the illusion. Nothing can slow what you forever are. Only within this dream, can we feel less than whole. Drop the thought of time and experience eternity. Drop the thought of time and experience a whole new way of seeing your world. And in that sight see before you the bridge to be crossed and the helping hand extended to you. Are you willing to grasp that hand and dropped all the values you have given this dream, including the value of who you believe this body to be?

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section V. - The Choice for Completion

1. In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt and attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they seem to be gone. All these must be understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack on the self to make the other guilty. I have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what is really being attempted that have not been touched upon.

The issue of special relationship comes up often in the Course so it must be one of those areas that we fail to let go of – fail to see what it really is as opposed to what it appears to be. There may be periods of 'happiness' but not lasting. Fear is ever present, ever right there stopping us from experiencing our truth. We see the special relationship as something we want – we need – we desire – and yet in truth we have All That Is. Whenever I am told that this subject has been brought up before, I pay particular attention to what is being presented. It is all for my benefit.

2. Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is always directed against God. For the ego would have you see Him, and Him alone, as guilty, leaving the Sonship open to attack and unprotected from it. The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not appear to be a weapon, but if you consider how you value it and why, you will realize what it must be.

In any special relationship we place the other person at a different level than what we see ourselves on. We do not see them equal or One with us. Such is the blindness given us by ego so that we fail to truly see ourselves.

3. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift, and one which has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The "dynamics" of the ego are clearest here, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies that center around it are often quite overt. Here they are usually judged to be acceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty, but do not correct it. This is the "natural" condition of the separation, and those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones. For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.

Ever know of someone who was in an abusive relationship? Perhaps you were. In that relationship we can clearly see 'love and hate'. "I couldn't leave him or her – I love them" is a common refrain. Even though they experience great physical and/or emotional pain, they continue on in the relationship. Some say it is for the children. What do the children learn? Only what they see, and so the cycle goes on. Some fear to leave the other, so they would rather live in fear with them than without them. Many will tell of being in their own hell – and they are correct. They are making hell for themselves, and they could just as easily make heaven to experience. In the world of ego, everything offered by it is opposite to what it appears to be. Love is offered but it is fear that is received.

4. It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is the renunciation of the Love of God, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this specialness is not hell, but Heaven. For the ego would never have you see that separation could only be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven could not be.

We all know only too well that if the lesson presented in each relationship is not learned by us, it will be repeated again and again until we open our eyes and see it for what it is. Why do some people run from one abusive relationship into another? What is to be learned in relationship? Just that we are not different – we are not separate bodies – we are One in our Truth. Your partner can be your reflection of your truth, if you look for it. If you see your partner as different, then you see yourself as separate as well.

5. To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete disagreement on what completion is, and how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union, and then in the extension of union. To the ego completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory" even to the final triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with the ego. This is its idea of Heaven. And therefore union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell.

Recall how much music has us singing about the joys of being in heaven – such a wonderful feeling. Remember as a child how you would pray to be taken to heaven should you die before you woke? Heaven is our natural state. No wonder that we are constantly looking for it, as the memory is within us. Ego can never offer us heaven. Heaven in love and ego knows not of love. Heaven is our natural state of Being. What ego offers is always fear based – judgment filled.

6. The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of both worlds has merely led to fantasies of both, and to the inability to perceive either as it is. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which union is excluded, and the basis for the attempt at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek but do not find"?

Ever know of someone who is 'living' a life of 'pure hell' as you might see it? Perhaps they are 'poor' or sick or disabled, but they do not complain about life. You complain about it for them. They are happy in the life they are living – they are accepting what is being offered to them and continue to move forward on their path. I have know several severely disabled individuals who have taught me so much just by watching them and getting to know them. No obstacle is too much for them to push aside. No hardship too great for them to quit living. Life as they live is good for them.

7. Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in the special relationship. This "self" seeks the relationship to make itself complete. Yet when it finds the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish this it gives itself away, and tries to "trade" itself for the self of another. This is not union, for there is no increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. And he feels guilty for the "sin" of taking, and of giving nothing of value in return. How much value can he place upon a self that he would give away to get a "better" one?

Reading this carefully we can see just how insane ego is – how crazy we are in the world we made of fear. Can we truly hope to believe that someone else can give us what we think is lacking in ourselves to make us happy and complete? And then what happens when they don't come through for us? Each and every time we look out there for what we have within, we shall be in a state of unhappiness instead of the state of bliss.

8. The "better" self the ego seeks is always one that is more special. And whoever seems to possess a special self is "loved" for what can be taken from him. Where both partners see this special self in each other, the ego sees "a union made in Heaven." For neither one will recognize that he has asked for hell, and so he will not interfere with the ego's illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to interfere with Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they can be of nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an "attractive" form of fear, in which the guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of "love."

Ever stop to realize that anyone we make 'special' including ourselves, is above others, including us? Can two people in a special relationship see each other on the same plane or is not one always higher than the other, or lower as the perspective might be? There are many relationships that have worked through the specialness and survived, and what they then have is truly a relationship blessed by Spirit. Whenever we think the other special we are simply judging them, and ourselves, and we know that judgment is of the ego. The acceptance of each other in a relationship requires no judgment – simply an awareness of who we are to each other – and that is usually in the role of teacher/learner.

9. The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in every special relationship, for only the deprived could value specialness. The demand for specialness, and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of love, would make love hateful. The real purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to destroy reality and substitute illusion. For the ego is itself an illusion, and only illusions can be the witnesses to its "reality."

We have all read stories of those people who many consider 'special' and the problems that those people eventually have to face. I know of no one who thinks themselves 'special' who is happy – truly happy. Being 'special' is nothing more than a fear of ego – nothing for us receive and nothing for us to give. And you know what we are in truth – Love – which is received and given by us in our awareness.

10. If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it must entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion of separation, and of the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that God must die so you can live. And it is this theme that is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of your self you think you can attack another self, and snatch it from the other to replace the self that you despise. And you despise it because you do not think it offers the specialness that you demand. And hating it you have made it little and unworthy, because you are afraid of it.

So the big question we must also ask on special relationships is this: do you have God placed on a pedestal? Do you believe God to be 'special' – separate from you and different from you? Perhaps we best look deep at our answers.

11. How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have attacked? So fearful has the truth become to you that unless it is weak and little, and unworthy of value, you would not dare to look upon it. You think it safer to endow the little self you made with power you wrested from truth, triumphing over it and leaving it helpless. See how exactly is this ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected in between two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body raise another self to take its power from his death. Over and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it is never completed, nor ever will be completed. The ritual of completion cannot complete, for life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell.

Believing in special relationships, what power could you possibly give to another or they to you? What powers do you have while acting as ego? Ego has no power only the offerings of the force of fear. But force is nothing while your Power is everything. Life and death or Heaven and hell are but words in the duality of this dream. Nothing truly happens in this dream. In Truth all has occurred already.

12. Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannot change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it.

Where do we find these rituals spoken of here? Many of the religions have great emphasis on the rituals of their services, in which specialness is a key factor – and separation is noted. How long do you suppose the many religions will continue to focus on the death of Jesus instead of focusing on the teachings of Jesus?

13. See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and His greatness. In the name of your completion you do not want this. For every idol that you raise to place before Him stands before you, in place of what you are.

I have visited many churches in my time, and some I have stood in awe of the beauty seen within them. Sometime later in life, after doing the Course a few times, I began to stand in awe of mySelf – of the Truth within me. And I realized that that is what I was being given back when I visited the churches – I was to look within me and see there the beauty of Truth.

14. Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because they are not true. They but seem to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize them for what they are; and you will fail to do this to the extent to which you want them to be true. And to the same extent you are denying truth, and so are failing to make the simple choice between truth and illusion; God and fantasy. Remember this, and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision as just what it is, and nothing more.

Sixteen chapters ago, we read about this being only an illusion and an illusion was nothing made of nothing. Even the values that we have given the illusion still have be of no value, for the value we gave was nothing more than an illusion as well. And here again we are reminded of this, and not for the last time either. It is all about choice – our choice to make – the choice of truth or the choice of illusion. Which choice will we make now? What fear do you suppose is holding you back from letting go of believing in your truth instead of the illusion you hold so dear?

15. The core of the separation illusion lies simply in the fantasy of destruction of love's meaning. And unless love's meaning is restored to you, you cannot know yourself who share its meaning. Separation is only the decision not to know yourself. This whole thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience, designed to lead away from truth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from all its consequences.

And what is the meaning of Love? Have we not been told in the beginning of this Course that the meaning of Love was beyond us? So what is being asked of us here? Having Love restored to us simply means that we once again recognize our Truth within and hold it more precious than all the illusions outside of us. This is all a thought – a thought we hold, but our Truth is not a thought – it is our Essence. Can our Essence ever be explained?

16. The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here is truth, separated from illusion and not confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For only fantasies make confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally unreal.

You consciously or unconsciously made a choice before you picked up your copy of the Course – a choice to be open to what it contained for you. And each day you do the Course, you continue to make that choice, and you will continue to make that choice and it will appear to be easier for you to do so. There might even come a time when you are not even conscious of making the choice. The more you choose to do the Course, the less confusion will appear in your world.

17. This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you, and also the only one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side, and nothing at all is here. It is impossible not to make the natural decision as this is realized.

This year – the now – the present moment – is chosen by you so you may continue to remember more of your Truth. You will see reality as it is and not as it was presented by ego. You will see a veil lifted before you and beyond that veil is All That Is. You believe you are here in this dream while you are actually there.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section VI. - The Bridge to the Real World

1. The search for the special relationship is the sign that you equate yourself with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has value only to the ego. To the ego, unless a relationship has special value it has no meaning, for it perceives all love as special. Yet this cannot be natural, for it is unlike the relationship of God and His Son, and all relationships that are unlike this one must be unnatural. For God created love as He would have it be, and gave it as it is. Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and understand it.

When I find myself searching for the someone special – that someone who I believe will give me what I am needing – I see myself separating from God. I am looking on the outside what can only be found on the inside. My truth – my essence – may natural state of Being – is within. Nothing outside means anything to me. The Course repeatedly tells me that I should not try to understand the meaning of Love, for that is beyond this dream. Rather I should accept myself for the Truth within me and therein, I shall experience Love beyond all comprehension.

2. Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate yourself from it. For the Love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this not, or Love will be unable to find you and comfort you.

As I release so shall I be released! A strong statement – an affirmation that I want before me, reminding me that I am free as the Love within me – as free as I have forever been.

3. There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your help, if you would have His. The holy instant is His most helpful aid in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in the special relationship. You do not recognize that this is its real appeal, for the ego has taught you that freedom lies in it. Yet the closer you look at the special relationship, the more apparent it becomes that it must foster guilt and therefore must imprison.

Have you ever had true freedom in any special relationship? Aren't you always caught in the expectations of the other? Haven't you worn some sort of façade in those special relationships? And has lasting happiness resulted because of the special relationship?

4. The special relationship is totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you must also value the body. And what you value you will keep. The special relationship is a device for limiting your self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to theirs. The Great Rays would establish the total lack of value of the special relationship, if they were seen. For in seeing them the body would disappear, because its value would be lost. And so your whole investment in seeing it would be withdrawn from it.

Special relationships is all about bodies – nothing else. You are attracted to a body and you want that body to be something special to you – you want that body to give you happiness and pleasure. But in seeing the body you fail to see beyond, to the light within. You see an appearance but fail to sense the awareness.

5. You see the world you value. On this side of the bridge you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. When two individuals seek to become one, they are trying to decrease their magnitude. Each would deny his power, for the separate union excludes the universe. Far more is left outside than would be taken in, for God is left without and nothing taken in. If one such union were made in perfect faith, the universe would enter into it. Yet the special relationship the ego seeks does not include even one whole individual. The ego wants but part of him, and sees only this part and nothing else.

Seeing a body as a body is seeing a world you believe in, one that you value. Opposite to this thinking is your truth – a world of love and Oneness – a world where separation does not and cannot exist. A world where two become as the One they are. A world the ego will try desperately to keep you from entering.

6. Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there.

You see a body but you also see beyond the body – you see so much more than the form itself. You begin to see – to sense – to experience the spark of Light within yourself and others, and together that Light lights up your world so that it is seen in Love.

7. The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. But fear it not, for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference that seemed to hold your world together. This frame of reference is built around the special relationship. Without this illusion there could be no meaning you would still seek here.

You will come to a place where you will understand that the body of itself means nothing. And with the meaning of nothing, you will begin to look beyond it at all times. Letting go of old perceptions may be fearful, but only for a moment. You will always be led through any fear to the Light of Love.

8. Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your mind from its fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix your mind so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it is delay, and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could not long find even the illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would soon recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is.

These are indeed comforting words to read – to hold within our mind. I am no longer wholly insane and I am beginning to see my world of illusion for what it is. I know now that I could not and can not find love in a special relationship. While I feel somewhat confused, I also experience a flood of peace flowing through me – a sense of being instead of doing.

9. Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is really part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system that taught you it was real, and understand the Thought that knows what you are. You have allowed the Thought of your reality to enter your mind, and because you invited it, it will abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not want to be apart from it.

First person: Nothing I seek to strengthen in my special relationship is a part of me. And I cannot keep part of a thought system that taught me it was real, and understand the Thought within that knows what I am. I have allowed the Thought of my reality to enter my mind, and because I invited it, that Thought will abide with me. My love for it will not allow me to betray myself, and I could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with me, for I would not want to be separated from it.

10. Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation the ego offered you, and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing.

Continue first person: I am glad I have escaped the mockery of salvation ego has offered me, and I do not look back with longing on the travesty that was made of my relationships. I need not suffer, for I have come too far to yield to the illusion of beauty and the holiness of guilt. Only if I were wholly insane could I look upon death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it as such. What guilt has presented me is ugly, fearful and dangerous. I see no illusion of truth and beauty there. And I am thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for me. I go to meet them gladly, and I learn how much more awaits me if I but show a little willingness to give it all up for it is all nothing.

11. The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you.

We often feel as if we will be lost should we let go of old thoughts, but with the old thoughts, we are lost. In a change of thought, we shall see Heaven before us for it has always been present. In a change of thought, we shall begin to realize that what we seek is already before us. In that Holy Instant of no-time, we shall bask in the knowledge of our Truth.

12. The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to share His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His perfect willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His Call. And let Him call on Heaven for you.

Remember back to where you read about the simple statement: "Holy Spirit, decide for me."? We are reminded here again of this. Spirit only asks that we make that statement so It may be with us in each and every instant – to make each and every instant a Holy Instant. What we must show is willingness, the rest is done for us.

Chapter 16.

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

Section VII. - The End of Illusions

1. 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.

When we do not learn what we is presented to us as a lesson in any relationship, we will soon discover that we enter into another relationship where the very same lesson is waiting for us. The past is there waiting for us to try to relive it again, with all its misery and suffering. The wounds of a time gone by have not healed because we did not allow them to in the last relationship. So we enter another looking the right ointment – again.

2. 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.

Think about this a bit longer – no special relationship is ever experienced in the present moment – never! Each special relationship has as the past as its core, and from there it attempts to build anew. Can new be built on old without having the old come through? When we finally come to a place on our path where we realize that the past is nothing more than an illusion, then we can begin to grasp that we can simply let go of thoughts that never happened – that is all the past is. Once the past is let go of, the present will present itself to us.

3. 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 you have done that has offended it, and seeks retribution of you. The fantasies it brings to its chosen relationships in which to act out its hate are fantasies of your destruction. For the ego holds the past against you, and in your escape from the past it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes 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 is that the present is useless to you while you pursue the ego's goal as its ally.

There is no question in my mind as I read this paragraph, that it is talking about insanity – my insanity – your insanity. Remember you are the ego referred to here – we hold a past that never happened against ourselves to prevent us from experiencing the present. We prevent ourselves from the truth within us. Is this not insanity?

4. The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the special relationship that binds you to it, and would teach you salvation is past and so 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?

Which is it for you – continue to act out the dream or let it go? It is truly idiotic to believe we can preserve a past that never was – to maintain something that never happened. And yet...

5. In the special relationship it does not seem to be an acting out of vengeance that you seek. And even when the hatred and the savagery break briefly through, the illusion of love is not profoundly shaken. Yet the one thing the ego never allows to reach awareness is that the special relationship is the acting out of vengeance on yourself. Yet what else could it be? In seeking the special relationship, you look not for glory in yourself. You have denied that it is there, and the relationship becomes your substitute for it. And vengeance becomes your substitute for Atonement, and the escape from vengeance becomes your loss.

Many years ago, I read that the common denominator in every relationship I had or will ever have is me. In reading the above I see that I am taking out on myself what I think I am taking out on another – it is just about me. I expect the other person to change me when only I can change me – change the thoughts I hold of me.

6. 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 understood 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.

Just as God provided us with the Holy Spirit as our link back to God, so the Holy Spirit provides us the holy instant – the present moment – where we can see our truth within us. And in our truth, we see that past for what it is – nothing but what we thought it was – simply a thought.

7. For a time you may attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant, to hinder your full awareness of the complete difference, in all respects, between your experience of truth and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy instant the power of the Holy Spirit will prevail, because you joined 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.

Ever tried to go into a meditation holding a thought which was not loving, only to discover that quickly the thought was taken from you? You cannot enter into the holy instant – the present moment – holding any fear. The holy instant is that eternal instant of love – it is your eternity of who you are – and only love exists.

8. 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 is to remind you that you have received what God has given you.

When someone asks us what we know for sure in life, this is what we may reply: What God gives is truly given. What God gives is truly received. What God gives is.

9. 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 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 you the true condition of Heaven.

There is absolutely nothing we can hold against our truth – the truth is the truth is the truth. So what is left? Only the illusions we have thought. So it is only the illusions that we forgive ourselves for thinking. As we forgive ourselves, we see our brothers in their light as well. We need not forgive them for they have done nothing to us, only we held the thoughts in our mind.

10. 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.

First person:I will remember that I always choose between truth and illusion; between the correction of my error that will heal me and the ego's correction of error that will destroy me. The power of God and all His Love, without limit, will support me as I seek only my place in the plan of correction arising from the Love of God. I will be an ally to God and not the ego as I seek the way the Atonement can come to me. God's help suffices, for the Holy Spirit understands how to restore the Kingdom to me, and to place all my investment in salvation in my relationship with Him.

11. Seek and find His message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven. From there the miracle extends to bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible. There is nothing that will not give place to Him and to His Majesty. To join in close relationship with Him is to accept relationships as real, and through their reality to give over all illusions for the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with Him and to no other. The truth lies there and nowhere else. You choose this or nothing.

We seek, we find, and we accept the message held for us in the holy instant – the present moment. We see the miracle we received flow out to all we look upon. There is no one who shall not be seen within the miracle – no one who shall not receive the message. We shall be the One we have forever been. We shall be seen again as complete as God is complete with us.

12. 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.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section I - Bringing Fantasy to Truth

1. The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his "sins" are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different.

First person: My own betrayal lies only in illusions, and all my 'sins' are but my own imagination. My reality is forever without sin. I do not need forgiveness but I do need awakening. In my dreams I have betrayed myself, my brothers and God. But what is done is dreams is not real – it never was. I am convinced that this is so. As I slowly awaken from the dreams, I see more clearly that they are but illusions. My Reality, my Truth has never changed. Only in my mind – only in the thoughts I hold can my reality appear different.

2. It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and devoting it to "evil," it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things of you. What you use in fantasy you deny to truth. Yet what you give to truth to use for you is safe from fantasy.

Continue first person: It is only my wish to change reality that is fearful – not true – because by my wish I think I have accomplished what I wish. This odd position acknowledges a power I believe I have. But by distortion and devoting it to 'evil' it also makes it false. I cannot be faithful to two masters who appear to ask conflicting things of me. What I believe I use in my fantasy I deny in truth. But what I give to truth to use is not harmed by fantasy.

3. When you maintain that there must be an order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would withhold from truth. You believe truth cannot deal with them only because you would keep them from truth. Very simply, your lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from your wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy. If you but realized what this must do to your appreciation of the whole! What you reserve for yourself, you take away from Him Who would release you. Unless you give it back, it is inevitable that your perspective on reality be warped and uncorrected.

In the very beginning of this Course we were told that no order of difficulties in miracles existed, and later on we were told it again. Now again – apparently this is a point for us to grasp. There is no order of difficulty in miracles – there are no problems that are presented to us – and there is nothing that we can withhold from our truth – we only believe we can do all of the above. We do not trust in who we are in truth – we are much more comfortable believing in who we are not. Do you see how warped our whole take on this dream is?

4. As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion of an order of difficulty in miracles remain with you. For you have established this order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher, and some to another. And so you learn to deal with part of the truth in one way, and in another way the other part. To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering it meaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective without understanding; a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all.

So simply put, as long as we believe in difficulties, so long will they persist. When you were in school, did you go to another teacher and question what another teacher told you – or did you not simply believe what you were taught? What can we learn from two different teachers who teach two opposing views? Only chaos. Like everything else in this dream, we must choose as to which teacher we shall give our undivided attention to – which shall we believe what is being told us.

5. Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions? Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside from truth, or you establish orders of reality that must imprison you. There is no order in reality, because everything there is true.

Someone once said – the truth is the truth is the truth, and nothing but the truth. If we could bring truth into fantasy, that would make fantasy real. But it is possible to bring fantasy to truth, and see it for what it really is – illusion. Truth will forever be there – fantasy comes and goes, and with choice, it will come less and less.

6. Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all. Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it; not you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section II - The Forgiven World

1. Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him.

After you read this, don't you want all the more to see it? It is so encouraging! Can you imagine how you will look to you once you forgive you for what you believe you have done? And then how beautiful all the faces you look upon will look. This is 'the Look of Love' we have read about – heard about – this is reality shining back at us. And what we see shall bring up the memories we have long forgotten of the truth we are. And the world we see shall change before us, and all within it shall change as well. Such is the power of forgiveness we hold within us.

2. This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.

What we shall see is no dream – no fantasy – no illusion. We shall see a world of Light, a world of Love, a world of Truth. Nothing is hidden for no darkness exists here. And before us we shall see the bridge we have been told of so many times, right on our path, but a step away. This bridge – this link – is between us and God and is the last illusion we shall go through. We are and will forever be One with God, but we have forgotten that memory so we must 'cross' this bridge to regain what has forever been real.

3. This step, the smallest ever taken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God's plan of Atonement. All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see. Yet what you see is only what you made, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of God's Son upon himself, the real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

Some might say the bridge is the Holy Spirit; others may say it is God, but it matters little to us now. We have come this far and know that just stepping on the bridge is all that is required. All we have to do is have that little willingness to give up all that we had believe to be true for all that is true. Do you feel something holding you back? Is there something tugging at you, preventing you from moving that one small step? Nothing exists other than love, so it must be one more illusion you have not yet left go of.

4. The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world to beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible will still occur. The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.

Read this carefully, perhaps several times and allow it to penetrate deep into your being – to the core – to the soul and allow the soul to savor what is being presented. This is a place of no perception – everything presented is but truth. No more lessons will be given for no more lessons are required. In a blink, our world that we held so dear shall be no longer seen but what is to be experienced is who we have forever been. We will not even realize nor recognize the transition of thought to being.

5. The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness. The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it. In the light of the real reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you that there is no reason here at all. Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.

The first line is the key that will unlock the real world for us – we must show complete forgiveness of the old world we believe we made, the world of fear and unforgiveness. And the Holy Spirit shall take us through the necessary steps to attain our truth. We will have to look at everything we held as truth, and now is known false. We will have to look at every thought we held which was not a thought of love, and we will have to let that thought go with a simple thought of forgiveness for ourselves to have it. And nothing will be left out – nothing shall remain hidden – nothing will hide in darkness for darkness shall not be seen.

6. All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection.

I really like this chapter – so very poetic – so beautiful to read – so magnificent to hold those thoughts. I like the expression of forgiving eyes in which to see our world. What a great thought – a great seed to plant within my mind and be aware as that thought grows into a belief I shall hold and practice. And perhaps because of the season now, no leaf nor blade of grass can be seen, but in their place is the every perfect and always different snowflake – truly a sign of the perfection of God. And just so we don't forget, we too are a sign of the perfection of God.

7. From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. And there he knows that he has always rested there in peace. Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation is the end of dreams, and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?

And from the world seen through forgiving eyes, we move effortlessly into the truth we are, and we once again remember our completeness, our Oneness with All That Is. And we shall not think of what we thought we were, for thoughts are no longer required. We find ourselves where we have forever been.

8. How much do you want salvation? It will give you the real world, trembling with readiness to be given you. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness.

So how much do you want salvation as it is presented here to you? How far are you willing to go to attain a world seen through forgiving eyes? That world is before us now, waiting in the Patience of God for us to accept our truth. And the choice, once again, is ours.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section III - Shadows of the Past

1. To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection. For the shadow figures you would make immortal are "enemies" of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did not do. The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he did what he did not. Because you bring them, you will hear them. And you who keep them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind, and what their purpose is. **They represent the evil that you think was done to you. You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself. They speak so clearly for the separation that no one not obsessed with keeping separation could hear them. They offer you the "reasons" why you should enter into unholy alliances to support the ego's goals, and make your relationships the witness to its power.**

We have given the word 'forgiveness' much value in our life – almost to the point of fearing it. Here we are told so gently and so sweetly that to forgive is but to remember only the loving thoughts we have had and to drop those not of love. The act of forgiveness is but ours alone to perform, for it but to us that it is performed. The choice is yours to make as to which thoughts you will hold onto and which one you will let go of. But thoughts of fear are seen as 'shadowy figures' by you. Do you wish to see them?

2. It is these shadow figures that would make the ego holy in your sight, and teach you what you do to keep it safe is really love. The shadow figures always speak for vengeance, and all relationships into which they enter are totally insane. Without exception, these relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself. This is why you see in both what is not there, and make of both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you, and seems to go by the name of love, no matter how distorted the associations by which you arrive at the connection may be. And finally, why all such relationships become attempts at union through the body, for only bodies can be seen as means for vengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident. Your own experience has taught you this. But what you may not realize are all the reasons that go to make the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks to reinforce itself, as holiness does, by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself.

Read this one again perhaps so that you can begin to grasp what an unholy relationship – a special relationship – appears to be. Totally insane and yet so totally subtle at times we don't even know we are in one. A small clue is that whenever the body is focus upon, the unholy relationship is before you. The body, of course, being the symbol of ego.

3. In the unholy relationship, it is not the body of the other with which union is attempted, but the bodies of those who are not there. For even the body of the other, already a severely limited perception of him, is not the central focus as it is, or in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance, and what can be most readily associated with those on whom vengeance is really sought, is centered on and separated off as being the only parts of value. Every step taken in the making, the maintaining and the breaking off of the unholy relationship is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures enter more and more, and the one in whom they seem to be decreases in importance.

In reading this paragraph, I feel a true sense of fear prevailing – the shadowy figures of fear will become more and more, a totally insane thought, and simply feeling the presence of fear has me realize where my mind is. Being aware of fear puts me on the outside of it.

4. Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. For time is cruel in the ego's hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. The attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questioned almost at once. Once it is formed, doubt must enter in, because its purpose is impossible. The "ideal" of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the reality of the other does not enter at all to "spoil" the dream. And the less the other really brings to the relationship, the "better" it becomes. Thus, the attempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the union was sought. For it was formed to get him out of it, and join with fantasies in uninterrupted "bliss."

Think back to past relationships that you might have had or some you have observed – do you see in them what is being talked about here? Did you see that while one person says they must have another, the 'another' never quite fits the 'bill'? Whatever happens in the relationship is always the 'another's' fault? In any special relationship, togetherness is not the goal – it is to remain separated.

5. How can the Holy Spirit bring His interpretation of the body as a means of communication into relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? What forgiveness is enables Him to do so. If all but loving thoughts have been forgotten, what remains is eternal. And the transformed past is made like the present. No longer does the past conflict with now. This continuity extends the present by increasing its reality and its value in your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark of beauty hidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship where hatred is remembered; yet there to come alive as the relationship is given to Him Who gives it life and beauty. That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the source of separation, and where it must be undone. For separation must be corrected where it was made.

So it appears that a key to the surrender of special relationships is simply forgiveness – our forgiveness of ourselves for holding thoughts not of love of another. Those thoughts we had that the other was responsible for our happiness are the ones we need to look at. And separation is never in the present – never in the now – but only in that past that hold onto and value so dearly – that same past that never was.

6. The ego seeks to "resolve" its problems, not at their source, but where they were not made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there will be no solution. The Holy Spirit wants only to make His resolutions complete and perfect, and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the separation more and more undone, and union brought closer. He is not at all confused by any "reasons" for separation. All He perceives in separation is that it must be undone. Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and show it to you. Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. And you will let this spark transform the relationship so you can see it more and more. For you will want it more and more, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you. And you will learn to seek for and establish the conditions in which this beauty can be seen.

Can you possibly conceive of solving any problem by not looking at its source? No solution will ever be possible because we do not know what is causing the problem, only that we have one. With ego, one never solves anything, only adds to the problem. Solutions offered by Spirit are as Spirit Is – complete and whole and perfect. No confusion is apparent in It's solution to what we think is a problem to us. And after the very first time you allow Spirit to help you in eliminating a problem, you will thereafter be looking towards Spirit for the resolution of all problems – and eventually you will discover that less problems are appearing to you.

7. All this you will do gladly, if you but let Him hold the spark before you, to light your way and make it clear to you. God's Son is One. Whom God has joined as one, the ego cannot put asunder. The spark of holiness must be safe, however hidden it may be, in every relationship. For the Creator of the one relationship has left no part of it without Himself. This is the only part of the relationship the Holy Spirit sees, because He knows that only this is true. You have made the relationship unreal, and therefore unholy, by seeing it where it is not and as it is not. Give the past to Him Who can change your mind about it for you. But first, be sure you fully realize what you have made the past to represent, and why.

Do you know what you have made your past to represent to you, and do you know why? Have you ever thought about this before? Within us is an eternal spark of Light – being eternal means simply that it is forever present – forever burning – forever there for us to locate and use when we choose to do so. There is no part of a Whole that we are to become for we are the One That forever Is. In our mind, we think we are left out of What Is, but our knowing shows us our Truth.

8. The past becomes the justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego against the present. For the present is forgiveness. Therefore, the relationships the unholy alliance dictates are not perceived nor felt as now. Yet the frame of reference to which the present is referred for meaning is an illusion of the past, in which those elements that fit the purpose of the unholy alliance are retained, and all the rest let go. And what is thus let go is all the truth the past could ever offer to the present as witnesses for its reality. What is kept but witnesses to the reality of dreams.

When we hold on to our past – a past that never was – we continue to stay in agreement with the teachings of ego, and ego will never allow us to see the present because within the present is no past – no fear – only love. To enter into the present we forgive ourselves and the ego will try extremely hard not to allow that to happen. But to never glimpse the present – to be forever locked into the past – is insane behavior at best. We are locked into a nightmare of dreams created by fear and sustained by more fear.

9. It is still up to you to choose to join with truth or with illusion. But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which one you choose you will endow with beauty and reality, because the choice depends on which you value more. The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery–it is all the same. For you can never choose except between God and the ego. Thought systems are but true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are. Only the Thoughts of God are true. And all that follows from them comes from what they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from which they came.

Read the first couple of line again carefully. Grasp the magnitude of what is being told to you – it is still up to us to choose truth or illusion – love or fear. And which ever one we choose, we let go of the other. And we are all far enough on our paths to know that there is no truth in fear – that no eternal love is present in fear – that only an illusion is of fear – and that our Truth will forever be within us and will forever be who we are. Truth will forever be present, but fear quickly fades away as we look through it and beyond it.

10. My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring reality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let me enter in the Name of God and bring you peace, that you may offer peace to me.

Now here is an offer presented to just you, and your reply is between you and the sender. Separation is a thing of the past and you can see it as such, depending on how you respond to this offer. Is this a one-time offer? Will you be given it again? Do you wish to chance not being here to hear it a second time?

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section IV - The Two Pictures

1. God established His relationship with you to make you happy, and nothing you do that 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 does not fulfill this function cannot be real.

God established His relationship with me to make me happy, and nothing I do that does not share His purpose can be real. So what purpose did God ascribe to you and me? Was it Love? Whatever is not Love is not real, right?

2. In this world it is impossible to create. Yet it is possible to make happy. I have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive you of your special relationships, but would transform them. And all that is meant by that is that He will restore to them the function given them by God. The function you have given them is clearly not to make happy. But the holy relationship shares God's purpose, rather than aiming to make a substitute for it. Every special relationship you have made is a substitute for God's Will, and glorifies yours instead of His because of the illusion that they are different.

First line is one often repeated – only God creates, we believe we make – big difference. The relationships we make for some purpose we have will never provide the happiness we seek. But if we show a little willingness, Spirit will transform those relationships to holy relationships, where the purpose of happiness will be shared.

3. You have made very real relationships even in this world. Yet you do not recognize them 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 you have made has, as its fundamental purpose, the aim of occupying your mind so completely that you will not hear the call of truth.

For me , there is a key contained in the above that helps me to grasp the life I believe I am living. Although I have made many relationships in this life, and I have believe in many of them to be all that I would ever desire, want or need, none of the relationships have brought me the happiness I know that is within me. They have all done one thing in common – they have all occupied my thoughts at one time or another to the point of forgetting about a spiritual path or the truth which is forever within me.

4. 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 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.

I smile here reading that the ego's answer to the Holy Spirit is special relationships. Such insane thinking, and yet this one particular piece of our dream has caused more pain and suffering than we could have imagined. Special relationships lock us into a blind box where only what ego wants us to see is shown to us. From the ego's point of view, this relationship is everything we ever dreamed of. From this relationship we shall have all the joy and happiness we will ever desire. Ever had some of those thoughts. A special relationship – a relationship where I must depend upon another for my happiness – is doomed from its first thought. And once in them, the only escape is by willingly giving it to the Holy Spirit.

5. The ego is always 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 so insanely. And all their defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect. The separation has nothing in it, no part, no "reason," and no attribute that is not insane. And its "protection" is part of it, as insane as the whole. The special relationship, which is its chief defense, must therefore be insane.

Perhaps you have been like this or knew someone who is or was – but some people are at such a state of alert most of their time, that they literally are walking time bombs. They are anxious over everything in their life and everyone's life as well. All the anxiousness is really but a smokescreen before their eyes so that they will see nothing but a fear based world. Beyond the screen is the Light within themselves and others. This screen will forever isolate them, separate them, from all others. There is literally no relationship, other than with themselves, that they truly trust.

6. You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the thought system the special relationship protects is but a system of delusions. You recognize, at least in general terms, that the ego is insane. Yet the special relationship still seems to you somehow to be "different." Yet we have looked at it far closer than we have at many other aspects of the ego's thought system that 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.

This is like a little mini-review for us: we know the thought system of the ego is delusional at best and that the ego is insane. We have seen experiences to support those conclusions and we feel at peace with them. We know them to be truth. Yet, special relationships continue to be a major part of our daily living, some we see while others are so subtle. But any special relationship is a delusion of an insane mind.

7. 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 first few times I read this paragraph changed my outlook in my life. My wife is an artist and often selects frames for her paintings. She can see the painting in the frame, but I see the frame – empty – void – and then I remember this paragraph about how ego offers us the frame with the thought of having something inside it, but nothing is there. Ego goes to great lengths to convince us to look again, but we continue to see what is there – nothing.

8. 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.

The times I have been to art museums and viewed the 'old masters' I am amazed at the ornate frames enclosing most of the work – some frames almost larger than the picture they hold. Many times I have focused more on the ornate details of the frame than the picture. And likewise ego presents this elaborate frame for us to feast our eyes upon – a special relationship – a relationship like no other and yet after a bit, they appear to be quite the same. Look deep into the picture offered you in special relationships – see into them so that your relationship can be revealed to you before you enter it fully. If after looking in, and still wanting a relationship that gives nothing and takes everything, enter into that special of specials.

9. Look at the picture. Do not let the frame distract you. This gift is given you for your damnation, and if you take it you will believe that you are damned. You cannot have the frame without the picture. What you value is the frame, for there you see no conflict. Yet the frame is only the wrapping for the gift of conflict. The frame is not the gift. Be not deceived by the most superficial aspects of this thought system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete in every aspect. Death lies in this glittering gift. Let not your gaze dwell on the hypnotic gleaming of the frame. Look at the picture, and realize that death is offered you.

Yes we all like the frame, but like an picture you buy, that which is in the center of the frame we must like as well. It is a package deal as they say. Any value to this gift is only what you give it. Any gift from the ego comes with strings attached. Are you ready to have those strings pulled on you as a puppet-master would do to its puppets?

10. 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 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.

This is an excellent example of how insane our belief in ourselves as egos is. When we accept the idea that we are not the truth, when we accept the thought that we are indeed these bodies separate from all others, when we accept the thought that we can bring ourselves happiness through another body or a multitude of bodies – then we are indeed what is called on dangerous ground. But by pausing a holy instant – a moment of time that is not – we can step upon holy ground – the truth of who we are.

11. The holy instant is a miniature of Heaven, sent you from Heaven. It is a picture, too, set in a frame. Yet if you accept this gift you will not see the frame at all, because the gift can only be accepted through your willingness to focus all your attention on the picture. The holy instant is a miniature of eternity. It is a picture of timelessness, set in a frame of time. If you focus on the picture, you will realize that it was only the frame that made you think it was a picture. Without the frame, the picture is seen as what it represents. For as the whole thought system of the ego lies in its gifts, so the whole of Heaven lies in this instant, borrowed from eternity and set in time for you.

In looking at art you will find that some art attracts you into it, while other is flat looking – no dimension. I enjoy the sort I can see myself walking into – see myself going beyond what the painting originally showed – to become lost within it. The flat art is not even a thought. And so the holy instant is that painting whereby I can enter it and become lost in its beauty. The frame that once was is now gone, and I have become one with the painting. I have become one with Heaven before me.

12. 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.

This is simple a beautiful visualization for us to partake in – see the two 'pictures' as they are presented to us – one with an enormous frame so large that its shadows block the picture it holds. The other picture is one of sheer beauty – one the resonates deep within us and the frame – well, we forgot already what the frame looks like. So in choosing what picture to accept we have to ask ourselves this – is there really any picture in the huge elaborate frame?

13. 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 from the frame in darkness is exposed to light, it becomes dull and lifeless, and ceases to distract you from the picture. And finally you look upon the picture itself, seeing at last that, unprotected by the frame, it has no meaning.

And what has no meaning, we let fall by the wayside and continue our journey through the picture we chose.

14. 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 beyond this picture you will see nothing.

But what shall we see beyond in the picture of Heaven? How far are we able to journey within that picture? Is there an ending? Within one picture is nothing, within the other is All That Is.

15. 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.

16. 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. Let us ascend in peace together to the Father, by giving Him ascendance in our minds. We will gain everything by giving Him the power and the glory, and keeping no illusions of where they are. They are in us, through His ascendance. What He has given is His. It shines in every part of Him, as in the whole. The whole reality of your relationship with Him lies in our relationship to one another. The holy instant shines alike on all relationships, for in it they are one. For here is only healing, already complete and perfect. For here is God, and where He is only the perfect and complete can be.

You must realize by now in the Course, that your level of consciousness is constantly being raised, that it is constantly being drawn upward. Hawkins says it so well in many books – we come from fear and move up and up – constantly raising our consciousness, and we raise our level, others are raised as well.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section V - The Healed Relationship

1. The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is a practical device, witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never fails. The experience of it is always felt. Yet without expression it is not remembered. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship became what it is. And as the unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of its maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the Redeemer of relationships.

So we might say that the holy relationship is being in the now – the present; and being in the present we are in the holy relationship. Out of the present we are no longer in that relationship – we are either focusing on the past or on the future. And the happy song we sing in sung now.

2. The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops and becomes accomplished, it represents the reversal of the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this; the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite of what it was. This is the first result of offering the relationship to the Holy Spirit, to use for His purposes.

So have you begun? Have you gone beyond the initial obstacle of fear – what will happen if I see this relationship another way? Once we get beyond the first step – the first obstacle – the first lesson – then other steps are not even noticed. It is a miracle in the making.

3. This invitation is accepted immediately, and the Holy Spirit wastes no time in introducing the practical results of asking Him to enter. At once His goal replaces yours. This is accomplished very rapidly, but it makes the relationship seem disturbed, disjunctive and even quite distressing. The reason is quite clear. For the relationship as it is is out of line with its own goal, and clearly unsuited to the purpose that has been accepted for it. In its unholy condition, your goal was all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make no sense. Many relationships have been broken off at this point, and the pursuit of the old goal re-established in another relationship. For once the unholy relationship has accepted the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was.

Once we ask Spirit to come – to be with us – once we show that 'little willingness', Spirit makes us aware of Its presence. In that bit of little willingness on our part, Spirit simply takes over, and a welcome relief for many of us. What we thought is of no importance to us now. What we saw we no longer see. We are now on a path of 'reclamation' – reclaiming our truth hidden deep within us under the covers of fear. Once we accept what is offered to us, there is no turning back although we may try. We have tasted of the holy fountain of truth and nothing will ever taste the same.

4. The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with this shift in goals. For the relationship has not as yet been changed sufficiently to make its former goal completely without attraction, and its structure is "threatened" by the recognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its new purpose. The conflict between the goal and the structure of the relationship is so apparent that they cannot coexist. Yet now the goal will not be changed. Set firmly in the unholy relationship, there is no course except to change the relationship to fit the goal. Until this happy solution is seen and accepted as the only way out of the conflict, the relationship may seem to be severely strained.

And of course ego will not take this lightly – its very existence is at stake here. It does not want us to walk through fears – it does not want us to drop all the many goals made for us – it does not want to know our truth in which we know also the truth of ego. It will attempt many ploys and many times we may waver, even go with ego on one of its senseless journey nowhere, but we return showing more willingness. We have drank of the truth, and nothing will satisfy us.

5. It would not be kinder to shift the goal more slowly, for the contrast would be obscured, and the ego given time to reinterpret each slow step according to its liking. Only a radical shift in purpose could induce a complete change of mind about what the whole relationship is for. As this change develops and is finally accomplished, it grows increasingly beneficent and joyous. But at the beginning, the situation is experienced as very precarious. A relationship, undertaken by two individuals for their unholy purposes, suddenly has holiness for its goal. As these two contemplate their relationship from the point of view of this new purpose, they are inevitably appalled. Their perception of the relationship may even become quite disorganized. And yet, the former organization of their perception no longer serves the purpose they have agreed to meet.

Ever witness such a relationship – one that was an unholy relationship now turning into a holy one? Perhaps one of the partners is not as willing as the other to follow. Perhaps one of the partners make an ultimatum to the other, and the other refuses. Perhaps they partners separate and go their separate ways, with at least one of them knowing the excitement and joy of a holy relationship.

6. This is the time for faith. You let this goal be set for you. That was an act of faith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of faith are being introduced. If you believed the Holy Spirit was there to accept the relationship, why would you now not still believe that He is there to purify what He has taken under His guidance? Have faith in your brother in what but seems to be a trying time. The goal is set. And your relationship has sanity as its purpose. For now you find yourself in an insane relationship, recognized as such in the light of its goal.

So we go from fear to faith – from thinking we were in control to knowing that our path is laid out for us to follow. We go from fearing others to loving all. We drop our baggage about who we thought we were and learn who we are. And because of this we can no longer tolerate a relationship built on fear, only one with love as it foundation.

7. Now the ego counsels thus; substitute for this another relationship to which your former goal was quite appropriate. You can escape from your distress only by getting rid of your brother. You need not part entirely if you choose not to do so. But you must exclude major areas of fantasy from your brother, to save your sanity. Hear not this now! Have faith in Him Who answered you. He heard. Has He not been very explicit in His answer? You are not now wholly insane. Can you deny that He has given you a most explicit statement? Now He asks for faith a little longer, even in bewilderment. For this will go, and you will see the justification for your faith emerge, to bring you shining conviction. Abandon Him not now, nor your brother. This relationship has been reborn as holy.

We know of unconditional love, now we learn of unwavering faith, of a knowledge so deep within us that we never knew it existed. We go from the chaos of insanity to the bliss of sanity, and we do this by exercising faith – faith in knowing Who is leading us, Who is making our decisions, Who is there to help choose. We waiver but Spirit gently nudges us asking that we just hold onto our faith and know this is the only way. And from within us comes a signal that this is our truth.

8. Accept with gladness what you do not understand, and let it be explained to you as you perceive its purpose work in it to make it holy. You will find many opportunities to blame your brother for the "failure" of your relationship, for it will seem at times to have no purpose. A sense of aimlessness will come to haunt you, and to remind you of all the ways you once sought for satisfaction and thought you found it. Forget not now the misery you really found, and do not breathe life into your failing ego. For your relationship has not been disrupted. It has been saved.

We do not understand the meaning of Love, so is any other understanding more important for us? We know we are Love and loved without understanding any of it. We know just as well that as Spirit takes from us those thoughts we believe to be problems, as He accepts from us all that we offer, that we are relieved of those fears. We have walked a lifetime so far seeking something we wanted on the outside when what we wanted was already within us.

9. You are very new in the ways of salvation, and think you have lost your way. Your way is lost, but think not this is loss. In your newness, remember that you and your brother have started again, together. And take his hand, to walk together along a road far more familiar than you now believe. Is it not certain that you will remember a goal unchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was never absent.

We have not lost nor could we ever lose anything, for we have nothing in this world. Our way is not lost, but simply pointed out to us more clearly. It appears as if new and yet we begin to know that we have walked this path before. The path has forever been there, and our goal on it has forever been as well.

10. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice. You have joined with many in the holy instant, and they have joined with you. Think not your choice will leave you comfortless, for God Himself has blessed your holy relationship. Join in His blessing, and withhold not yours upon it. For all it needs now is your blessing, that you may see that in it rests salvation. Condemn salvation not, for it has come to you. And welcome it together, for it has come to join you and your brother together in a relationship in which all the Sonship is together blessed.

In a holy relationship, we glow with the love within us and so that others may see theirs as well. We glow together, becoming the One we have forever been. This is what salvation is – joining as we have forever been – see each other as we are. And we hear a song so beautiful that only angels could sing it and only we could remember it.

11. You undertook, together, to invite the Holy Spirit into your relationship. He could not have entered otherwise. Although you may have made many mistakes since then, you have also made enormous efforts to help Him do His work. And He has not been lacking in appreciation for all you have done for Him. Nor does He see the mistakes at all. Have you been similarly grateful to your brother? Have you consistently appreciated the good efforts, and overlooked mistakes? Or has your appreciation flickered and grown dim in what seemed to be the light of the mistakes? Perhaps you are now entering upon a campaign to blame him for the discomfort of the situation in which you find yourself. And by this lack of thanks and gratitude you make yourself unable to express the holy instant, and thus lose sight of it.

For a relationship to exist, it must have more than one member in it. In the holy relationship each member has requested the assistance of Spirit, and each member has accepted it as well. Such is the scene of a holy relationship. We thank Spirit for all that has been done for us, but we also thank other members for their effort as well. A holy relationship works as one. And always within any relationship you are in, remember you are always a part of it. There is no space in a holy relationship for judgment or self-righteous behavior. There is but room only for love.

12. The experience of an instant, however compelling it may be, is easily forgotten if you allow time to close over it. It must be kept shining and gracious in your awareness of time, but not concealed within it. The instant remains. But where are you? To give thanks to your brother is to appreciate the holy instant, and thus enable its results to be accepted and shared. To attack your brother is not to lose the instant, but to make it powerless in its effects.

Staying in the instant – staying in the present – in the now – is the only way that time will never distort what we have. Time is a product of ego – a toy of fear. But the instant is eternal, time never was.

13. You have received the holy instant, but you may have established a condition in which you cannot use it. As a result, you do not realize that it is with you still. And by cutting yourself off from its expression, you have denied yourself its benefit. You reinforce this every time you attack your brother, for the attack must blind you to yourself. And it is impossible to deny yourself, and to recognize what has been given and received by you.

It might be like having insurance but never using it when you feel ill. You may forget you have it, but then discover you do and then begin once again using it – once again being in the holy relationship which never left you. And being there you once again do not judge others – but see them as the truth they are – you are.

14. You and your brother stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the goal, together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly arrange the means for its accomplishment? It is just this same discrepancy between the purpose that has been accepted and the means as they stand now which seems to make you suffer, but which makes Heaven glad. If Heaven were outside you, you could not share in its gladness. Yet because it is within, the gladness, too, is yours. You are joined in purpose, but remain still separate and divided on the means. Yet the goal is fixed, firm and unalterable, and the means will surely fall in place because the goal is sure. And you will share the gladness of the Sonship that it is so.

Does this not remind of a wedding scene? You and another standing before Spirit, knowing that you both are but one. We have sought all too often for something out there and yet, never finding it. Now we know and experience that which we sought.

15. As you begin to recognize and accept the gifts you have so freely given to your brother, you will also accept the effects of the holy instant and use them to correct all your mistakes and free you from their results. And learning this, you will have also learned how to release all the Sonship, and offer it in gladness and thanksgiving to Him Who gave you your release, and Who would extend it through you.

As we slowly and surely see the gifts offered to us by Spirit, and accept those gifts as well, we begin to feel as if the holy instant is all that is – we are beyond words of elation, of joy, of happiness. We see for ourselves how life before us has changed and we know that we shall continue to rely on Spirit for the remainder of the path.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section VI - Setting the Goal

1. The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely simple, but it is unequivocal. In fact, in order to be simple it must be unequivocal. The simple is merely what is easily understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be clear. The setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is general. Now He will work with you to make it specific, for application is specific. There are certain very specific guidelines He provides for any situation, but remember that you do not yet realize their universal application. Therefore, it is essential at this point to use them in each situation separately, until you can more safely look beyond each situation, in an understanding far broader than you now possess.

Note the part about 'simple is...easily understood' – now note how many things in your life as presented to you by yourself are not easily understood, not even in a difficult way. When we begin to notice that if we but get out of our own way – we drop the beliefs we hold so dear to us – that miracles just keep flowing to us. But we are learning here to walk as if we were once again an infant – just one step at a time and until we master that one step, we don't try the second one.

2. In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very simply, is "What do I want to come of this? What is it for?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning, for it is this which will determine the outcome. In the ego's procedure this is reversed. The situation becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can be anything. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it wants to come of the situation. It is aware of what it does not want, but only that. It has no positive goal at all.

Again, keeping it serenely simple (KISS method) we appear to often work from the end – as if what we want is already ours, and it is. The ego has no idea what it wants from any situation it places us in. Ego has no goal, no object in mind so to speak – simply continue with those thoughts of fear and all their fruits – guilt, blame, shame, just to name a few.

3. Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it has already happened. Then you look back at it, and try to piece together what it must have meant. And you will be wrong. Not only is your judgment in the past, but you have no idea what should happen. No goal was set with which to bring the means in line. And now the only judgment left to make is whether or not the ego likes it; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome, set in advance, makes understanding doubtful and evaluation impossible.

And here is an easy lesson for us: have you ever been able to change your past? Have you ever been able to go back and alter what happen so that is different from what you thought it was? We look back on a past that never was, and there is no way that we can do anything about it. If we judge we are living in the past. If we accept, we are living in the holy instant – the present – the now.

4. The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen. You will therefore make every effort to overlook what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's sorting out of truth and falsity. The true becomes what can be used to meet the goal. The false becomes the useless from this point of view. The situation now has meaning, but only because the goal has made it meaningful.

When we come to Spirit and ask for help – ask for assistance in seeing this life differently – asking for a change of thought – we are at place we begin to know that we as this ego – this body – can do nothing, and all the frustration we encounter is our own doing because of this. Giving all of the chaos to Spirit is lifting a great burden from our mind – our thoughts are changed and our vision is clearer.

5. The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome must be peace. And this is quite apart from what the outcome is. If peace is the condition of truth and sanity, and cannot be without them, where peace is they must be. Truth comes of itself. If you experience peace, it is because the truth has come to you and you will see the outcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. You will recognize the outcome because you are at peace. Here again you see the opposite of the ego's way of looking, for the ego believes the situation brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that the situation is as the goal determines it, and is experienced according to the goal.

Okay, so what are you experiencing right now? Is it peace or something other than peace? And is there anything other than peace which is real? For most of us, we are not experiencing peace now. We have thoughts of the upcoming holiday season and the burden that places on us. But as so many authors tell us, including the Course, we can choose peace instead of this. When we are being who we are, we are in peace. When we are believing who we are not, we are not in peace.

6. The goal of truth requires faith. Faith is implicit in the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's purpose, and this faith is all-inclusive. Where the goal of truth is set, there faith must be. The Holy Spirit sees the situation as a whole. The goal establishes the fact that everyone involved in it will play his part in its accomplishment. This is inevitable. No one will fail in anything. This seems to ask for faith beyond you, and beyond what you can give. Yet this is so only from the viewpoint of the ego, for the ego believes in "solving" conflict through fragmentation, and does not perceive the situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split off segments of the situation and deal with them separately, for it has faith in separation and not in wholeness.

I often times view faith as my holding the hand of God as I move along my spiritual path. I hold onto it as if I were a tiny child and I am when it comes to my path. I am open and receptive to all that is presented, but without holding onto a hand, I could easily slip off the path onto the pavement of chaos. From Love to fear just that fast. And there have been times when I feel comfortable to release my grip, knowing the hand is still there should I believe I need it.

7. Confronted with any aspect of the situation that seems to be difficult, the ego will attempt to take this aspect elsewhere, and resolve it there. And it will seem to be successful, except that this attempt conflicts with unity, and must obscure the goal of truth. And peace will not be experienced except in fantasy. Truth has not come because faith has been denied, being withheld from where it rightfully belonged. Thus do you lose the understanding of the situation the goal of truth would bring. For fantasy solutions bring but the illusion of experience, and the illusion of peace is not the condition in which truth can enter.

Ego will continue to tell me to let go of that hand, knowing that I am on the edge of the path. Ego will encourage me that I can do this path alone – that I need no one else. This is the fantasy – the illusion – that I must be aware of. I choose peace and will settle for nothing less.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section VII - The Call for Faith

1. The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the witnesses to your lack of faith. They demonstrate that you did not believe the situation and the problem were in the same place. The problem was the lack of faith, and it is this you demonstrate when you remove it from its source and place it elsewhere. As a result, you do not see the problem. Had you not lacked faith that it could be solved, the problem would be gone. And the situation would have been meaningful to you, because the interference in the way of understanding would have been removed. To remove the problem elsewhere is to keep it, for you remove yourself from it and make it unsolvable.

Why are we at where we are at on our path? Could it be because of faith? That we do not show enough faith about our truth, to move us along? Is our lack of faith holding us here? First of all, perhaps no problem exists and therefore no solution is necessary. Perhaps, like all of our ego thoughts, the problem seems real because of the chaos we have believed in for so long. If we give meaning to any situation, we must be in thoughts of fear, right? If we are in the holy instant, no meaning is possible for none exists.

2. There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve. There is no shift in any aspect of the problem but will make solution impossible. For if you shift part of the problem elsewhere the meaning of the problem must be lost, and the solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning. Is it not possible that all your problems have been solved, but you have removed yourself from the solution? Yet faith must be where something has been done, and where you see it done.

What is your reaction to "is it not possible that all your problems have been solved, but you removed yourself from the situation"? Do we always want to accept the solution to a situation? Are we always happy with the solution presented to us? But having faith would have us knowing within that no problem exists.

3. A situation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems are perceived, it is because the thoughts are judged to be in conflict. But if the goal is truth, this is impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, for minds cannot attack. The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for bodies cannot solve anything. It is their intrusion on the relationship, an error in your thoughts about the situation, which then becomes the justification for your lack of faith. You will make this error, but be not at all concerned with that. The error does not matter. Faithlessness brought to faith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used against truth will always destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it be restored where it was lost, and seek not to have it made up to you elsewhere, as if you had been unjustly deprived of it.

Ever stop and think that everything in your life is a relationship situation? Even that relationship with your pet – where it is just you and it. Do you not judge the pet constantly? Remember early, very early in the Course, we had lessons concerning the fact that we are not these bodies. That same lesson appears throughout the Course because it is one we have yet to learn well. Because we believe we are this body, this name, this label, etc., we are not demonstrating our faith. If we demonstrated faith, would we believe we are this body?

4. Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation. But remember this; the goal of holiness was set for your relationship, and not by you. You did not set it because holiness cannot be seen except through faith, and your relationship was not holy because your faith in your brother was so limited and little. Your faith must grow to meet the goal that has been set. The goal's reality will call this forth, for you will see that peace and faith will not come separately. What situation can you be in without faith, and remain faithful to your brother?

Is there anything possible that we have not already been given? Can we ever, in truth, lack anything? So if we say we desire something, we need, we want, we must have, etc., we not demonstrating faith, but listening to the darkness in our mind. Our goal has been set but not by us. Having faith that we will attain this goal is our beginning, and staying with faith will insure our completion.

5. Every situation in which you find yourself is but a means to meet the purpose set for your relationship. See it as something else and you are faithless. Use not your faithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it calmly, but do not use it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and wholly faithful to its master. Use it, and it will carry you straight to illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you. It interferes, not with the goal, but with the value of the goal to you. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers, but look upon its offering and recognize it is illusion.

In the relationship you are presently in – any of them and all of them – are you aware of what you are to learn from them? Have you stop your mind long enough to ask the question and listen for the answer? Are you aware of showing faith or faithlessness? Are you at peace or in a problem?

6. The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as faith to truth. If you lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and perfectly, his part in any situation dedicated in advance to truth, your dedication is divided. And so you have been faithless to your brother, and used your faithlessness against him. No relationship is holy unless its holiness goes with it everywhere. As holiness and faith go hand in hand, so must its faith go everywhere with it. The goal's reality will call forth and accomplish every miracle needed for its fulfillment. Nothing too small or too enormous, too weak or too compelling, but will be gently turned to its use and purpose. The universe will serve it gladly, as it serves the universe. But do not interfere.

Spiritual teaching dating back before Buddha, talk about letting go of everything we believe we have – letting the illusion we believe in simply drift away. What happens when we allow this? We have nothing by which to compare or judge another. And then what? They are then seen as they are and we are – the Oneness of Truth.

7. The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you. And you can use this in perfect safety. Yet for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make it useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead.

The word 'power' in our lives has meanings we have given it depending on the situation at the time. The 'power' we have is not covered under any definition offered by ego – by us. The power we have is our essence. The power we have is our truth. Our power is That Which We Are, and will forever be. You see, that power is beyond description.

8. Yet think on this, and learn the cause of faithlessness: You think you hold against your brother what he has done to you. But what you really blame him for is what you did to him. It is not his past but yours you hold against him. And you lack faith in him because of what you were. Yet you are as innocent of what you were as he is. What never was is causeless, and is not there to interfere with truth. There is no cause for faithlessness, but there is Cause for faith. That Cause has entered any situation that shares Its purpose. The light of truth shines from the center of the situation, and touches everyone to whom the situation's purpose calls. It calls to everyone. There is no situation that does not involve your whole relationship, in every aspect and complete in every part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it and keep the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole relationship, and derives its meaning from it.

Remember that other section in the Course where we were told that no one can do anything to us – only our minds attack – and what we feel our brother has done to us is simply what we have done to our brother. Here is that same lesson repeated much the same way. Perhaps the repetition is because we are still not there – yet. If we show a lack a faith in our brother, we show that lack of faith in ourselves. We cannot see a brother different from us, unless we are coming for a past that never existed.

9. Enter each situation with the faith you give your brother, or you are faithless to your own relationship. Your faith will call the others to share your purpose, as the same purpose called forth the faith in you. And you will see the means you once employed to lead you to illusions transformed to means for truth. Truth calls for faith, and faith makes room for truth. When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose of your relationship by exchanging yours for His, the goal He placed there was extended to every situation in which you enter, or will ever enter. And every situation was thus made free of the past, which would have made it purposeless.

With faith in yourself, then seeing faith in others, the relationship become a holy relationship and truth is present. But you will have to continue to have faith in you, and you will be challenged constantly. Do you think that ego will allow you to simply be at peace and not be enticed into fear?

10. You call for faith because of Him Who walks with you in every situation. You are no longer wholly insane, nor no longer alone. For loneliness in God must be a dream. You whose relationship shares the Holy Spirit's goal are set apart from loneliness because the truth has come. Its call for faith is strong. Use not your faithlessness against it, for it calls you to salvation and to peace.

As we have learned to call Spirit for decisions: "Decide for me" and called upon Spirit to see this differently, we are reminded here to continue to call upon Spirit for the faith necessary to maintain a holy relationship. Perhaps the message is to simply not forget we are with Spirit at all times and to simply ask for assistance at all times.

Chapter 17

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section VIII - The Conditions of Peace

1. The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning that the Holy Spirit's purpose has given it is also given to every situation. It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth. The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it. It is a situation of perfect peace, simply because you have let it be what it is.

So what does an example mean to you? Something we might try to attain, might try to do, might try to be? The holy instant is an example of what is reality in truth. It is an example of what faith will do for us. Just as a little willingness is all that is needed, so it is with just a little faith. Actually there is no such thing as a little faith – it is simply faith. And we have accepted the holy instant as it is, with no judgment or meaning – simply peace.

2. This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks of you. Let truth be what it is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it encompass every situation and bring you peace. Not even faith is asked of you, for truth asks nothing. Let it enter, and it will call forth and secure for you the faith you need for peace. But rise you not against it, for against your opposition it cannot come.

Can we interrupt truth or attack truth or intrude upon truth? Not really, we only believe we can when we come from the ego side of our mind. Truth is truth – no even definable for us with the words we use. Truth is experience within us as the knowledge that has forever been there. We may resist truth, but it is still present.

3. Would you not want to make a holy instant of every situation? For such is the gift of faith, freely given wherever faithlessness is laid aside, unused. And then the power of the Holy Spirit's purpose is free to use instead. This power instantly transforms all situations into one sure and continuous means for establishing His purpose, and demonstrating its reality. What has been demonstrated has called for faith, and has been given it. Now it becomes a fact, from which faith can no longer be withheld. The strain of refusing faith to truth is enormous, and far greater than you realize. But to answer truth with faith entails no strain at all.

Wouldn't we all want every instant to be a holy instant – every moment to be the present moment – the now? Here we are told to lay down our faithlessness – our thoughts of a past and a future – and simply accept that which is given to us – that which is before us. Once seen, our faith is showing brightly from within and the darkness no longer is seen. Any strain – any stress – any anxiety that we experience is not from accepting and acknowledging our faith, but from using fear to attempt to hide it.

4. To you who have acknowledged the Call of your Redeemer, the strain of not responding to His Call seems to be greater than before. This is not so. Before, the strain was there, but you attributed it to something else, believing that the "something else" produced it. This was never true. For what the "something else" produced was sorrow and depression, sickness and pain, darkness and dim imaginings of terror, cold fantasies of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was nothing but the intolerable strain of refusing to give faith to truth, and see its evident reality.

And any strain is our resistance – our fear – our beliefs about a past that never was and a future that never will be. Those thoughts burden us and cause us the sorrow, the depression, the sickness and the pain. We believe we must live in darkness when light is but a thought away.

5. Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did this to him. Think carefully before you let yourself use faithlessness against him. For he is risen, and you have accepted the Cause of his awakening as yours. You have assumed your part in his redemption, and you are now fully responsible to him. Fail him not now, for it has been given you to realize what your lack of faith in him must mean to you. His salvation is your only purpose. See only this in every situation, and it will be a means for bringing only this.

And such was our 'crucifixion' – was! The nails of faithlessness held us to a cross of darkness. But we have come down from that cross, discarded the darkness and risen above all of that. We gladly take our part in our redemption and feel responsible to each other for it. You are there for me, and I for you. Everything that is ours is being shown to us once again. We have but to let go of all that we believe is ours in this dream – let go thoughts given to forms of nothingness.

6. When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became a giver of peace as surely as your Father gave peace to you. For the goal of peace cannot be accepted apart from its conditions, and you had faith in it for no one accepts what he does not believe is real. Your purpose has not changed, and will not change, for you accepted what can never change. And nothing that it needs to be forever changeless can you now withhold from it. Your release is certain. Give as you have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond any situation that could hold you back, and keep you separate from Him Whose Call you answered.

Has this not been a hidden goal within us all – our truth? Have we not been seeking the truth of who we are instead of who we think we are? Just by reading this Course material we have raised our consciousness to a higher level. And we have yet to reach the summit.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

I. The Substitute Reality

1. To substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you, and would accomplish for you. To substitute is to choose between, renouncing one aspect of the Sonship in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution occurred is thus fragmented, and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation.

We have all accepted substitutions for what we wanted at one time or another in our lives. At times, the substitution appeared better than what we had wanted, as if we were not to have what we thought we should. And so it is on our spiritual path as well – we don't always know what we want – in fact we repeat often that we don't know anything thereby opening us to what is presented by Spirit.

2. The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge between them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one because they are the same. Substitution is clearly a process in which they are perceived as different. One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything seems to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy.

Believing that we are the ego, we believe in substitutions. Spirit sees no substitutes as It perceives only love, something we are being reminded of constantly. Spirit sees us as One, while we all too often see us as separated and divided as we could be. We all know the power that is within the truth of who we are. Can you stretch your imagination to the point where you could see that power as the One we all are?

3. The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves substitution by definition, for it is love's replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each one seems to require a different form of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems. No one is seen complete. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, and used as the standard for comparison of acceptance or rejection for acting out a special form of fear.

One of the things that the Course repeats and repeats for us is that love is love is love and nothing but love. It is repeated for us because we so quickly deny it – we look for a substitute for love fairly often, sometimes without being aware of it. We have all come far enough on our path to know when we are in a place of love or a place of fear. The peace that flows over us in love is not to be forgotten. That which is experienced in fear has to be constantly given us by ego so that we don't forget – but we do and for that we are grateful. We forget fear by going beyond it and seeing it as it is – an illusion. Can we do that with love? Can we go beyond love? There is no 'beyond love'.

4. You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it.

Some of us that are what you might say 'older' may have been brought up with fearing God – fearing to talk directly to God – not being worthy enough for God – having to pray to others so that our prayers might be heard by God. There were rituals for us to help us clean out our minds of thoughts we believed God would not like. We looked elsewhere for a substitution for God because we feared God. And often we found other 'gods' that we did not fear, at least initially.

5. You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.

Sometimes when I meditate, I often think about how close I am to my Reality – only one thought away, and yet for me to have that one thought and only that one thought seems impossible at times. And yet our reality is but a thought away. We are told by the Course that a thought got us into this dream, and a thought shall wakening us. In order to have but one thought, we have to let go of all the others – something we yet do not have sufficient faith to allow – there is more for us to let go of – for us to de-value.

6. That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable. For truth brought to this could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not afraid of it.

So from one thought we have what is before us – what we continue to project onto our screen of illusion. And error can only cause such chaos to be seen. Could truth be seen as chaos? Truly a world of madness, complete with insanity being seen as sanity. I particularly like the last of this paragraph – don't invest in a world that is not there – don't buy into guilt, shame, etc. Instead see this world for what it is, then begin to see beyond it.

7. When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rising to frighten you, say only, "God is not fear, but Love," and it will disappear. The truth will save you. It has not left you, to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you. You but believe it is the other way; that truth is outside, and error and guilt within. Your little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have no substance. They fuse and merge and separate, in shifting and totally meaningless patterns that need not be judged at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are no real differences at all. None of them matters. That they have in common and nothing else. Yet what else is necessary to make them all the same?

That phrase: "God is not fear, but Love" is like an opened parachute for us as we fall through the darkness of this madness. It opens and carries us to truth, to that which is forever within us. We are told often that no truth is to be found outside, only within. And yet we believe as ego, that the tiny, mad voice within our mind is our 'within' – it is not. "Within" for me means into my essence of truth, not a mind that is appears split.

8. Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. He brings all your insane projections and the wild substitutions that you have placed outside you to the truth. Thus He reverses the course of insanity and restores you to reason.

I suggest you read the first line here often – beautifully written – let those thoughts of fear dance away from you, to be taken the wind of Spirit and blown into the nothing they are. Reach our your hand and touch that of Spirit, as you are led from your outside to within, where your truth is known to you and peace is your experience.

9. In your relationship with your brother, where He has taken charge of everything at your request, He has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside you nothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting have nothing in common in reality. Within yourself you love your brother with a perfect love. Here is holy ground, in which no substitution can enter, and where only the truth in your brother can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together as you are with Him. The original error has not entered here, nor ever will. Here is the radiant truth, to which the Holy Spirit has committed your relationship. Let Him bring it here, where you would have it be. Give Him but a little faith in your brother, to help Him show you that no substitute you made for Heaven can keep you from it.

Particularly at this time of year, we often give to our 'brother' in offerings of food, money and clothing. All of this is of an outside world – a world of nothingness. We certainly give to our brother those worldly items, but we must wrap them first in love so that they may have meaning to him. When we give love, we give the perfect gift. With love given to another, goes our faith in them as well.

10. In you there is no separation, and no substitute can keep you from your brother. Your reality was God's creation, and has no substitute. You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there. And He would never accept something else instead of you. He loves you both, equally and as one. And as He loves you, so you are. You are not joined together in illusions, but in the Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken the holy place in which you stand together. God is with you, my brother. Let us join in Him in peace and gratitude, and accept His gift as our most holy and perfect reality, which we share in Him.

Often times I have had students who simply cannot accept the fact that God is with them. They still think of God as out there and very separate from them. And so they look upon their brothers as simply being as they are – bodies perhaps – but not having God within them. But not only is God within us, we are within God. There is no boundary for God or us – no place one of us begins and the other ends. We, our brother as well, are One with God. There is no definition of One.

11. Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe in your love. Heaven has entered quietly, for all illusions have been gently brought unto the truth in you, and love has shined upon you, blessing your relationship with truth. God and His whole creation have entered it together. How lovely and how holy is your relationship, with the truth shining upon it! Heaven beholds it, and rejoices that you have let it come to you. And God Himself is glad that your relationship is as it was created. The universe within you stands with you, together with your brother. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator.

See what happens when we see our brother as One with us? Heaven is before us. Our truth is made known. And all relationships are holy relationships – are all as One.

12. Whom God has called should hear no substitutes. Their call is but an echo of the original error that shattered Heaven. And what became of peace in those who heard? Return with me to Heaven, walking together with your brother out of this world and through another, to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it. Would you still further weaken and break apart what is already broken and hopeless? Is it here that you would look for happiness? Or would you not prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in making whole what has been ravaged by separation and disease?

We have been 'called' by God or we would not be reading this Course. And look at the offer for us – to walk with our brother to Heaven – from this world of madness to Truth. But drop those fears of you leaving this life, for you shall remain in your dream but you shall know which is real and which is not. Happiness will forever be found within you and you shall search no further. And your brother shall always appear as you are – the Oneness of God.

13. You have been called, together with your brother, to the most holy function this world contains. It is the only one that has no limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered you, in your holy relationship. Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted. The peace of God is given you with the glowing purpose in which you join with your brother. The holy light that brought you and him together must extend, as you accepted it.

Make every relationship you have a holy relationship. Accept and give to another only the love you are. And in that holy relationship you shall discover an endless array of love – of never ceasing flowing of love from one to another. And with that love you shall experience the peace on earth and good-will of your brothers.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

Section II. The Basis of the Dream

1. Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept. Rather it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have preferred. Here, you are "free" to make over whatever seemed to attack you, and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the "attack." This would not be your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as under attack and highly vulnerable to it.

Where else but in dream could a world appear real and not yet be real? As we think this world to be, so it is. But something deep within us knows that what we see is not real – is not our truth – is not home. If we were to step back but a moment and observe ourselves, we would see a body fearful of everyone and constantly defensive against everything – nothing but anxiety and stress and depression.

2. Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes, and therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world, and changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking examples, both of the ego's inability to tolerate reality, and of your willingness to change reality on its behalf.

So perhaps it is as simple as this – instead of trying to satisfy the ego by seeing this world the way it is presented, we could satisfy our soul by seeing this world through the eyes of Spirit.

3. You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams you arrange everything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do you order. No limits on substitution are laid upon you. For a time it seems as if the world were given you, to make it what you wish. You do not realize you are attacking it, trying to triumph over it and make it serve you.

Recall how many times you have read that this dream you are having is nothing more than a movie you are directing, producing and writing, not to mention starring in the lead role and also the extras as well. People are in our lives because we have placed them there and we expect them to perform for us according to our wishes. We truly believe we are in complete control of our life – of our dream – our movie. But in truth, can we ever control an illusion?

4. Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you literally scream, "I want it thus!" And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant the illusion of satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world that you prefer is terrifying. Your attempts to blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you substitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you would do to it. And thus is guilt made real.

We become so lost up in this illusion, we think it is real while it is the opposite. And in that mode of thinking, we believe everything is real, including the body we call ourselves. Then somewhere, some time, we pause and a little spark of light from within ignites and for a brief moment out of time, we see that what we thought was real is only a dream, an illusion. Then perhaps the light goes dim once again, and we believe again in our world. But we will never be able to rid our mind of that one holy instant in which our truth was shown. It is that one very instant that pulls us along this spiritual path.

5. Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it. And while you see it you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from you. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. And what you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special relationship has a special place. It is the means by which you try to make your sleeping dreams come true. From this, you do not waken. The special relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it.

What was your reaction the very first time you read or were told that the world you see is nothing more than a thought within your mind that you are projecting? Are we not confused by what is truly real and what is only pretended? Do we know 'real' if it is presented to us? The 'real' of this dream is define as being able to be felt, to see, to hear, to sense, to hold, etc. But the 'real' of our truth is simply truth – no definition – no words – only a knowing. A special relationship is our means of our holding ourselves to the belief that our dream is real. And even if we say we are dreaming, we choose that over wakening. What could we possibly fear by being awakened?

6. The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain asleep. I said before that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in the special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor snatch it away from you. But He does use it differently, as a help to make His purpose real to you. The special relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an offering to everyone.

So once again, if we but show a little willingness – if we but ask of Spirit to see this world in a different light – He shall show us our dream as a means of waking us from the slumber of fear. We see what had appeared fearful now as peace and joy. The dream is still there but it is seen through a different lens. And no longer are the extras in our movie doing what we wanted of them. Instead they are appearing before us bathed in a light of love which is offered to us and gratefully accepted by us.

7. Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will share with all who come within your sight. Through it, the blessing the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that He has forgotten anyone in the purpose He has given you. And think not that He has forgotten you to whom He gave the gift. He uses everyone who calls on Him as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you who offered your relationship to Him. If you but recognized His gratitude! Or mine through His! For we are joined as in one purpose, being of one mind with Him.

A special relationship seen as a holy relationship changes everyone in it from fear to love. What greater reason could we have to change all special relationships to holy? And our dream appears one of happiness now instead of fear and we are grateful. As we awaken we realize that all we thought was real is not, what we had forgotten is.

8. Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. It is the wish to make it that is incredible. Your relationship with your brother has now become one in which the wish has been removed, because its purpose has been changed from one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this because you think it may be this that is the dream. You are so used to choosing among dreams you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and all illusions.

To have a world appear as unreal is a wish we hold in our minds, and we can change our mind. We can choose that which is real – we can choose truth and love over fear. We can see our brother as One with us. And we must become aware that the choice is one constantly before us – moment by moment – instant by instant.

9. Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you have chosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your special relationship meet its conditions. In your relationship the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream reflects your will joined with the Will of God. And what this Will would have accomplished has never not been done.

Heaven is a choice we make – Heaven is eternally present before us but to experience it, we must first make that choice. That's how close Heaven is. As we choose Heaven, we choose our Truth, for they are but the same. We can continue to dream, but we can see Heaven instead of the illusion of a dream. Such is the Will of God; such is our will as One with God.

Chapter 18

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Section III Light in the Dream

1. You who have spent your life in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that seemed to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your goal was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God cannot destroy Himself. The light is in you. Darkness can cover it, but cannot put it out.

How crazy can this dream seem? When we are awake, we are still sleeping and dreaming. Each image that we have project onto our screen has taken deeper into the illusion, and the deeper we appear to go, the more we appear to believe in the dream. Our goal of the dream is indeed darkness, for the ego wants no light to shine. We even went so far to believe that we could hide from God in the darkness we made. But what we forgot is that even in that darkness, our truth is still within us. The light is still glowing from within and we only believe that darkness can hide it from view.

2. As the light comes nearer you will rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear, and sometimes to stark terror. But you will advance, because your goal is the advance from fear to truth. The goal you accepted is the goal of knowledge, for which you signified your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid you have stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light, and it will be enough to remind you that your goal is light.

The ego part of our mind will have us running from the light that begins to appear, and yet like a moth to a flame, we turn and go to the light. And the fear we had is no longer seen in the rays of light. And then we are reminded that the light is truth and the darkness is not real. We have been confused.

3. Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible. You do not know because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A little flicker of your eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to give you confidence in yourself, so long despised. You go toward love still hating it, and terribly afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what you have made of it. You are advancing to love's meaning, and away from all illusions in which you have surrounded it. When you retreat to the illusion your fear increases, for there is little doubt that what you think it means is fearful. Yet what is that to us who travel surely and very swiftly away from fear?

Our truth is suddenly open to us in the light from within. Did we forget who it was that so close to us along our journey in life? Had we known, would we have reached out and grasp the extended hand? Or would we have been so laded down with guilt that we would fear to touch our truth? We have been taught by ourselves that love is hate and hate is love, that when love is presented to us, we run from it. Even though we run from it, we are drawn back to it. It is who we are and we are the Truth.

4. You who hold your brother's hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this world's light. And fear must disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to your brother. You will succeed only in frightening yourself. The gift is given forever, for God Himself received it. You cannot take it back. You have accepted God. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. You do not understand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is not necessary. All that was necessary was merely the wish to understand. That wish was the desire to be holy. The Will of God is granted you. For you desire the only thing you ever had, or ever were.

Perhaps you could view holding your brother's hand as turning on a light switch, and then there was light! In the light you are One, no longer separate. And in the One, no fear exist for fear is not real. Offering love to your brother by taking his hand is the offering God gives us constantly. We cannot refuse it for it is All That Is. In our Truth is our acceptance of who we are – we accept God in the Oneness we are. And the relationship with our brother is one Heaven sent. We will not understand love, but gratefully accept it and know it is our truth.

5. Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible, and will strengthen your desire to reach it. And in your desire lies its accomplishment. Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit's Will. No little, faltering footsteps that you may take can separate your desire from His Will and from His strength. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take your brother's. You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go we carry God with us.

As you continue reading the Course, practicing the lessons of the Course, over and over, year upon year, you will discover that its teachings become easier and the knowledge deeper. Just reading the Course once places you where you have never before been – at a higher awareness of your consciousness. And all of this comes with the knowing within you that you are not walking this path alone, that separation is but a thought of fear, and fear is not real. And you will continue on your path with or without the Course, but what you have been shown will forever be seen by you.

6. In your relationship you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone who would remain in darkness. Those who would see will see. And they will join with me in carrying their light into the darkness, when the darkness in them is offered to the light, and is removed forever. My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of your relationship, is your need for salvation. Would I not give you what you gave to me? For when you joined your brother, you answered me.

It would appear that our salvation, our wakening, our going home, is connected directly to the one we call brother. By taking his hand, by giving and showing love, by letting the light within you shine upon him who thinks he is lost, you and he experience the Oneness – you and he experience salvation. We have been told before that we do not return – we do wake – alone.

7. You who are now the bringer of salvation have the function of bringing light to darkness. The darkness in you has been brought to light. Carry it back to darkness, from the holy instant to which you brought it. We are made whole in our desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear that you and your brother experience is really past. Time has been readjusted to help us do, together, what your separate pasts would hinder. You have gone past fear, for no two minds can join in the desire for love without love's joining them.

We have perhaps many titles, many labels in this dream, but how does 'bringer of salvation' or the 'bringer of light' appeal to you? Ego will tell you that the responsibility is too great – indeed too much work for you to do – you have better things to do in this life. Name one! You and I are the bringer of light to the world we project from the thoughts held in our mind. It is our honor to light up the world before us. It is a privilege we gladly accept and happily perform. Is it work? Is being who we are work? Only the ego resistance to our truth appears in the dream as work. What love has joined together is together forever.

8. Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one Ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is joined with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great lights have joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can you remain in darkness? You and your brother are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertook apart, and that led nowhere. You have found your brother, and you will light each other's way. And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God, to shine away the past and so make room for His eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.

Read the first two lines several times. Take the meaning of them deep within you. There are no lights in Heaven that are not lit for us. There is no other Ray from God that is yet to shine upon us. With that light no darkness can be thought of. We are joined together, on the journey to wakening where we have never left.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

Section IV. The Little Willingness

1. The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that you need do so little that enables Him to give so much.

" **It is the answer." That one jumped at me. The first thing that came to my mind was "There must be a better way." I enjoy being reminded about the 'little willingness.' We have to but have a tiny thought and it is taken from us. I have said before that 'little willingness' is not really correct, but it pacifies or irritates ego. Like faith, willingness is our desire to change what we see now. It is an unwritten message that sends out for help. I need do next to nothing and it shall be in the hands of Spirit.**

2. Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the holy instant. Come to it not in arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be.

Willingness is like humility to me, certainly not arrogance as ego would have us see it. Trust in the knowing within and be open to it. The holy instant is only required in this dream. What is delivers to us we need at the moment; we have forgotten what we have. Willingness is also surrendering – letting go of anything because we do not know what anything means. In that willingness we accept the truth of who we are.

3. Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be as you would make yourself? God did not create His dwelling place unworthy of Him. And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be interfering with His Will. You do not need the strength of willingness to come from you, but only from His Will.

Being humble does make us appear little to others, it only shows that we know that nothing in our world means anything to us – that we do not have all the answers – any answers to the myriad of problems we present ourselves as ego. Ego will have believe that we are less than others as we demonstrate humility. But in the act of humility, we discover who we are and we are in awe of ourselves. Would God create anything that was less than God is? God created you in the image and likeness of God. Can you not accept that? Is it because God is without form, without boundaries, without a description? But you are as well.

4. The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God's Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. God has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to teach you what they are. If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you must make the learner different. You did not make the learner, nor can you make him different. Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to be made for you?

There once was a time when I was taught that I was unworthy of God, but prayed that "only say the word and I shall be healed." If I were to be healed then I must have sinned – been sick – less than whole. But I cannot sin; I cannot be sick, and I cannot be less than the completeness I am. There are no preparations I must make for God to come to me – God is forever with me, and I with God. Can God enter into my world of illusions? Can I enter my world of illusions as the truth of who I am?

5. You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer, but merely to receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God's. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus:

I who am host to God am worthy of Him.

He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as He would have it be.

It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.

A truly beautiful prayer – one for us to repeat often – to have out where we can remind ourselves. Note from the prayer that we need do nothing but to be willing to accept it. Many times in the Course we are told the same thing – we need do nothing but simply accept our truth.

6. And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away the little that is asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement to it, and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear that you will add, if you prepare yourself for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourself to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His.

It is not about something small that might do, but the fact that we must do nothing. As ego, that is difficult at best. As ego, we always have to do something. If not, we might just sit and look within, and that would not be in the best interest of ego. In this paragraph, we are being asked to do but one thing – and that is not even to show that willingness. It is that we are to let go – let go of this world of dreams – of illusions and accept what has forever been.

7. It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult, because you insist there must be more that you need do. You find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so little, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now.

How do you feel knowing that you understand nothing and that you will never understand anything in this dream? Difficult at best to accept! And yet has there ever been one illusion that we could understand, including ourselves? There is nothing to understand about nothing. All that is asked of us is the little willingness and the letting go.

8. Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is natural and easy for you impossible. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible, and remain unwilling to give place to One Who knows. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.

There is a lot of 'stuff' here in this last paragraph. It was our decision alone to make this life difficult for us. It is we who think that anything is possible through us. But remember in the very beginning of the Course where it tells us that there is no difficulty in miracles? Here it brings it up again, this time telling us that if difficulty is experienced, we have caused it ourselves. And everything is this dream has already happened – it has been over but we have not yet let go of it. And that past that we thought was so precious to us at times, never happened. It was and is but a thought within our mind.

Chapter 18

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Section V. The Happy Dream

Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, the holy relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.

Read the first line carefully – the undoing of what never was. We are told so many times and so many different ways that this is a dream – not real – never was – and yet we hang onto the thought that it is real. We are also told here that we cannot understand and therefore the Atonement is necessary for us. Then again, what in a dream could ever be understood? This is surrender time – let go of all you believe to be true.

2. Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is its function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is His function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred, and to be forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will build your part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him, you will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.

So we need not go to the desert for 40 days of fasting, etc. to receive the holy instant. Nor do we have to remove all thoughts of guilt or other fears from our mind. All we have to do, and it is again repeated for us, is to have that little willingness and allow Spirit to do Its thing. Our part is to offer to Spirit all that we hold which is not love. Spirit will do and does all the rest. We have but to show that little willingness. We have to show faith in ourselves about the truth within us. And as that which serves us no purpose is lifted from us, we ascend into a higher consciousness of thought.

3. Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourself for such a function? Yet it is possible, because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this, without the means, is inconceivable. He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.

Planning and preparation are ego words. Our function is given us by God and no preparation nor planning are required by us. We are to simply 'show up' and the rest will be revealed to us. Accept the function given you, and the means of doing it will be provided you.

4. Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, "Thy Will be done," and not, "I want it otherwise." The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you have accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and use them.

I, for one, do not tire of being told that I do not understand – the more I hear it, read it, etc., the more I remember it. The message of happy dream is "They Will be done." Sounds a lot like "Not my will, but Thy Will." Either way it is saying that I will not do it my way.

5. It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.

It is real to love your brother as you love yourself. To love is real, to fear is unreal. But a key that is required here is that you love yourself first. Love yourself as God loves you – no conditions whatsoever. Can you love your brother like that? Every brother? No exceptions? Spirit makes our relationship into the holy relationship of truth when we all it to be. We simply show up, show the little willingness we have, and accept what is presented.

6. When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, in spite of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one that you would rather have. He will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining its blessing lies in the fact that it is now impossible for you or your brother to experience fear alone, or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary, or even possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without the other. And it will come to both at the request of either.

A couple of points here to remember: Just having a holy relationship does not mean you can sit back and it will just forever be. That relationship will be tested by ego every which way it can conceive of. Each time you feel it testing, offer the relationship to Spirit to once again form into a holy one. It is somewhat like having your car worked on by a mechanic. If the car is not running properly, you take it in and have it fixed. If your relationship does not appear to be holy, offer it to Spirit to have it fixed. It only take the offering of one to affect you both.

7. Whoever is saner at the time the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him, and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:

I desire this holy instant for myself, that I may share it with my brother, whom I love.

It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me.

Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now.

And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit, that His blessing may descend on us, and keep us both in peace.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

Section VI. Beyond the Body

1. There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.

Before I ever heard of the Course, beyond the body would mean to me that which I can not see – ghosts, evil spirits or just spirits – spooky at best and of course along with that came fear. Now using the Course in my daily living, beyond the body has all new meaning to me. First I do not believe in the body as real, and therefore can anything possibly be beyond that which is not real? As I read above that the Kingdom of Heaven is my dwelling place, then I accept the knowledge of who I am and where I am and will forever be. Heaven is not some place to go after this body does it death routine, but Heaven is here and now and will forever be, and I am in It.

2. What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else is there to give? The belief that you could give and get something else, something outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and of your Identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind. Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your body deceive yourself. You hate your mind, for guilt has entered into it, and it would remain separate from your brother's, which it cannot do.

What is the only real item we know? Love! God is real, therefore so am I. God is Love, therefore so am I. As for giving and receiving, there is but one commodity – Love, everything else is unreal – false – illusion. And the other point made above is that the guilt which is but a thought in our mind, we believe we can hide in a body which is not real. The body cannot be guilt for it can do nothing that we have not first thought of. So the responsibility is still ours for the thoughts we hold.

3. Minds are joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties of the body does separation seem to be possible. And it is mind that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. Its guilt, which keeps it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies because it is attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it not know its Identity. Mind cannot attack, but it can make fantasies and direct the body to act them out. Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.

Remember in the early beginning of the Course, we read that this illusion all began with a thought we held in our mind and for a moment, failed to laugh at the ridiculousness of it and here we are? Our minds are still joined but we believe them to be separated by the bodies we believe in. And with the separated mind that we believe in, comes the resulting fears we never experienced as One Mind. That is because fears like this dream, are illusions. We place so much value, so much emphasis on the body that we have forgotten the illusion part of it. We think it is real; we think it can join another; we think it can do battle; and we think it can respond on its own to the fears we also think.

4. In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it maintains it can, and uses what it does to hurt the body to prove it can. The mind cannot attack, but it can deceive itself. And this is all it does when it believes it has attacked the body. It can project its guilt, but it will not lose it through projection. And though it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions.

The easiest way to determine if we are thinking as One Mind is to ask ourselves if we can see and feel the body. If the response in yes, we are still separated in our thoughts and continuing with the illusion. Remember those times when you purposely got another person in trouble by placing the blame for some action on them, instead of accepting it yourself? Did you really rid yourself of the guilt associated with that action? It never left you nor can ever leave you. Guilt, or any fear, is a thought you hold in the separated mind you believe in.

5. Would you not have the instruments of separation reinterpreted as means for salvation, and used for purposes of love? Would you not welcome and support the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your perception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the body. For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have no real effect at all. What God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will. You cannot make His Will destructive. You can make fantasies in which your will conflicts with His, but that is all.

How did you answer the questions above? Be sure to read them again and answer them. One of the main points the Course makes is that this body that we have so much faith in, is not real. We are constantly reminded with the Text and the Workbook. This is all about our remembering what lies hidden within us, just waiting for us to uncover. The knowledge of our Truth, the very essence of who we are, is within each of us, and once discovered and remembered, it becomes as One.

6. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its attack and blaming it for what you wished it to do. It is impossible to act out fantasies. For it is still the fantasies you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. It does not dream of them, and they but make it a liability where it could be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your "enemy"; weak, vulnerable and treacherous, worthy of the hate that you invest in it. How has this served you? You have identified with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance and the perceived source of your guilt. You have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of God's Son, and turning it against him.

Now if you have difficulty reading this because it sounds rather bizarre and insane, it is only because it is. Look what we do constantly in this dream we call life. Look at the various ways you use your body, think about your body, or think about the body of another. How much value do you place upon the body? Does your body truly serve you or does it but follow the thoughts you hold as to what it should do. If you believe you are indeed this body, do you also believe that you are full of hate as you think you are? Do you think that hate is eating away at you from inside your body? Do you make weird statements about your feelings, such as "this thing is eating away at me" or "this thing is causing me so much pain and suffering"? What happens to us when we say some of these things often enough and long enough? You know the results.

7. This is the host of God that you have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode that harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence and death. This thing you made to serve your guilt stands between you and other minds. The minds are joined, but you do not identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You hate this prison you have made, and would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it unharmed, without your guilt upon it.

Would you really want God to be within this body you call you? Is it a place clear of fear, clear of guilt, clear of shame? So often we refer to going within and some people think of the body, but within is of the mind. Would you want God to enter into a mind that is holding hatred and fear? With the help of Spirit we can change those thoughts to love, we can clear the darkness and present nothing but light, and God is within that light.

8. Yet only thus can you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not a prison, but an illusion of yourself. The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is internal. Mind reaches to itself. It is not made up of different parts, which reach each other. It does not go out. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses everything. It encompasses you entirely; you within it and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere or ever.

Do you see that your body is but a prison you have made for it? You have placed the limitations on it, you have constructed it in its present form. Now look at your mind which is One with God. Your mind is without boundaries, limitations or walls of any kind. There is never a moment you are not present in the mind for there is no where else to be. This is your truth – you are One with God; where God is, you are.

9. The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you off from others and keeping you apart from them, and them from you. It is not there. There is no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from Himself except in illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yet this could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to create differently, and to have separated Himself from His Son to make this possible. He would have had to create different things, and to establish different orders of reality, only some of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between Himself and you.

Remember those times when you were extremely fearful, and yet you continued on – you walked through that fear and discovered that the fear, while it seemed real enough, was nothing? Fear is an illusion from a thought we hold in our mind. This body, this image we think we are, is also an illusion of a thought we hold. All illusions are nothing – all illusions. There is no separation in our Truth because there is no separation in God.

10. You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hand is joined with your brother's have begun to reach beyond the body, but not outside yourself, to reach your shared Identity together. Could this be outside you? Where God is not? Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He cannot be? You are surrounded only by Him. What limits can there be on you whom He encompasses?

In reaching out my physical hand to my brother, I am extending my mind to him as well. It is my mind that unites with him and has us both beyond the illusions of our bodies. Is this outside the body? There is no outside the body. There is no body. Being One with God is simply that – Being One. To grasp this, we must let go of every thought we hold of this illusion.

11. Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself. This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes hoped for in special relationships. It is a sense of actual escape from limitations. If you will consider what this "transportation" really entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. It becomes part of you, as you unite with it. And both become whole, as neither is perceived as separate. What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union. The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed you, and unites with it. And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it. You have accepted this instead of the body, and have let yourself be one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be limited by it.

Some of us may say that we experience ecstasy in some special relationships, that some relationships took us to far away dreams, but did we not also return back to the main dream? Uniting our mind with that of another, takes us beyond what we can think with a separated mind. What happens to the body when we experience this? Nothing, for the body is not real. Ram Dass talks about some of his 'trips' while using some drugs back in his younger years, of the dreams he had and the thoughts he held. But those trips were just that – mind journeys. Join your mind with your brother, see them as the love you both are, and experience the fleeting journey of love.

12. This can occur regardless of the physical distance that seems to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present or anticipated. The "something" can be anything and anywhere; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, and even a general idea without specific reference. Yet in every case, you join it without reservation because you love it, and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending all the "laws" your body obeys and gently setting them aside.

Ever been simply walking somewhere and you hear some sound that triggers a memory in you – a memory of something or somewhere, yet it is not clear what or where? Or how about seeing a flash – an image of something that you instantly recognize, and yet cannot remember seeing it before? This all happens without time as we know it. And have those thoughts lingered with you afterwards, sort of pulling you into something or pulling you somewhere – unknown?

13. There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not attacked, but simply properly perceived. It does not limit you, merely because you would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot contain you. You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of Self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the lack of awareness of the body, and of the questioning whether or not all this is possible.

When you had those thoughts or have those thoughts, we you aware that your body of itself did nothing, but your mind continued with its flow of thoughts? The body is a limitation, while the mind knows no limitation. And might those sights or sounds that are fleeting at best, but remembering long after, be but a beckoning to you from the Truth within you?

14. It is possible because you want it. The sudden expansion of awareness that takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.

So much is said about the holy instant, the moment, the now or the many names given by different authors – but always holding the same meaning – a instant without time where no past nor future thoughts are held. Once we taste of this, we can not get enough – it is more than an addiction – it is more than a quest or a drive we have – it is recognized as the Truth we are, and it is the beginning of the end of the sleep.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

Section VII. I Need Do Nothing

1. You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes the body an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this always means you still find sin attractive. No one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.

Simply the title of this section says it all – I need do nothing. Remember that 'sin' is but error as used in the Course. Is the error in your thinking your goal? Perhaps you need think again.

2. There is one thing that you have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body. It has perhaps faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.

Ever notice in meditation that you often 'feel' the body – you notice its presence? But have you had those 'moments' when you were completely free from the thought of a body – felt absolutely nothing but the love you are? After those 'instances' you never quite see nor feel the body you think you are the same. Somehow you know that this is not who you are.

3. At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never wholly in the present. In any single instant the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided. It has no attraction now. Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore must be thought of in the past or in the future.

Think about this for a bit. What you see as your body is from past thoughts you have had about the body – never about a thought in the present, for no past is there. What we see as the body is nothing more than thoughts of a past we never had. We are beginning to grasp this thing about it being an illusion, and this life being an illusion. This is just the beginning for us.

4. It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot prepare for it without placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does aim at saving time. You may be attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

Like most paragraphs in the Course, this one is powerful in its content. It is impossible for us to experience the holy instant unless we let go of the past and future, something not many of us are willing to do or know how to do. And this is one of the reasons it is but an instant. Some of us are on paths we have struggling with for a very long time, and yet as we pause and look, we see the struggle self-inflicted – we are struggling against ourselves. The path is easier and will appear quick if we simply get out of our way. It is all about accepting where we are at rather than analyzing where we appear to be.

5. Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you. You are prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you should do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; "I need do nothing."

Some great lines here: "You are prepared." So stop trying so hard and just allow life to come to you. You have been told that you are prepared now. Just one instant with a brother brings the universe to both of us. In that one instant we need do nothing. By now we have come to realize that we can do but nothing in a dream of nothing. But of course, the ego will have a million solutions and suggestions for you of things to do.

6. Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. You do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for you. Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. "I need do nothing" is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation.

Do you realize that to be in the holy instant – a moment without past and future thoughts, that you are doing nothing. This is what is being told to us – we need do nothing – simply be there.

7. To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time. This is the way in which sin loses all attraction right now. For here is time denied, and past and future gone. Who needs do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind.

Can you think of anything you can do that does not involve the body? To do nothing is without the thought of the body. Once the value we have placed on the body is forgotten, we can slip into that instant of no-time. There we are in the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God. When we slip back into the body, Spirit remains.

8. Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.

And so you shall go within to the silence of the instant, therein listening to the Voice present for you. And once heard, never to be forgotten.

Chapter 18

THE PASSING OF THE DREAM

Section VIII. The Little Garden

1. It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body is a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you. Can you who see yourself within a body know yourself as an idea? Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot even think of God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize.

Reading this one paragraph makes me stop and think just how limited I am when I believe I am this body. This body that I have so long that I am is limited in just about any way I can think of. And look at the one big questions asked of us: can you see yourself within this body as nothing more than an idea in your mind? We have even given God form and shapes. This world of illusion is filled with formless forms and we call it real. But our Reality is a formless world of All That Is.

2. The body cannot know. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.

As long as we believe in the body we call ourselves, we will fail to see All That Is around us. Where would you possibly invite God into this body? Is God ever in an illusion? Could you join God in any illusion? I truly enjoy reading the line "the body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea." We have attempted in this dream to limit God – to limit the idea we are in truth. Can it be done? What is your first thought when you see a fence – to stay on your side and to go beyond the fence? Are you ready to step out of your limited space to the unlimited world beyond?

3. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to defend this little speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. The sun becomes the sunbeam's "enemy" that would devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.

Within your kingdom of the fence in idea you call a body, you believe you are the ruler and sole proprietor. We have decided to take the place of God – not just to be separate from God but to replace God. And as such we become an enemy to ourselves. And what other enemy is there?

4. Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not survive apart from them. And what it thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its whole existence still remains in them. Without the sun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.

And while we are in this space of grandeur believing we are who we see, the world continues to function, the universe continues being a universe, and the sun, moon and other planets continue on their paths. This is the meaning behind loneliness – behind feeling separated. We feel lost and so alone in this chaotic existence we call life.

5. Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing another for some things, but by no means totally dependent on its one Creator for everything; needing the whole to give it any meaning, for by itself it does mean nothing. Nor has it any life apart and by itself.

And so as we look into the world we make, we do indeed see the above: we appear to be concerned only for ourselves, and let all the others take care of themselves. We believe we can hold our thoughts so that we need not share them with others, for fear they may steal our thoughts. We believe in all that we have accumulated and all that we are trying to accumulate more of, hoping that all this accumulation will bring us joy, as long as the others don't take any of it from us. We seem to operate as if each of us in one separate being, forgetting that each of us is actually but One. And all the accumulations we look upon only the meaning we have given them. Without that meaning, they are nothing. With the meaning, they are also nothing.

6. Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as you. It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the Whole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. It leads no separate life, because its life is the oneness in which its being was created.

Now here is where our bubble gets burst – we are not this body, this tiny speck of nothing with some sort of a limiting fence surrounding it. We are not a separate idea from God, but of One with God. We are unlimited in All That Is. We are but One with God.

7. Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain within your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all that he surveys, who looks on nothing yet who would still die to defend it? This little self is not your kingdom. Arched high above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to every part. The little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception.

Read carefully what this is saying to you: DO NOT ACCEPT THIS BODY AS YOU! It is not who you are. It is nothing more than a thought you are holding. Change your thought. What you are is beyond what you have ever thought was the most – such as the Universe. You are beyond the Universe, and yet you are the Universe. Will you continue in your belief that you are indeed a king within this tiny, limited kingdom – or will you accept that you are One with God.

8. Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning. It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. In your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert–dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless–that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy that love would bring to it from where it comes, and where it would return with you.

What truly holds us here when we know within that this is not who we are, nor is what we see real? Love would never hold us from anything, but free us to be Love. So the obvious response is fear, but do we fear? Do we fear what might happen to us if we were to let go of the idea that we are not this body? Would the body disappear or would the body continue to be seen but only seen differently? Accepting our truth does not mean that we must experience death, quite the contrary. Accepting our truth does not include death in its agenda. We are eternal as is our Source.

9. The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was. And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with you. And under its beneficence your little garden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone.

Letting go of that tiny idea that we this body, allows the Light from within to shine away all darkness. The thoughts of fear planted in the Garden of our Mind have been pulled and tossed away. In their place, seeds of unconditional love have been planted and are already sprouting through. Keeping our garden from of weeds now becomes a goal. We want only the truth – only Love to be present in our mind.

10. Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there. So will it grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, and leaving you inside. And you will recognize yourself, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the Love of its Creator shining upon it.

And from our Garden we shall share with others the fruits of love. And in giving them our harvest, we receive as well. There is no shortage in supply.

11. The holy instant is your invitation to love to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love's answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the body, and interposed no barriers to interfere with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. Asking for everything, you will receive it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven straight to Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood.

In one holy instant – in one present moment – in the now – we can experience All That Is. We can experience our Truth. We can experience joy and happiness. We can experience seeing all others as the Oneness of us. In that holy instant no bodies can be seen for no bodies are real. In that holy instant is All That Is and no needs nor wants are experienced. And in that holy instant, we see a Light of Lights shining forth and are in awe that we are that Light.

12. Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully at your weak request. You do not recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother. And you and he will not be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother. But together you could no more be unaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.

And once again we are reminded that we need show only a little willingness and the rest is taken care by Spirit. But we may not see what we think we are looking for because we may still be holding onto some thoughts we consider special to us. And until we let them all go, we can live all that there is to live.

13. You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert's dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome you. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him. Only a little wall of dust still stands between you and your brother. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you.

Have you ever once thought that the journey you thought you were on is over? But if it is indeed over, or even if it never started, why do we feel like we are still there? Because there remains yet one last veil of nothingness to go beyond, to see through, to blow away in the wind of illusion. So what holds us back from doing it?

Chapter 18

Section IX - The Two Worlds

1. You have been told to bring darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. Yet this wild and delusional thought needs help because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole rule of the kingdom it is set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery. This is the little part you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades it still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it.

First Person: I have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And I have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of myself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. Yet in this wild and delusional thought needs help because...I think I am the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, the sole ruler of the kingdom I set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery. This little part I think I stole from Heaven. I give it back to Heaven. Heaven never lost it, but I lost sight of Heaven. I allow the Holy Spirit to remove it from the withered kingdom I set it in, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack and reinforced by hate. Yet still within its barricades is a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what it thinks surrounds it.

2. Be you not separate, for the One Who does surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the eternal light. How is this done? It is extremely simple based on what this little kingdom really is. The barren sands, the darkness and the lifelessness, are seen only through the body's eyes. Its bleak sight is distorted, and the message it transmit to you who made it to limit your awareness are little and limited, and so fragmented they are meaningless.

The 'little kingdom' you made is seen only through the eyes of your body. Seeing through the eyes of Spirit gives you a completely different perspective. You are as you have and will forever be.

3. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to returned to the mind that made it. And these messages bear witness to the world, pronouncing it as true. For you sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages. Yet God can bring you there, it you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there. For it is not His purpose to frighten you, but only yours. You are severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear, but He would lead you safely through and far beyond.

Here we are told again that what we believe we see is but the illusion we make with the thoughts we hold. We are in charge of those illusions. We project our thoughts on the screen of our dream and then believe they are true. But if we allow Spirit to guide through the troubles we encounter on our path, we will be led beyond them. And beyond them lies nothing that could be described with words we know - nothing that could be seen with the eyes of the body - nothing that could be touched by us. For this is beyond fear - beyond our thoughts of fear - beyond that which the mind can comprehend.

4. The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadow rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless. Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept apart from what was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen. The body's eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see what it dictates.

A circle of fear; a circle how large or small depends on how much value we give to the thought. And can we ever simply step out of the circle? And all that bleakness, darkness and despair painted in the above paragraph is but an illusion you make with the thoughts you hold in a mind that doesn't even exist. What is darkness but the absence of light? And is light nothting more than the absence of darkness? How sad it is that they body cannot see beyond all this. For just the other side of the veil hiding everything from you, is the peace we seek.

5. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs as long as your believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion that seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.

As long as you and I believe we can sin but not forgive, this long will we believe we are this body. Guilt is the glue which hold the body together; forgiveness is that which dissolves such glue. We see a glimpse of light beyond what we see and we know within that is our goal.

6. This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it and see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button's fall, nor hold a feather. Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an illusion of a foundation Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands hold nothing.

How beautiful the words used here to describe what we believe is true. As with any illusion, any dream, we can see beyond it - through it - and know that what is before us is not real but what is beyond it is true.

7. Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise from your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is there. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's make-believe. Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.

Have you ever stopped for but a moment and considered this life and the world we see as mere child's play; simple playing on and one the game of hide and seek? Who do you suppose we are hiding from and what is it we are seeking? Could it be that we are hiding and seeking the same?

8. So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no more substantial. You will not bruise yourself against them in traveling through. Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows . Their shadows lie upon the world beyond them, still further from the light. Yet from them to the light their shadows cannot fall.

No harm will come to us as we move through the darkness into the light. We will be guided to around them and through them and we will see them for what they are - nothing. And with all the words about darkness and light, have you noticed that in the light there are no shadows?

9. This world of light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and you are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and love.

First person works well here: This world of light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here I am forgiven, for here I have forgiven everyone. Here is my new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought I had laid upon it. Here there is no attack on me and I feel welcome. Here is my innocence, waiting to clothe me and protect me, and make me ready for the final step in my journey within. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and love.

10. Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness does make lovely, but it does not create. It is the source of healing, but it is the messenger of love and not its Source. Here you are led, that God Himself can take the final step unhindered, for here does nothing interfere with love, letting it be itself. A step beyond this holy place of forgiveness, a step still further inward but the one you cannot take, transports you to something completely different. Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived, forgiven nor transformed. But merely known.

Read this again carefully. Forgiveness is no an end but is the source of healing, and a messenger of love. One step beyond this place of forgiveness, a step within and one we are told we cannot make alone. And it is here that we simply pause knowing, not seeing nor believing not imagining anymore - just being in this moment knowing.

11. This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. We need remember only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learning can go, will go beyond it, but in a different way. Where learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him Who is complete where He begins, and where there is no end. It is not for us to dwell on what cannot be attained. There is too much to learn. The readiness for knowledge still must be attained.

How do you feel being told that knowledge is beyond the scope of this course? But then as you read knowledge is explained as being unable to describe or define - simply knowing within of the Truth you are. When the words of the Course fail to speak to you, then you are on the brink of moving beyond them, moving to the knowledge you hold within. When the words stop, God begins.

12. Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone. Love is not learned, because there never was a time in which you knew it not. Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator, Whose acknowledgement of you and yours of Him so far transcend all learning that everything you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one meaning.

Love is not learned. A big statement o fact. Our learning will end when we accepted all that Love is not. When we just accept that we are that Love we so often refer to. We are that which we give to others and yet never lose any of it ourselves. When we get to this point on our journey where we no longer have a need for learning we will then just rest in knowledge of who we are in Truth.

13. Your relationship with your brother has been uprooted from the world of shadows, and its unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. From there it calls to you to follow the course it took, lifts high above the darkness and gently placed before the gates of Heaven. The holy instant in which you and your brother were united is but the messenger of love, send from beyond forgiveness to remind you of all that lies beyond it. Yet it is through forgiveness that it will be remembered.

First Person My relationship with my brother has been uprooted from the world of shadows and its unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. From there it calls to me to follow the course it took, lifts me high above the darkness and gently places me before the gates of Heaven. The holy instant in which I and my brother are united is the messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind me of all that lies beyond it. Yet is through forgiveness that it will be remembered.

14. And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy place of forgiveness you will remember nothing else, and memory will be useless as learning, for your only purpose will be creating. Yet this you cannot know until every perception has been cleansed and purified, and finally removed forever. Forgiveness removes only the untrue, lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it, safe and sure within its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean perception. There is your purpose now. And it it is there that peace awaits you.

And when the memory of God has come to me in the holy place of forgiveness I will remember nothing else...for my only purpose will be creating.

Chapter 19.

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section I Healing and Faith

1. We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth, peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by which the wholeness of the dedication can be safely assumed. Yet we also said that peace without faith will never be attained, for what is dedicated to truth as its only goal is brought to truth by faith. This faith encompasses everyone involved, for only thus the situation is perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must be involved in it, or else your faith is limited and your dedication incomplete.

A key word here is 'wholly' - completely - nothing left back. Have you ever given a situation that you were having to cope with, over to the Holy Spirit and you did not experience peace as the result? Most likely, you failed to let go completely of the problem. Something we all do and perhaps we are not even aware of it. To give it over to Spirit is to give it in its entirety. If you could have handled it, you would not be giving to Spirit. And when you give, you give with the faith that it shall be experienced differently.

2. Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God. And he is healed because you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus do you see him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since He shares it He has given it, and so He heals through you. It is this joining Him in a united purpose that makes this purpose real, because you make it whole. And this is healing. The body is healed because you came without it, and joined the Mind in which all healing rests.

Can you see what you believe you see in a thought of love? If so, it is the opportunity to heal, not only the brother but yourself as well. We do not heal alone. We are not here alone. See your brother free as he is allows you to be free as well. In this freedom is your body and his healed because in this freedom you have not look upon the body.

3. The body cannot heal, because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing. Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it for. It is obvious that a segment of the mind can see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs the body becomes its weapon, used against this Purpose, to demonstrate the "fact" that separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion, acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what truth has never said and behaving insanely, being imprisoned by insanity.

This is one of harder concepts the Course asks that we accept. We have grown up believing the body can be sick, the body can be injured, the body can be in pain, etc. The body of itself does nothing. The thought we hold is the master of the body. Try to heal the body and we simply go in circles. Change our thoughts of how we see our body, and a change is seen. Why do placebos work? Because the takers believe they are taking something to cure them. The body is the symbol of separation. When we fail to focus on the body, we fail to focus on the separation.

4. Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions. For faithlessness is the perception of a brother as a body, and the body cannot be used for purposes of union. If, then, you see your brother as a body, you have established a condition in which uniting with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you from him, and kept you both apart from being healed. Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit's purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the body, to stand between you. And the body will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an "enemy" of healing and the opposite of truth.

Notice how the Course will repeat messages several times. The repetition is required not because we are slow learners but because we are slow in letting go of what we are holding onto that has us believing in illusions. Without faith, we are indeed this body of an illusion, a nothing from nothing, lost in the world of darkness. With faith, we are the Light to shine away all darkness. This is that world of duality - we either have faith and we exercise faithlessness. We either believe who we are in truth, or we believe who we think this body is.

5. It cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the opposite of faithlessness. Yet the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they are. Faithlessness would always limit and attack; faith would remove all limitations and make whole. Faithlessness would destroy and separate; faith would unite and heal. Faithlessness would interpose illusions between the Son of God and his Creator; faith would remove all obstacles that seem to rise between them. Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth. Partial dedication is impossible. Truth is the absence of illusion; illusion the absence of truth. Both cannot be together, nor perceived in the same place. To dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain, for part of it is sought through the body, thought of as a means for seeking out reality through attack. The other part would heal, and therefore calls upon the mind and not the body.

One might say that faithlessness are the chains that bind us to this limiting body of nothing we believe in. Faith, are the other hand, breaks all chains that bind us and sets us free. Faithlessness is of the darkness, faith is of Love. And like everything else in the world of duality, we cannot have the best of both - we cannot be some of both - we must choose between the two.

6. The inevitable compromise is the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind. For this divided goal has given both an equal reality, which could be possible only if the mind is limited to the body and divided into little parts of seeming wholeness, but without connection. This will not harm the body, but it will keep the delusional thought system in the mind. Here, then, is healing needed. And it is here that healing is. For God gave healing not apart from sickness, nor established remedy where sickness cannot be. They are together, and when they are seen together, all attempts to keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where both must be, are recognized as dedication to illusion; and given up when brought to truth, and seen as totally unreconcilable with truth, in any respect or in any way.

In fear we believe the body is sick. In fear we search for a solution to the sickness we believe the body has. With faith, we know that our thoughts are that which is 'sick' and the remedy is not out there somewhere or from someone out there, but the 'cure' is within the very mind that holds the thoughts of sickness - fear.

7. Truth and illusion have no connection. This will remain forever true, however much you seek to connect them. But illusions are always connected, as is truth. Each is united, a complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each other. And to perceive this is to recognize where separation is, and where it must be healed. The result of an idea is never separate from its source. The idea of separation produced the body and remains connected to it, making it sick because of the mind's identification with it. You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection, for this concealment seems to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth.

By now, we all know that two thought systems are 'at work' within the mind - both in opposition to each other - both believing they are correct and true - but only one that offers us peace. Throughout our journey in this world we make, we have felt lonely, we have felt separated, we have felt pain, anger, hatred, lust, guilt, etc. And also in this world we have had brief glimpses of a peace that simply overwhelmed us - a peace that has us thirsty and searching for more. Such is the two thoughts systems \- one believing we are this body and the other knowing we are not.

8. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become because of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness, for faithlessness is an attack that seems to be justified by its results. For by withholding faith you see what is unworthy of it, and cannot look beyond the barrier to what is joined with you.

This conflict within our mind is the very cause of the illness we believe the body has or had. It is caused by fear and fear is the dark side of the mind. It produces pain, suffering and even 'death' - and all because we have not the courage to accept the faith within us - to accept that which is know within us - that which has trembling in anticipation of experiencing the light within.

9. To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you offer the gift of freedom from the past, which you received. You do not use anything your brother has done before to condemn him now. You freely choose to overlook his errors, looking past all barriers between yourself and him, and seeing them as one. And in that one you see your faith is fully justified. There is no justification for faithlessness, but faith is always justified.

In this world of late, I have noticed that the TV set just lays on us every conceivable sickness almost known to man for the purpose of frightening us in believing we might just have what they are talking about - then we will have to visit a doctor and get the miracle drug offered. This is the world we are making! We all have seen and heard of many individuals who simply said no to that world - no thank you but I will not buy your product nor your thoughts - you may keep them both. These individuals are in a statement of freedom which contains the faith they are exercising. Faith is but a change of thought that sickness is but an illusion.

10. Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgment of union. It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is His Love that joins you and your brother, and for His Love you would keep no one separate from yours. Each one appears just as he is perceived in the holy instant, united in your purpose to be released from guilt. You see the Christ in him, and he is healed because you look on what makes faith forever justified in everyone.

So faith is to love as attack is to fear. Faith is our acceptance of who we are in Truth. Faith is the key which unlocks all the chains we have placed upon ourselves and our brother. With faith we see beyond any boundary - any limitation we have projected from thoughts of fear. Faith lights up our world and darkness is simply no longer present.

11. Faith is the gift of God, through Him Whom God has given you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judges him unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen already forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself. Faith sees him only now because it looks not to the past to judge him, but would see in him only what it would see in you. It sees not through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the new perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to you.

Faith is a gift from God given to us by Spirit, because we faith we unlock all doors. We see beyond the entrances to that which is in light. We see beyond the facade of the body to light within. We see as if for the first time all that is present before us but was kept in darkness.

12. Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For faith arises from the Holy Spirit's perception, and is the sign you share it with Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God through Him, and wholly acceptable to his Father as to Him. And therefore offered you. Your holy relationship, with its new purpose, offers you faith to give unto your brother. Your faithlessness has driven you and him apart, and so you do not recognize salvation in him. Yet faith unites you in the holiness you see, not through the body's eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom you are united.

Faithlessness has seeing separation, faith has us seeing love and wholeness (holiness). Faith unlocks the knowledge within us and the world we make is never again seen as it was.

13. Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind. And the mind that receives it looks instantly beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it was healed. There is the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands. Do you, then, offer grace and blessing to your brother, for you stand at the same altar where grace was laid for both of you. And be you healed by grace together, that you may heal through faith.

Can you think of one gift from God given to the body? All God's gifts are given and received by the mind, where they are opened up so that they may work themselves into the thoughts we hold which may not be loving. As the thoughts are healed, the body is seen the same. As the thoughts are healed, so shall our brother be healed as well.

14. In the holy instant, you and your brother stand before the altar God has raised unto Himself and both of you. Lay faithlessness aside, and come to it together. There will you see the miracle of your relationship as it was made again through faith. And there it is that you will realize that there is nothing faith cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to all of them. For what the messengers of love are sent to do they do, returning the glad tidings that it was done to you and your brother who stand together before the altar from which they were sent forth.

You and I, we stand before an altar God has made so that we may lay down our faithlessness - our fears - our old beliefs of illusions - and then we stand there together knowing we have let go of it all. And in that holy instant we are united in the Oneness we speak of so often. We experience the peace that we long for of a time not yet forgotten. And from that altar we go and begin to see others as we see ourselves. And we unite with others and become One with them, they continue with others as well.

15. As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely what has already been prepared for loveliness. Truth follows faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. Yet truth will stay forever.

Ever had a garden that you feared? One that you just knew would never produce anything - one that perhaps would be eaten by the animals before you had a chance to harvest anything? Such is the garden of fear. What could possibly grow in the darkness of shadow? But have but a little faith, and your garden will produce before your eyes. There will be plenty for you and the animals - you will share because your faith tells you there is no end to what you may experience. A garden of faith has few weeds, but continued observance is necessary so the required faith is ever present.

16. Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal, and learn how not to interfere with it and make it slave to time. For what you think you do to the eternal you do to you. Whom God created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all, along with his Creator. You can enslave a body, but an idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is its jailer or its liberator, according to which it chooses as its purpose for itself.

Have you ever once thought of God as being a slave to anyone or anything? Impossible you say, because God is God. So true. But who are you? Are you who you think you are from the thoughts you hold in mind or are you who you know you are as is held within you?

Chapter 19.

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section II - Sin versus Error

1. It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible. The belief in sin is necessarily based on the firm conviction that minds, not bodies, can attack. And thus the mind is guilty, and will forever so remain unless a mind not part of it can give it absolution. Sin calls for punishment as error for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane.

Some of you may remember the 'old days' when a sin could be forgiven by a 'higher authority' if one did a certain 'penance' for the sin. But there were some sins that would never be wiped from the slate. The word 'sin' became a big word for many of us. Then once we picked up the Course and discover that sin does not exist, that what we thought was sin was an error in our thinking and we could forgive ourselves for that thought by thinking a thought of love. And error and sin are only associated with the false thought of having a body.

2. Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks. To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what God created not. Thus is creation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the ego's grandiosity. For by it God Himself is changed, and rendered incomplete.

Here it is obvious that sin is but a thought in this world we make. It is like any other word, an illusion. Sin is for the ego and by the ego – let the ego live with it.

3. The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself. But he cannot sin. There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty. That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. Yet for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is impossible. For the wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?

If we believe we are separated from God, we can also believe that we can error. But in truth, error does not exist. Believing you are this body will insure you the experience and fear of death. Believing in your truth will present to you That Which You Are.

4. A major tenet in the ego's insane religion is that sin is not error but truth, and it is innocence that would deceive. Purity is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. And it is this doctrine that replaces the reality of the Son of God as his Father created him, and willed that he be forever. Is this humility? Or is it, rather, an attempt to wrest creation away from truth, and keep it separate?

In the chaotic world we make, everything we believe is insane. The world has us believing that it is sane and we must bend to its demands. And so it presents its doctrine of how it is, compared to the knowledge within us that tells us how it has forever been and will forever be.

5. Any attempt to reinterpret sin as error is always indefensible to the ego. The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to its thought system, and quite unapproachable except with reverence and awe. It is the most "holy" concept in the ego's system; lovely and powerful, wholly true, and necessarily protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies its "best" defense, which all the others serve. Here is its armor, its protection, and the fundamental purpose of the special relationship in its interpretation.

Sin for the ego is the bat held over our heads – it is its way of insuring guilt and fear. We have sinned therefore we must be punished, or they must be punished as the case may be. Someone is always right and someone always wrong. Sin is wrong and we will pay for it! How much does sin cost?

6. It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only in such a world could everything be upside down. This is the strange illusion that makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness that this world's foundation seems to have is found in this. For sin has changed creation from an idea of God to an ideal the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of bodies, mindless and capable of complete corruption and decay. If this is a mistake, it can be undone easily by truth. Any mistake can be corrected, if truth be left to judge it. But if the mistake is given the status of truth, to what can it be brought? The "holiness" of sin is kept in place by just this strange device. As truth it is inviolate, and everything is brought to it for judgment. As a mistake, it must be brought to truth. It is impossible to have faith in sin, for sin is faithlessness. Yet it is possible to have faith that a mistake can be corrected.

The ego goes to great lengths to insure in us that sin is real and therefore we must pay for sin with guilt, shame, anger, etc. The price of sin may be fear. Even though ego has made a world with sin as its foundation, this does make it a world stable in truth. Quite the contrary. If sin is false, and the ego has made its world to stand upon it, then what the world is standing on is false, not real. We are far enough in the Course to know that sin is not real, error can be corrected at its source, and only Love exists and is real.

7. There is no stone in all the ego's embattled citadel that is more heavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural expression of what the Son of God has made himself to be, and what he is. To the ego, this is no mistake. For this is its reality; this is the "truth" from which escape will always be impossible. This is his past, his present and his future. For he has somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind completely. Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be the ego's wish, which in its madness it believes it has accomplished.

How truly sad this is to read – sad because it is what we have believed in, or perhaps still believe in. Could the Son of God ever be anything other than the Son of God? Could God ever be anything other than God? Does anything other than Love exist in your world? Nothing exists which is not love, for only Love is real – that simply states that everything else is false – not truth – an illusion. And that includes the body we think we are.

8. Would you not rather that all this be nothing more than a mistake, entirely correctable, and so easily escaped from that its whole correction is like walking through a mist into the sun? For that is all it is. Perhaps you would be tempted to agree with the ego that it is far better to be sinful than mistaken. Yet think you carefully before you allow yourself to make this choice. Approach it not lightly, for it is the choice of hell or Heaven.

We have thought with the ego long enough, we have accepted the ego's teachings long enough. Now – this holy instant – is the time to see our error and correct it. Now – this holy instant – is the time when we no longer believe in that which is not truth. Now – this holy instant – is the moment we accept our truth that we are but One with All That Is.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section III - The Unreality of Sin

1. The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error. Sin will be repeated because of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin is denied the acting out. But while the guilt remains attractive the mind will suffer, and not let go of the idea of sin. For guilt still calls to it, and the mind hears it and yearns for it, making itself a willing captive to its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that cannot be corrected, and yet 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.

Interesting to read that sin is not found in error, which is some thought that we can correct. Sin is a part of guilt, a part of fear and a gift from the ego. Using guilt, ego can manipulate into doing just about anything. Guilt seems to melt our resistance to ego. And as long as we believe we are in fact this ego – this illusion we made – that is how long we will wallow in guilt.

2. The ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is really called upon by sin, and always answers. For the ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment. Yet punishment is but another form of guilt's protection, for what is deserving punishment must have been really done. Punishment is always the great preserver of sin, treating it with respect and honoring its enormity. What must be punished, must be true. And what is true must be eternal, and will be repeated endlessly. For what you think is real you want, and will not let it go.

Read this carefully and note that ego brings sin to fear – an illusion brings an illusion to an illusion – and demands punishment, but of what and for what? The word 'illusion' must be made a part of our awareness so that we can call what we see illusion instead of reality. We know illusion is not real, but we are not so sure about guilt, fear, or sin. It depends on which words we use.

3. 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.

So if we change the word 'sin' to error, it is now something we want corrected. There is no guilt attached to error. So we can correct error, but we hold onto sin until we change our thoughts about it – change the word.

4. 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, and they call for nothing else. What calls for punishment must call for nothing. Every mistake must be a call for love. What, then, is sin? What could it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for help that you would keep unheard and thus unanswered?

What Spirit sees and corrects are but thoughts we hold. Spirit does categorize our thoughts but sees them all in truth. There is nothing that we can hold in our mind that cannot be corrected by Spirit if we but ask. Punishment is of ego, correction is of Spirit. Which one is your choice?

5. 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. The Holy Spirit can teach you how to look on time differently and see beyond it, but not while you believe in sin. In error, yes, for this can be corrected by the mind. But sin is the belief that your perception is unchangeable, and that the mind must accept as true what it is told through it. If it does not obey, the mind is judged insane. The only power 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.

Because of our split mind, because of a world of duality, we shall make errors – it is part of being human, part of this dream. But we are not judged for the thoughts we hold, merely guided in thinking them. The choice is still ours. If I believe in this world of duality, then I would believe in sin, and then I would believe that I must do something as penance for those sins. And even then I would continue to feel guilt over the sins. My other choice, the one I choose, is not to believe in this world of duality. This is not my truth, and this comes from deep within me.

6. 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 with 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?

If sin is real, then truth is false. Again the choice is yours. Which one makes you the most content – love is real or love is false? God extended Love in the image and likeness of God. Love is real, then everything else – fear included, sin included, - is false. Try saying that truth is false and feel the fear that sweeps through you. You know which choice brings you peace.

7. 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 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?

This is madness and insanity at best – if there be a difference between the two of them. If we believe in bodies, then we believe in sin. If we believe in sin, then we believe in separation. If we believe in separation, then we believe we are not One with God, nor will we ever be. And if you believe in all that, you are mad indeed.

8. If sin is real, it must forever be beyond the hope of healing. For there would be a power beyond God's, capable of making another will that could attack His Will and overcome it; and give His Son a will apart from His, and stronger. And each part of God's 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.

If we believe that sin is real, then why go on with this spiritual path? Where could it possibly lead except to death? If we believe in sin, then we do not believe in God. And if we do not believe in God, we do not believe in ourselves. We believe we are lost bodies simply here existing in a world of fear. But look what is viewed when we believe in love, when we believe in God and in ourselves.

9. And yet you look with Heaven's smile upon your lips, and Heaven's blessing on your sight. You will not see sin long. For in the new perception the mind corrects it when it seems to be seen, and it becomes invisible. 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 your brother. And you will help him overcome mistakes by joyously releasing him from the belief in sin.

Just think for a moment about the phrase 'look with Heaven's smile upon your lips' – can you visualize that without smiling? What a joy to see 'Heaven's blessing' before us. Now the minds corrects what we had called sin and the guilt is no longer present. Now we see our brother as one with us, and we with him.

10. In the holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven shining on both you and your brother. And you will shine upon him, in glad acknowledgment of the grace that has been given you. For sin will not prevail against a union Heaven has smiled upon. Your perception was healed in the holy instant Heaven gave you. Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see.

One of my favorite subjects – the holy instant – that moment we take from the time we make where we let go of the past thoughts we hold and the future promises we have made from them, to the present before us. And in that holy instant we see as we once saw. We see not what we let go of but we see what has forever been.

11. Look upon your Redeemer, and behold what He would show you in your brother, and let not sin arise again to blind your eyes. For sin would keep you separate from him, but your Redeemer would have you look upon your brother as yourself. Your relationship is now a temple of healing; a place where all the weary ones can come and rest. Here is the rest that waits for all, after the journey. And it is brought nearer to all by your relationship.

See through the eyes of Spirit and your brother is viewed as never before – as the Oneness you seek, as the Oneness you are. Our relationship of Oneness is now a place of healing for both of us, and all of us. And from this relationship we build upon all others.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE
Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

1. As peace extends from deep inside yourself 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. Yet peace will gently cover them, extending past completely unencumbered. The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose from your relationship to others, to bring them gently in, is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He lay, deep within you and your brother, will quietly extend to every aspect of your life, surrounding you and your brother 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 you, recognizing in your call the Call for God. And you will draw him in and give him rest, as it was given you.

The very first line here tells us that we will encounter obstacles to peace, but note that it does not say that we will not move beyond them. Some of the obstacles will come from the thoughts of fear we hold in our mind. Others may appear as if coming from our brother. But peace shall come like a blanket of snow, gentle covering all darkness and making all to be viewed as light. The peace within us, within our brother shall by its nature saturate all of the world we make. And the light shall be a beacon to others so they may see their own.

2. All this will you do. Yet the peace that already lies deeply within must first expand, and flow across the obstacles you placed before it. This will you do, for nothing undertaken with the Holy Spirit remains unfinished. You can indeed be sure of nothing you see outside you, but of this you can be sure: The Holy Spirit asks that you offer 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 your brother.

Here is our assurance that we can indeed do what is asked of us: we are not doing this alone; we are not doing this as an isolated, separated body; we are doing this collectively with the Holy Spirit. It is a no-fail operation. We asked Spirit and Spirit is present with us.

3. The gratitude you owe to Him He asks but that you receive for Him. And when you look with gentle graciousness upon your brother, you are beholding Him. For you are looking where He is, and not apart from Him. 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 the 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?

And the gratitude we feel for Spirit is for ourselves as well. And as we see that gratitude towards our brother, we see within them, Spirit reflected back to us. And what do we see that we say is Spirit? The light within each of us. And when we have accomplished the extension of peace in all – the extension of love in all – the function of Spirit has been completed and we await the last step of this journey which is taken for us by God.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

A. The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It

1. The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it. For it cannot extend unless you keep it. You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others in. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving you. If you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? If it would spread across the whole creation, it must begin with you, and from you reach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by joining you.

Did you read this one carefully – slowly? You are the center of the peace we all seek. To you we come for that which we seek. And even though you give to us, you are not without, such is the magnitude of peace. And as we receive that peace, we also become the center of peace for others.

2. Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must dispossess to dwell with you? What seems to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barrier of sand still stands between you and your brother. Would you reinforce it now? You are not asked to let it go for yourself alone. Christ asks it of you for Himself. He would bring peace to everyone, and how can He do this except through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your brothers and salvation? And yet, this little remnant of attack you cherish still against your brother is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters in its going forth. This little wall of hatred would still oppose the Will of God, and keep it limited.

If you think you can hold onto peace without extending it, think again. For you can no more hold onto love, without extending. Simply saying peace, you acknowledge that you have it, and having it, you become the center others come to. And as you think you are holding peace back for one brother, you are holding it from yourself. One tiny obstacle to peace for both of you is present before you. A simply breath of love will blow the sand aside and allow the flow of peace to continue.

3. The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. And that little is a limit you would place upon the whole. God's Will is One, not many. It has no opposition, for there is none beside it. What you would still contain behind your little barrier and keep separate from your brother seems mightier than the universe, for it would hold back the universe and its Creator. This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it from Heaven.

Just think that the purpose of the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – rests on you and the choice you make. And yet you hold onto a fear of letting go completely. And that little fear holds back the peace for all of us. And just a reminder that by doing this you are saying that your will is greater than the Will of God. Breathe again and blow that speck of sand away and allow Heaven to be experienced by all.

4. Would you thrust salvation away from the giver of salvation? For such have you become. Peace could no more depart from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle. It cannot contain the Will of God. Peace will flow across it, and join you without hindrance. Salvation cannot be withheld from you. It is your purpose. You cannot choose apart from this. You have no purpose apart from your brother, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you. The little wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace. For peace will send its messengers from you to all the world, and barriers will fall away before their coming as easily as those that you interpose will be surmounted.

Be sure to read again the line that says 'you have no purpose apart from your brother, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you." Remember how you asked for that relationship to be a holy relationship? If you have no purpose other than this, why go around looking for what you already know? Why not get on with your purpose and feel peace. Any walls that you may think you see or obstacles that you see as preventing you from fulfilling your purpose are nothing more than illusions - and you already know you can walk through any illusion at any time.

5. To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the same. Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. How can this fail to be accomplished, wherever it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no real barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between you and your brother must fall away because of the appeal you answered. From you who answered, He Who answered you would call. His home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand between Him and His holy purpose, for it is yours. But let Him quietly extend the miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in it as it was given.

No order of difficulty in miracles? Hmm, have you read this before? Ever been somewhere where you were walking and you saw ahead of you what appeared to hole that seemed to be on your path and so you became concerned with the hole way before you came upon it. Once before you, you saw it to be nothing more than an indentation on your path, easily walked over. Such are the obstacles to peace you think you see here and there. When you come up close to them, they are not what you have imagined. When you come up close to your brother, he, too, is not as you imagined. Within him is the image you are. And that makes you One.

6. There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you and your brother now. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen over it. How can a shadow keep you from the sun? No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end.

Can you not feel the excitement beginning within you? Can you not begin to experience that which you have long forgotten? Your journey without a beginning is now coming to a close. Illusions will no longer be seen and believed in. Where shadows once were is now light coming from the radiance within you.

7. The little insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited in and push Him out must produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything, for it has no purpose now. Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you it seemed to have a mighty purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.

Insane for sure is the idea that we might rid ourselves of the Voice of God. That is within us will forever be present. That which is within is our truth and truth can never change nor be cast aside. Once we believed in the world we projected from the thoughts within our mind, but no longer. Now such thoughts are but small obstacles of illusion appearing on our path.

8. This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Yet what could be more unstable than a tightly organized delusional system? Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness, which extends to everything. The variability the little remnant induces merely indicates its limited results.

And still we hold onto something – a straw of doubt perhaps – but none the less, we do not yet let go of this tiny speck of fear. And so we still see the world we make but now we know that this world is not real, that which is real is beyond what we think we see. We see a world of limitation knowing we are forever free.

9. How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer? Can it interfere with the effects of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return, and part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is nothing in itself, and stood for nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter's cold?

We have all seen and watched as the wind takes a feather on the ground and propels it upward and beyond, only to allow it fall once more to the ground. The feather is no match for even the gentlest of breezes. And so it is with the obstacle we think we see before us, the obstacle to the peace within us which others seek. Why do we pretend that this tiny obstacle, this grain of nothing, is greater than that which we hold within us.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV I The Obstacles to Peace

A. The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It

i. The Attraction of Guilt

10. The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on guilt at all. It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth, for there it sees itself, with which it would unite in holy union and completion. As love must look past fear, so must fear see love not. For love contains the end of guilt, as surely as fear depends on it. Love is attracted only to love. Overlooking guilt completely, it sees no fear. Being wholly without attack, it could not be afraid. Fear is attracted to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon does not exist. Fear looks on guilt with just the same devotion that love looks on itself. And each has messengers which it sends forth, and which return to it with messages written in the language in which their going forth was asked.

Could love see fear if love looked upon fear? Is fear real? Can love see only that which is true? With love, fear is not to be found. Fear cannot be in the presence of love. Fear is repulsed by love and attracts only more fear, if that were possible. Love attracts love but not more love, just love, for love is simply love. And what do you suppose the messengers of fear appear as, or for that matter, what do the messengers of love appear as?

11. Love's messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love and gentleness. The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master. Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messages of different things in different languages. What fear would feed upon, love overlooks. What fear demands, love cannot even see. The fierce attraction that guilt holds for fear is wholly absent from love's gentle perception. What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible.

The messengers of love have but one message – love – nothing else exists, remember that teaching? But the messengers of fear have a pursuit of guilt as their objective, to find guilt, cherish guilt and protect guilt. And what could protect guilt? And while these two messengers are busy within your mind, we find ourselves deep into this inner turmoil.

12. Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen. And this depends on which emotion was called on to send its messengers to look upon it, and return with word of what they saw. Fear's messengers are trained through terror, and they tremble when their master calls on them to serve him. For fear is merciless even to its friends. Its messengers steal guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. And in their savage search for sin they pounce on any living thing they see, and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured.

So stop where you are right now and look upon the world before you – what world are you viewing – one of fear or one of love? Can you tell the difference? As you see your world, are you at peace and deep within guilt? And do you see before you brothers who appear in the truth they are, or in the bodies you have come to believe in?

13. Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast upon it and to prey upon reality. For they will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. For they are frantic with the pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him who sends them forth by offering him what they hold dear.

Messengers of fear see only that in your world, and show it to with great pride. They will show how others suffer, how others dies, and how others are so much less than you. And this world they will whisper to you is one of beauty and splendor. This is the world where you are master and you care not for others. These messengers believe that pain is joy, suffering is happiness, and guilt is love.

14. The Holy Spirit has given you love's messengers to send instead of those you trained through fear. They are as eager to return to you what they hold dear as are the others. If you send them forth, they will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. And they will return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovingly with you. Be not afraid of them. They offer you salvation. Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.

From Spirit come the messengers of love, not to do battle, but to have you see the world through the eyes of love. Where there was suffering is now love, joy and peace. Welcome these angels of love, these messengers of love, and hasten them to rinse the guilt from the world so that the light from within can be seen clearly by all. And this they shall do and so much more. Your brother is now seen as the truth he is – the Oneness of you both. And with that bit of knowledge you know that the Salvation you sought has been found.

15. If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting no messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. The world will be transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed with beauty. The world contains no fear that you laid not upon it. And none you cannot ask love's messengers to remove from it, and see it still. The Holy Spirit has given you His messengers to send to your brother and return to you with what love sees. They have been given to replace the hungry dogs of fear you sent instead. And they go forth to signify the end of fear.

Using the messengers given us by Spirit is like our using a 'pop-up block' device on our computer to stop unwanted and annoying messages. Using the messengers of love, we receive and give only messages of love. Any message of fear is block by our program. Where once you saw fear – where once you experience guilt, shame, blame, etc – there now you experience the eternal peace that only Love gives to you. You feel that you are home at last.

16. Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard. This is a feast that honors your holy relationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a holy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentleness before the table of communion. And I will join you there, as long ago I promised and promise still. For in your new relationship am I made welcome. And where I am made welcome, there I am.

How is this for a picture to hold in your mind? A feast set before you on a table of light – a feast of love and the music of what you remember best – and a whispering within you telling you that you are now in the holy instant that Is All That Is. And within that moment outside of the time you make, you feel and experience the presence of God and you are held in the Oneness of It.

17. I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die instead of you. To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved through murder. Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the Son of God was killed instead of you. Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love, knowing its littleness? Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart? Mine was of no greater value than yours; no better means for communication of salvation, but not its Source. No one can die for anyone, and death does not atone for sin. But you can live to show it is not real. The body does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get you what you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will also believe that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would have calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete. This is completion as the ego sees it. For guilt creeps in where happiness has been removed, and substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.

And so much within this paragraph – Jesus was our symbol of sin – of guilt – and his death was his atonement and ours as well. He died so that we could cease to believe in death. He died to show that the body ceases to be, but the Spirit within is eternal. He offered his body which was just as your body – a nothing in a world of nothing. If we believe in the body, we shall believe in sin. If we believe in sin, we shall believe in guilt. If we believe in guilt, we shall believe in death, and therefore never totally grasp the essence of who we are in truth. In truth there is no sin, no guilt, no death and no body; there is no fear, only the presence of love. Communion – the Oneness - is our act of completion of which we have always been.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

B. The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable for What It Offers

1. We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your desire to get rid of it. Where the attraction of guilt holds sway, peace is not wanted. The second obstacle that peace must flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable for what it offers. For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and seen in it.

And here is where a lot of students of the Course encounter the obstacle head-on: the belief in the body. Of what value can you say the body is? Think about it and discuss it with other students. If the body is a projection of a thought you have, is it any more valuable than any other form you believe you see which is also projected from a thought in your mind?

2. This is the value that you think peace would rob you of. This is what you believe that it would dispossess, and leave you homeless. And it is this for which you would deny a home to peace. This "sacrifice" you feel to be too great to make, too much to ask of you. Is it a sacrifice, or a release? What has the body really given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation? Do you not see that this is the belief in death? Here is the focus of the perception of Atonement as murder. Here is the source of the idea that love is fear.

And here is the confusion within our mind made clear. You will not perish by giving up your thoughts of this body. You will not vanish from the sight of others. You will not go up in a puff of smoke. Your body will still be seen but not as a valuable asset you believe it is. It will be what it is for – a means of communication.

3. The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent far beyond the body, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace. Such is the message that I gave them for you. It is only the messengers of fear that see the body, for they look for what can suffer. Is it a sacrifice to be removed from what can suffer? The Holy Spirit does not demand you sacrifice the hope of the body's pleasure; it has no hope of pleasure. But neither can it bring you fear of pain. Pain is the only "sacrifice" the Holy Spirit asks, and this He would remove.

When you look upon another and extend them the Love within you, are you seeing a body or are you seeing an image and likeness of yourself from within? The body is but a tiny form in an illusory world. The truth of us is beyond all form, beyond all illusions. What we have to give to others is what we seek from them as well. My peace I give them, and peace I receive.

4. Peace is extended from you only to the eternal, and it reaches out from the eternal in you. It flows across all else. The second obstacle is no more solid than the first. For you want neither to get rid of peace nor limit it. What are these obstacles that you would interpose between peace and its going forth but barriers you place between your will and its accomplishment? You want communion, not the feast of fear. You want salvation, not the pain of guilt. And you want your Father, not a little mound of clay, to be your home. In your holy relationship is your Father's Son. He has not lost communion with Him, nor with himself. When you agreed to join your brother, you acknowledged this is so. This has no cost, but it has release from cost.

Read this carefully and you will see what you are as well – eternal. Peace is of eternity. You give peace because you are eternal, and you give it to those who are eternal as well. Peace flows regardless of how many bodies are before you. Nothing can prevent peace from flowing – no dream, no illusion, and no fear. If we choose to be this body, we choose all the baggage that comes with it – guilt, fear, shame, pain, suffering, etc. We are not this form – we are so beyond any form.

5. You have paid very dearly for your illusions, and nothing you have paid for brought you peace. Are you not glad that Heaven cannot be sacrificed, and sacrifice cannot be asked of you? There is no obstacle that you can place before our union, for in your holy relationship I am there already. We will surmount all obstacles together, for we stand within the gates and not outside. How easily the gates are opened from within, to let peace through to bless the tired world! Can it be difficult for us to walk past barriers together, when you have joined the limitless? The end of guilt is in your hands to give. Would you stop now to look for guilt in your brother?

And oh yes, please look at the 'price tag' of being a body – a form of illusions where fear is dominant and normal as a way of 'living'. But the good news as it is said, is that this is but a dream – and the obstacles we believe are before us are dreams as well. We shall walk through these dreams and get beyond this body, and we shall not walk through them alone – we are never alone. You want peace? Peace is already yours. It waits for you within. Simply drop the form you think you are and see the image that you are in truth.

6. Let me be to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and look upon your brother as you would look on me. Forgive me all the sins you think the Son of God committed. And in the light of your forgiveness he will remember who he is, and forget what never was. I ask for your forgiveness, for if you are guilty, so must I be. But if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were with me. Would you see in me the symbol of guilt or of the end of guilt, remembering that what I signify to you you see within yourself?

Now here is a question that often enters a student's mind: who is talking to us here? Is it the spirit of the man called Jesus or could it be the Voice of God coming to us through the Holy Spirit? And does it matter? What does matter is that we hear what is being told to us – guilt is over and has been for a very long time, please don't practice it any more. When you look upon another, how do you see them, as a body, a form of dreams, or do you see your own reflection shining back to you? Do you experience a 'oneness' while looking at another? Look within you and what shall you see? You shall what you have been seeking in this dream. You shall see what you believe you have left.

7. From your holy relationship truth proclaims the truth, and love looks on itself. Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined. O come ye faithful to the holy union of the Father and the Son in you! And keep you not apart from what is offered you in gratitude for giving peace its home in Heaven. Send forth to all the world the joyous message of the end of guilt, and all the world will answer. Think of your happiness as everyone offers you witness of the end of sin, and shows you that its power is gone forever. Where can guilt be, when the belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when its great advocate is heard no more?

' **love look upon itself' – what a great line to remember when you look at another. From within me comes the truth we are together as the One we have forever been. There never was a you or me or them – only One. Guilt is a very old habit and totally worn out – get rid of it. It worked well in the Old Testament of this dream. It has no purpose here at all. There is no sin – no guilt – no fear – and no death. What we once believe in are now seen for what they are – dreams of fear.**

8. Forgive me your illusions, and release me from punishment for what I have not done. So will you learn the freedom that I taught by teaching freedom to your brother, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you raise to freedom, and bar my way to you. Yet it is not possible to keep away One Who is there already. And in Him it is possible that our communion, where we are joined already, will be the focus of the new perception that will bring light to all the world, contained in you.

If you are looking for a savior, look upon your brother, for you need go no further. Your brother is your key as you are his key. It is not about you and him, but about the one you both are and remember. Within your brother is what is within you as well. Let your light shine brilliantly so that he may see his as well. And together the light of One shines so that the entire world can be seen.
Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

B: The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable for What It Offers

i. The Attraction of Pain

9. Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of sacrifice. And to accept the peace He gives instead, without the limits that would hold its extension back, and so would limit your awareness of it. For what He gives must be extended if you would have its limitless power, and use it for the Son of God's release. It is not this you would be rid of, and having it you cannot limit it. If peace is homeless, so are you and so am I. And He Who is our home is homeless with us. Is this your wish? Would you forever be a wanderer in search of peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must fail?

What is it about pain that we find so interesting that we spend countless hours trying to define pain, find its source and have it cease. And yet we know only too well what we resist will persist. Have you not simply been with pain, and then noticed how it became less intense. Like fear, be with your pain, move through it, and do not fight it. And this becomes even more simple for us when we offer to spirit our ideas of pain and suffering, we all too often call sacrifice.

10. Faith in the eternal is always justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. Yet it can unite only with what already is at peace in you, immortal as itself. The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; neither joy nor pain. It is a means, and not an end. It has no purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign to it. Only the mind can set a purpose, and only the mind can see the means for its accomplishment, and justify its use. Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be attained. 1 And these conditions are the home of the emotion that calls them forth, and therefore is compatible with them.

If you were to take the word 'faith' above, and change it to 'God' nothing really changes but the message becomes more clear to us. God is eternal and forever kind, infinite in patience and wholly loving. Are you also not like God? This body that we place so much faith and trust in will never offer nor bring to us what we have already been given. The body of itself is but a means, but to what? Does the body have an end that it seeks? Is the end but when it ceases to be of use? But we are not this body so this does not concern us. Nothing truly concerns us for we are as we shall forever be – All That Is.

11. But think you which it is that is compatible with you. Here is your choice, and it is free. But all that lies in it will come with it, and what you think you are can never be apart from it. The body is the great seeming betrayer of faith. In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot give. Can your mistake be reasonable grounds for depression and disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think has failed you? Use not your error as the justification for your faithlessness. You have not sinned, but you have been mistaken in what is faithful. And the correction of your mistake will give you grounds for faith.

And once again we are reminded that it is all about choice – which choice we choose – the responsibility still remains with us. Try as we may to give this away, but it is always there. Can you believe in the body and still believe in your truth? Can you? Believe in the body and you believe in the illusion you think is before you. Believe in the illusion and you shall believe in the fears contained therein. Believe in the fears and you shall believe in sin and you shall experience guilt, and all the other frills that come with it. But believe in who you are in truth – who you know you are from within – and the body becomes simply a vehicle to move through this dream. It is not who you are and not who you think you are – it is but an image to use while you dream.

12. It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is one the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not really punitive at all. It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is the invitation to pain. For it invites fear to enter and become your purpose. The attraction of guilt must enter with it, and whatever fear directs the body to do is therefore painful. It will share the pain of all illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be the same as pain.

Read the first line a few times and let it soak in – to seek pleasure through the form we call body will also produce pain, and with pain, comes suffering and assorted baggage. Pain is of the body but pain does not exist in your Truth. See yourself as a body, and you shall experience pain. And if you choose to stay there, you will become confused and believe pain to be pleasure.

13. Is not this inevitable? Under fear's orders the body will pursue guilt, serving its master whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole illusion of its existence. This, then, is the attraction of pain. Ruled by this perception the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully and obeying the idea that pain is pleasure. It is this idea that underlies all of the ego's heavy investment in the body. And it is this insane relationship that it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. To you it teaches that the body's pleasure is happiness. Yet to itself it whispers, "It is death."

So might we call the body an instrument of ego? Is it not seen in its form because of ego? Do we not get caught up in seeing the body as ourselves, forgetting for a moment that this is not so, nor could it be? Believing in the body is to believe in pain. And pain moves on to suffering and suffering moves on to death, which the ego does not realize is it's end. But we are not an ego – we do not have an end. Do you see how foolish it is to believe in this form we call body?

14. Why should the body be anything to you? Certainly what it is made of is not precious. And just as certainly it has no feeling. It transmits to you the feelings that you want. Like any communication medium the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize this, and both also recognize that here the sender and receiver are the same. The Holy Spirit tells you this with joy. The ego hides it, for it would keep you unaware of it. Who would send messages of hatred and attack if he but understood he sends them to himself? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn himself?

Why does the body mean anything to you? Is it the body that has you accumulating all that you believe you want and need? Is it the body that performs of its own so that you receive money that you consider to be so very important? Is the body that brings to you another relationship or ends another? The body is nothing more than a response mechanism and receives it direction from the mind – our mind. And what we choose depends on how the body will move. And who we choose our thoughts with will determine whether we shall experience peace as we move this body through this dream.

15. The ego's messages are always sent away from you, in the belief that for your message of attack and guilt will someone other than yourself suffer. And even if you suffer, yet someone else will suffer more. The great deceiver recognizes that this is not so, but as the "enemy" of peace, it urges you to send out all your messages of hate and free yourself. And to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure and offering it to you as freedom from attack.

Have you gotten by now in your journey through the Course, that anything and everything of the ego is always supposedly 'out there'. Whenever we seek for anything 'out there' we never find what we seek. The ego always tries to give away what it holds in our mind, only to discover that it still remains. In its insanity it will even direct the body in attack and combat, but never to victory. How often are we told to be still and listen – to go within – what we seek is there? The reason is simple: the truth is within us, the falsehood is 'out there'.

16. Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not that the ego has dedicated the body to the goal of sin, and places in it all its faith that this can be accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the body's praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego's rule. Not one but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guilt is the escape from pain. Not one but must regard the body as himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable.

For ego, the word 'impossibility' means that we cannot do it; for Spirit, 'impossible' is but an obstacle on our path, and obstacles are to be seen for what they are, and walked through. Is anything impossible for God? Believe in your body and you believe in death. Believe in your truth and you shall know your eternity.

17. It is not given to the ego's disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death. Freedom is offered them but they have not accepted it, and what is offered must also be received, to be truly given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving from the Father and offering His messages unto the Son. Like the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and the receiver. For what is sent through Him returns to Him, seeking itself along the way, and finding what it seeks. So does the ego find the death it seeks, returning it to you.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

C. The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death

1. To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that peace must flow across. No one can die unless he chooses death. What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction. Guilt, too, is feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on those who are attracted to it and seek it out. And so it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life.

" **No one can die unless he chooses death." A very powerful statement! Simply stated, if we choose death, belief in this body, ego, illusions, etc, we shall die – cease to be and this we fear. Yet what happens if we do not choose death, if we do not believe in this body, the ego, illusions, fears, and the like? Nothing happens to us. We continue as we shall forever be. Nothing changes. We shall never cease to be. So why is it that we fear death and all that goes with it? Could it be that we are not yet ready to surrender those beliefs, that they still hold something we are attached to, attracted to?**

2. And yet a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication is not to live; the black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily away from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hands of forgiveness, and watch the chains fall away, along with yours. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him he can escape through your forgiveness. This is no arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you who chose His Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is not to death, nor to its master. When you accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose in place of the ego's you renounced death, exchanging it for life. We know that an idea leaves not its source. And death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result of the Thought of God.

Remember when you used to walk down streets at night being a kid, and you noticed your shadow either appearing ahead of you or behind you, while once in a while it would be beside you? Did you give much power to that shadow knowing you were making it? And so it is with ego – a shadow, a symbol, a form of nothingness that we have given power to over us. What happens when you see the ego as a shadow? Does it not lose some of its power knowing that? There is so much more to living than looking forward to death. Death is for the dead, life is for the living. We are in this dream so why not make the most of it? Why not go for life and live in peace, instead of looking at death and feeling that same way – dead?

i. The Incorruptible Body

3. From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven? One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin nor its results. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they live. They are not following His Will; they are opposing it.

If God wills that you and I not be bound by the dedication to madness, why are we? Why have we not chosen what God has laid before us? What makes us think that a better way than God's exists? Why be sad and somber in dark shrouds of guilt, when we could just as easily walk in the light from within us?

4. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body which they dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, offered to sin to feed upon and keep itself alive; a thing condemned, damned by its maker and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself. You who believe you have condemned the Son of God to this are arrogant. But you who would release him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would kill it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it cannot kill.

Have you ever thought hard on viewing your own funeral? Seeing the many mourners, etc. Viewing yourself in a casket perhaps? And what is it all for? Have you not asked yourself this question many times? Has viewing a loved one, going through the burial routine, etc., had you thinking less of them? When the body ceases to be of value, it lays down and is there – deceased we say. But the memory of who used that body lingers long after the body is removed. It is not the body we remember of someone, but the spirit of them, which never dies. The ego may direct the body to death, but it cannot direct our spirit to do anything. Ego shall cease to be, and we shall continue forever.

5. You have another dedication that would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose. The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. For God has answered this insane idea with His Own; an Answer which left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer and accepted It.

After reading this, look at your view of your body once again. Who do you agree with? The author or your ego? Which one do you trust to give truth? Once again we are told that the body does not die, for the body does nothing of itself. Your body, my body is the result of a tiny mad idea of doubt, which is easily corrected.

6. You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first? The body can but serve your purpose. As you look on it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which is the ego's goal.

Here is one of those lines that we might try to remember often – what better way to teach the first and fundamental principle of this course than by exhibiting that we are can move beyond death and its fears? The body follows what our mind is thinking. The body can serve us if we so direct it. See only that in the body, nothing more.

7. Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it, and bid it come to save them from communication. For death is seen as safety, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is not the end of conflict. Only God's Answer is its end. The obstacle of your seeming love for death that peace must flow across seems to be very great. For in it lie hidden all the ego's secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego's making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on Life Itself.

Perhaps some of us have come up against this wall – where we think that death is the ultimate answer for us as we look upon the problems facing us. Perhaps some of us have come close to welcoming this experience with hopes that life would end. Ego offers this to many of us at different times in life. Some of us have declined the offer and there are some that may have accepted the offer. In truth there is no conflict. In truth there is no fear. In truth is where we are for all time. Could death possibly offer us more than the truth we already have?

8. Under the dusty edge of its distorted world the ego would lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay that God Himself is powerless before the ego's might, unable to protect the life that He created against the ego's savage wish to kill. My brother, child of our Father, this is a dream of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments nor twisted rituals of condemnation to which the body leads you. Ask not release of it. But free it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation you commanded it to die, for only death could conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it real?

How about looking at the crucifixion and resurrection in a different light for a moment? In the death of Jesus the human on the cross, ego appeared to win over truth. But in the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb, the truth stood out for all to see. Truth triumphed over ego – the body appear to die on the cross, but the Spirit of the man called Jesus continued on. And that act shown us that our Spirit which is one and the same Spirit that Jesus had, continues forever. That act showed us that death was just one more illusion in the world of illusion. Nothing to fear for nothing is there.

9. The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love's real attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union with your brother, and ready to grow into a mighty force for God is very near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was given you. Your newborn purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit and protected by God Himself. It needs not your protection; it is yours. For it is deathless, and within it lies the end of death.

I believe it is safe to say that your view of death has changed since you have been reading the Course, right? The more we change our thoughts of fear to love, the less the fear of death appeals to us. It will come that no appeal will be seen eventually. In the Oneness we are is the demise of death.

10. What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God and you. In its tiny hands it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to you. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of your brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to the resurrection and the life.

This is one of those paragraphs that literally sings to me – it is that beautiful to read. We are far enough in this Course to know that no one and no thing can harm us in any way. We know that sin is an ego expression, and our correction of any mistake is but a thought away. We are always referred to a little children, and here we have been seen as a babe perhaps in a manger – born into a life of love where all are seen as the Oneness we are. And the miracle of life – of this life, this dream – is ageless which is but a thought we hold in our mind. We are in this dream but not of this dream. Our truth is eternal, and we are that truth.

11. When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie in them, but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One given to you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:

Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.

Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction.

Teach me how not to make of it an obstacle to peace, but let You use it for me, to facilitate its coming

Read this again please: whenever you feel the presence of fear, see terror anywhere, experience the body trembling in a cold sweat of fear, this is all a sign that ego is reminding you that you are a sinner and you will die for you sins. Look to Spirit for the guidance you require. Ask and you shall receive – it is a guarantee.

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God

1. 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.

Try to honestly answer the first two questions asked of you above. Are your answers even close to what you are being told you will see? And look at the last line – 'here your world does end' – Does this also produce a fear in you?

2. The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself like to a leper's, and the bright Rays of His Father's Love that light His face with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone.

Is this not true for us so often, that we can see and yet not see was lies beyond the fear? Recall the first time you saw your brother as the truth he is. Was it not a bit difficult to get beyond his 'veil' as well? We fear death because we believe we will end, and yet something within us tells us that we are eternal – we shall exist forever.

3. 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.

If each fear can be visualized as a veil, then this veil of death is by far the darkest for us to go beyond, to walk through. Ever stop and think that the 'death of ego' does not necessarily mean the end of your body? It but means the end of who you think this body is, your belief that this body is you.

4. See how the belief in death would seem to "save" you. For if this were gone, what could 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.

And so now that you are aware of your secret pact, it is no longer a secret. So it no longer holds such power over you. You can surrender this 'secret' just as you have surrendered other such 'secrets'. Let go of the falsehood and realize your truth.

5. Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; the fear that raised it yields to the love beyond, 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 the obstacles to love, Love Itself has called. And each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies beyond. Your wanting fear seemed to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the Voice of Love beyond them, you answered and they disappeared.

Here once again is the reminder that any obstacle – every obstacle – is surmounted in the same way – by seeing beyond the illusion to the Truth shining there. And you no longer hold the fear of death, you have let that go as you have all other fears. And what is presented to you – what you experience – is the truth of who you are – Love.

6. 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.

Is it not the time to let go of what we call a past; to let go of what we think we are as this body? And in place of that thought, is the thought of Love. We have made the leap from the insanity of ego to the sanity of truth. Once we allow the veil to be lifted, never again shall we see ourselves as we do now. Although we shall be tempted, the illusion will never hold its grip of fear on us.

7. 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 cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming death can stand against your will. For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparated from it and completely one.

For me, there is a little secret here to remember – what appear to attracts me from beyond the veil, already is known to me within. I shall walk through my fears more swiftly is I but remember this. Will my world of ego disappear? Yes, the world of fear will vanish and before you will be the world as seen through the eyes of truth. Once seen, never forgotten and always remembered. Truth is who you are. Why settle for anything less, for there is nothing more?

Chapter 19

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

Section IV - The Obstacles to Peace

D: The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God

i. The Lifting of the Veil

8. Forget not that you came this far together, you and your brother. And it was surely not the ego that led you here. No obstacle to peace can be surmounted through its help. It does not open up its secrets, and bid you look on them and go beyond them. It would not have you see its weakness, and learn it has no power to keep you from the truth. The Guide Who brought you here remains with you, and when you raise your eyes you will be ready to look on terror with no fear at all. But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith that sees them not.

One of the many things repeated in the Course is the fact that we do not reach the 'goal' alone - we need a brother with us. We must see ourselves as One with each other. We must see the reflection of the Christ within us in our brother. And just pause for a brief moment and think that you have come this far on your path, certainly not because you listened to the ego side of you. Has ego ever led you where you would find truth? Has ego ever led you to a place of peace?

9. No one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has accepted the Atonement and learned illusions are not real. No one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he could not have reached this far unless his brother walked beside him. And no one would dare to look on it without complete forgiveness of his brother in his heart. Stand you here a while and tremble not. You will be ready. Let us join together in a holy instant, here in this place where the purpose, given in a holy instant, has led you. And let us join in faith that He Who brought us here together will offer you the innocence you need, and that you will accept it for my love and His.

And do not forget for a moment either that the author of the Course walks with you as well – you are being led by a voice within you – you cannot ever be alone, even when you believe you are. And so here you are before the obstacle of the fear of God, and the veil begins to slowly vanish before you – slowly it raises in your sight. And the glimmer of brightness beyond description begins to shine, a brightness of a memory within you as well.

10. Nor is it possible to look on this too soon. This is the place to which everyone must come when he is ready. Once he has found his brother he is ready. Yet merely to reach the place is not enough. A journey without a purpose is still meaningless, and even when it is over it seems to make no sense. How can you know that it is over unless you realize its purpose is accomplished? Here, with the journey's end before you, you see its purpose. And it is here you choose whether to look upon it or wander on, only to return and make the choice again.

Simply stated, here is where we will end up now or later. If we hold onto the fear, we shall wander more, but still will end up here. Are you ready to let go of the fear of God? Are you ready to let go of the fear of your truth? We have believed in falsehood so long that it is difficult at times for us to relinquish its hold on us, but we can and we shall. The decision is but a thought away. Think that thought and move on.

11. To look upon the fear of God does need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but not with fear. For only if they share in it does it seem fearful, and you do share in it until you look upon your brother with perfect faith and love and tenderness. Before complete forgiveness you still stand unforgiving. You are afraid of God because you fear your brother. Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one reaches love with fear beside him.

Please read this several times so that the message will become one with you. If we do not forgive, we shall continue fear. If we continue fear, we shall not reach love. We are told here that we need not prepare, for how could we prepare to let go of our fear – we either let it go or we hold onto it a bit longer. And a clue for us is this – how do you see your brother? Do you see the body or do you see the truth emanating from him?

12. This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger. You do not know him, and your interpretation of him is very fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems to be yourself unharmed. Yet in his hands is your salvation. You see his madness, which you hate because you share it. And all the pity and forgiveness that would heal it gives way to fear. Brother, you need forgiveness of your brother, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you and he will raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.

Is the brother – the one before you – a complete stranger to you? Is that person but a body you fear or is it a view of love? Do you attack this person because you fear attack? But this person is not fear, the thought you hold of him is. Would you know Jesus is he stood before you? Would you recognize him? How do you know what he looks like? Certainly not from the many pictures of him, for they are not his likeness. The one before you is there for a purpose – so you and he can share together, equally, in Heaven instead of the insanity of the world you make. Together you both shall see, or neither of you shall at all.

13. Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins against him, or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice. He has in him the power to forgive your sin, as you for him. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet your savior stands beside each one. Let him be what he is, and seek not to make of love an enemy.

One of the many things the Course tells us often is that we are to see our brother as we are in truth, not as the body it is. The body before us offers us nothing for our salvation, but the truth before us offers us everything. Will you take a chalice of Atonement from an enemy? Not as long as you see the enemy, you shall not even notice the chalice. He can forgive himself for his errors, as you can for yourself as well. That is step one in the process. The second step is the acknowledgement of who he and who you are, and then the correction is made final. And remember that your brother is looking upon you as you see him as well.

14. Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful He is! You thought He sinned because you cast the veil of sin upon Him to hide His loveliness. Yet still He holds forgiveness out to you, to share His Holiness. This "enemy," this "stranger" still offers you salvation as His Friend. The "enemies" of Christ, the worshippers of sin, know not Whom they attack.

Who is it that you believe stands before you? Is this a body or is it a reflection of what you hold within you? Again I ask you, would you recognize Jesus if he stood before you?

15. This is your brother, crucified by sin and waiting for release from pain. Would you not offer him forgiveness, when only he can offer it to you? For his redemption he will give you yours, as surely as God created every living thing and loves it. And he will give it truly, for it will be both offered and received. There is no grace of Heaven that you cannot offer to your brother, and receive from your most holy Friend. Let him withhold it not, for by receiving it you offer it to him. And he will receive of you what you received of him. Redemption has been given you to give your brother, and thus receive it. Whom you forgive is free, and what you give you share. Forgive the sins your brother thinks he has committed, and all the guilt you think you see in him.

Jesus died on a cross not because he was bad, not because he was Jewish, not because we would have a Lenten season to remember this occurrence. Why did he hang on a cross and die? Was it for our sins, and if so, which ones? Did he not die to show us that we do not? And yet, we continue to carry fears with us – all varieties of them. We fear our brother – we may even fear Jesus for we fear God – and yet we were shown – told – repeatedly asked to let go of the fears we hold – to forgive ourselves for the thoughts we hold not only of ourselves but others – our brother. We can only be redeemed by giving redemption to another. We can only love by loving another. Whom you forgive is free is a great line – for it applies not only to your brother – but to you as well. In your forgiveness shall the guilt of both you vanish. Remember that if you fear just one brother, you fear God.

16. Here is the holy place of resurrection, to which we come again; to which we will return until redemption is accomplished and received. Think who your brother is, before you would condemn him. And offer thanks to God that he is holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for you. Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind. Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him and he accepted as his own, and toss it lightly and with happy laughter away from him. Press it not like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it, unredeemed and hopeless.

Does this paragraph sound a bit like being in a tomb – waiting the resurrection? Here is where we are and we have but to see our brother as One with us – to see within our brother the Christ Spirit which is in each of us – it is the bond that forever holds us as One. And we are grateful that we see each of holy – as whole – as One. And we join our brother in this celebration of new life – a new view – the truth once again shown. And together he and I shall roll back the heavy burden – the huge stone – preventing each of us for moving beyond the darkness of fear.

17. Give faith to your brother, for faith and hope and mercy are yours to give. Into the hands that give, the gift is given. Look on your brother, and see in him the gift of God you would receive. It is almost Easter, the time of resurrection. Let us give redemption to each other and share in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, not separate in death. Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit for you. And be you and your brother free together, as you offer to the Holy Spirit this same gift. And giving it, receive it of Him in return for what you gave. He leadeth you and me together, that we might meet here in this holy place, and make the same decision.

We give to each other that which we have to give – truth. And as we give, we therefore receive. We see our brother for the truth he is, and we see ourselves as the truth we are. We are ready to move out of our tomb of darkness to the Light within us. We have been led here by our truth, and as the saying goes, 'the truth shall set us free'.

18. Free your brother here, as I freed you. Give him the selfsame gift, nor look upon him with condemnation of any kind. See him as guiltless as I look on you, and overlook the sins he thinks he sees within himself. Offer your brother freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare together the way unto the resurrection of God's Son, and let him rise again to glad remembrance of his Father, Who knows no sin, no death, but only life eternal.

Look at what is being asked of us – nothing that has not already been done for us. Nothing that Jesus did, can we not do, and even more he tells us. We do not need to hang from a cross or bear a crown of thorns on our head. We simply have to forgive our brother for what he thinks he has done – for what we think he has done – for what we think we have done – and in the forgiveness is his and our complete release of sin – of fear. God knows not of sin, of death or fear. Why do we believe we do?

19. Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be lost but found; not to be seen but known. And knowing, nothing in the plan God has established for salvation will be left undone. This is the journey's purpose, without which is the journey meaningless. Here is the peace of God, given to you eternally by Him. Here is the rest and quiet that you seek, the reason for the journey from its beginning. Heaven is the gift you owe your brother, the debt of gratitude you offer to the Son of God in thanks for what he is, and what his Father created him to be.

Together we shall disappear into God beyond the veil of fear before us, not to be lost in God, but to be found; not to be seen but to be known. As it was so shall it forever be. The plan of salvation is God's. Nothing in God's plan can ever go wrong. Here is the journey purpose seen. Here is experience our truth – the peace of God. Here is all that we have been seeking – all that we have forgotten is now remembered. Heaven has forever been before us, and now we have unlocked the fear and walk together thru its portal.

20. Think carefully how you would look upon the giver of this gift, for as you look on him so will the gift itself appear to be. As he is seen as either the giver of guilt or of salvation, so will his offering be seen and so received. The crucified give pain because they are in pain. But the redeemed give joy because they have been healed of pain. Everyone gives as he receives, but he must choose what it will be that he receives. And he will recognize his choice by what he gives, and what is given him. Nor is it given anything in hell or Heaven to interfere with his decision.

And so now how do you see your brother? As the giver of your redemption or the giver of guilt? As you see him, you shall see his gift. Choose to receive joy for pain is not of your truth.

21. You came this far because the journey was your choice. And no one undertakes to do what he believes is meaningless. What you had faith in still is faithful, and watches over you in faith so gentle yet so strong that it would lift you far beyond the veil, and place the Son of God safely within the sure protection of his Father. Here is the only purpose that gives this world, and the long journey through this world, whatever meaning lies in them. Beyond this, they are meaningless. You and your brother stand together, still without conviction they have a purpose. Yet it is given you to see this purpose in your holy Friend, and recognize it as your own.

Some very comforting words here – we have come this far because this journey was our choice and we did not choose what is meaningless to us. What we know to be true is still true. And as we stand together in the Oneness we are in truth, we know deep within us, that we shall forever see ourselves as only this – for anything less is false – anything less is fear.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section I - Holy Week

1. This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and the acceptance of the truth. Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion of God's Son, but happily in the celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning. But a risen Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God's forgiveness on himself; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole.

What a great message here – Easter is the sign of peace, not of pain. This Holy Week we see ourselves whole (holy) and healed from all illusions. We shall rise to our truth. We shall role back the fear holding us within the tomb we have made, and we shall walk beyond into the Light from within us.

2This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white and holy sign the Son of God is innocent. Let no dark sign of crucifixion intervene between the journey and its purpose; between the acceptance of the truth and its expression. This week we celebrate life, not death. And we honor the perfect purity of the Son of God, and not his sins. Offer your brother the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love and not the "gift" of fear. You stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them. This Easter I would have the gift of your forgiveness offered by you to me, and returned by me to you. We cannot be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can the resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests on Christ, along with mine.

Remember for those who are old enough, of the preparation we did during this week we called Holy Week? Remember how we fasted during the Lenten season and now in this final week, we even gave up more? Such memories of another time. Now we can see this week once shrouded in purple cloth, bathed in the Light of Love. This is a week of celebration for us and our brother. We celebrate life – living – and not death. Where once we saw thorns we now see the lilies of the field. We have dropped the purple cloth – the thorny crown – the guilt and shame and replace it with the offering of love to our brother. Only in love are we united.

3. A week is short, and yet this holy week is the symbol of the whole journey the Son of God has undertaken. He started with the sign of victory, the promise of the resurrection, already given him. Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. Help him to go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release. Hold him not back with thorns and nails when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to resurrection.

A week is indeed short – as quick as we can imagine it. But this week, we are being told is the symbol of our whole journey we undertook with our brother. There is no need to go on the path of crucifixion for that is long over and the results ever present for us. We take the hand of our brother, and together as one we walk the path and lay the nails, and hammer, and thorns and spear down, and in their place we hold the lilies of the purity of our souls. And the shining light from both of us illumines our path.

4. Easter is not the celebration of the cost of sin, but of its end. If you see glimpses of the face of Christ behind the veil, looking between the snow-white petals of the lilies you have received and given as your gift, you will behold your brother's face and recognize it. I was a stranger and you took me in, not knowing who I was. Yet for your gift of lilies you will know. In your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient Friend, lies his release and your redemption with him. The time of Easter is a time of joy, and not of mourning. Look on your risen Friend, and celebrate his holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of your salvation, along with mine.

Read carefully here for there is a message just for us here. See what is being told us – who was the stranger we took into our heart without knowing him? Whose face did we look upon in this stranger? This is a time a joy and happiness, not of sorrow and guilt. Rejoice in knowing this is a time of the ending of sin. No more shall we carry this thought. We have been set free.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section II - The Gift of Lilies

1. Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body, or to cover it or for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see. Think on the many offerings made for its pleasure, and remember all these were made to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your brother to you, and to attract his body's eyes? Learn you but offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight acknowledges the lack of value he places on himself.

And once again we are reminded that we are not the bodies we have so long believed we were; the bodies are but nothing made from nothing and being nothing. And yet we are blasted daily in a continuous manner about how we should adorn this nothingness, how we should have this nothingness appear so that others will find it attractive, etc. As we begin to let go of the notion that we are this body, a small trickle of peace descends upon us and we feel perhaps the first time, a pleasure of a memory tucked far away and yet close at hand.

2. Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out nor take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and give. And every gift it offers depends on what it wants. It will adorn its chosen home most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it wants by offering them to those who come unto its chosen home, or those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange their gifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them.

It is important to remember that only the mind can receive and give – only the mind places a value on what we believe we see; only the mind judges what and who appear before us. We have been told before and once again here, the body of itself does nothing.

3. Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the giver. No one but sees his chosen home as an altar to himself. No one but seeks to draw to it the worshippers of what he placed upon it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a light upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed upon it and take it for their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother and on yourself. Here is your gift to both; your judgment on the Son of God for what he is. Forget not that it is your savior to whom the gift is offered. Offer him thorns and you are crucified. Offer him lilies and it is yourself you free.

And what is it you are offering to others in your daily routine of living this life, thorns or lilies? Are you offering the body and its adornments or are you offering a thought of love you might be holding in your mind? The choice is yours alone to make. And what you discover you are offering to others is what you shall also receive.

4. I have great need for lilies, for the Son of God has not forgiven me. And can I offer him forgiveness when he offers thorns to me? For he who offers thorns to anyone is against me still, and who is whole without him? Be you his friend for me, that I may be forgiven and you may look upon the Son of God as whole. But look you first upon the altar in your chosen home, and see what you have laid upon it to offer me. If it be thorns whose points gleam sharply in a blood-red light, the body is your chosen home and it is separation that you offer me. And yet the thorns are gone. Look you still closer at them now, and you will see your altar is no longer what it was.

And the lilies mentioned are but loving thoughts we hold in our mind, with the truth of who we are. Offer those thoughts to another; see others as they are in truth, as you are in truth, and you will begin to grasp the meaning of Easter. It is not about thorns, blood, and hanging on a cross – but about eternal life – about our rebirth from fear to love. Could that lesson be taught us in any different manner? And yet it was taught us in such a way that we would grasp its meaning, and yet through time, the original lesson has been lost. No one died because you committed a sin! You cannot sin.

5. You look still with the body's eyes, and they can see but thorns. Yet you have asked for and received another sight. Those who accept the Holy Spirit's purpose as their own share also His vision. And what enables Him to see His purpose shine forth from every altar now is yours as well as His. He sees no strangers; only dearly loved and loving friends. He sees no thorns but only lilies, gleaming in the gentle glow of peace that shines on everything He looks upon and loves.

So we show a little willingness – we ask for guidance from Spirit – to see this differently – isn't that what the Course is constantly teaching – to see differently? And with that Guidance we see no crown of thorns but a wreath of lilies upon the head of one of us who taught us all that we are to remember. We see no body hang upon a wooden cross, but we see the eternal Spirit we all are. We see no death for that is an illusion as well. What we see is the eternal life we all lead as the Oneness we are.

6. This Easter, look with different eyes upon your brother. You have forgiven me. And yet I cannot use your gift of lilies while you see them not. Nor can you use what I have given unless you share it. The Holy Spirit's vision is no idle gift, no plaything to be tossed about a while and laid aside. Listen and hear this carefully, nor think it but a dream, a careless thought to play with, or a toy you would pick up from time to time and then put by. For if you do, so will it be to you.

The Easter season is upon us, the Passion plays will be showing once again. This year see them differently. Lay down old beliefs you have carried with you since childhood and allow the truth to be shown to you. Ask for and receive the guidance you seek. Listen well to what you are being told and see for yourself what your world can look like.

7. You have the vision now to look past all illusions. It has been given you to see no thorns, no strangers and no obstacles to peace. The fear of God is nothing to you now. Who is afraid to look upon illusions, knowing his savior stands beside him? With him, your vision has become the greatest power for the undoing of illusion that God Himself could give. For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you have received. The Son of God looks unto you for his release. For you have asked for and been given the strength to look upon this final obstacle, and see no thorns nor nails to crucify the Son of God, and crown him king of death.

And just pause here for a moment and contemplate all that the vision of Spirit allows you to take in – to see beyond illusions – to know the Presence within you at all times – to know deep within you your Truth – to see your brother as One with you – to see in others the shining Light of Love we are. And finally to grasp just a little bit that the fear of God that you held onto so tightly is now released, just another illusion you held. And you shall see no death, no crucifixion nor pain and suffering.

8. Your chosen home is on the other side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for you, and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with the body's eyes. Yet all you need you have. Your home has called to you since time began, nor have you ever failed entirely to hear. You heard, but knew not how to look, nor where. And now you know. In you the knowledge lies, ready to be unveiled and freed from all the terror that kept it hidden. There is no fear in love. The song of Easter is the glad refrain the Son of God was never crucified. Let us lift up our eyes together, not in fear but faith. And there will be no fear in us, for in our vision will be no illusions; only a pathway to the open door of Heaven, the home we share in quietness and where we live in gentleness and peace, as one together.

With the vision of Spirit given to you by your request, you are able to see beyond the veil that was constantly before you; to see beyond to where you have never left. This is not a physical vision, but a vision of truth. For a very long time you have been being called, and although you heard often, you did not know how to answer. You are now in the knowledge that you are Love and in your presence no fear exists. Take hold of another's hand so that they too, may see beyond the veil before them, and together you may walk through this last illusion.

9. Would you not have your holy brother lead you there? His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him where you laid the lilies of forgiveness. Let him be to you the savior from illusions, and look on him with the new vision that looks upon the lilies and brings you joy. We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is within us, as is our home. So will we find what we were meant to find by Him Who leads us.

Do not become confused as to who leads who, for your brother sees you as the lead, and you see your brother as the lead. No one is leading the other, but together you both walk beyond the veil. And you become his savior and he becomes yours. And the Light of Love comes from each of you to form a beacon on Oneness.

10. This is the way to Heaven and to the peace of Easter, in which we join in glad awareness that the Son of God is risen from the past, and has awakened to the present. Now is he free, unlimited in his communion with all that is within him. Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike. Your gift has saved him from the thorns and nails, and his strong arm is free to guide you safely through them and beyond. Walk with him now rejoicing, for the savior from illusions has come to greet you, and lead you home with him.

Have you 'risen' from your past? Have you left the past behind you and not dragging it with you in the present? We rise daily from a past that never was and yet we so strongly believed in. We rise daily from what we think we were to what we know we are. Each day, each moment of each day, we are 'resurrected' from the tomb of our past. Walk gladly from its darkness and see before you the immaculate lilies of the field showing their beauty to you for perhaps the first time. And allow the peace of being home to flood your being.

11. Here is your savior and your friend, released from crucifixion through your vision, and free to lead you now where he would be. He will not leave you, nor forsake the savior in his pain. And gladly will you and your brother walk the way of innocence together, singing as you behold the open door of Heaven and recognize the home that called to you. Give joyously to your brother the freedom and the strength to lead you there. And come before his holy altar where the strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads you home. The lamp is lit in you for your brother. And by the hands that gave it to him shall you be led past fear to love.

Now we see not our brother or the cross, but instead see the truth of both of us. We have been led here and here we shall remain. We have come this way with another and know we look upon no other but simply the Oneness of us all. Take hold of your brother's hand once more and walk deep into your truth.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section III - Sin as an Adjustment

1. The belief in sin is an adjustment. And an adjustment is a change; a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before has been made different. Every adjustment is therefore a distortion, and calls upon defenses to uphold it against reality. Knowledge requires no adjustments and, in fact, is lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this reduces it at once to mere perception; a way of looking in which certainty is lost and doubt has entered. To this impaired condition are adjustments necessary, because it is not true. Who need adjust to truth, which calls on only what he is, to understand?

Look at the last line – who need adjust to truth...only what he is, to understand? We are the truth we seek. We are the goal we aspire after. We are the beginning and ending of this journey of illusion. We need adjust nothing for adjustments are part of the illusion.

2. Adjustments of any kind are of the ego. For it is the ego's fixed belief that all relationships depend upon adjustments, to make of them what it would have them be. Direct relationships, in which there are no interferences, are always seen as dangerous. The ego is the self-appointed mediator of all relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary and interposing them between those who would meet, to keep them separate and prevent their union. It is this studied interference that makes it difficult for you to recognize your holy relationship for what it is.

As any kind of fear is of the ego, so we are told that adjustments of any kind are ego as well. Think of those past relationships you entered into with the thought of doing just a little adjustment on the partner and then they would be as you want them. Now think of the holy relationships you are in and notice that there is no thought of wanting a change – you are accepting and being accepted as you are. What a difference when ego is not used as a relationship counselor.

3. The holy do not interfere with truth. They are not afraid of it, for it is within the truth they recognize their holiness, and rejoice at what they see. They look on it directly, without attempting to adjust themselves to it, or it to them. And so they see that it was in them, not deciding first where they would have it be. Their looking merely asks a question, and it is what they see that answers them. You make the world and then adjust to it, and it to you. Nor is there any difference between yourself and it in your perception, which made them both.

Here is a gentle hint for us to know what mode we are in – if we are not afraid of truth, if we can fearlessly look at truth, we are indeed in the holy (whole) mode – the mode of completion. And you can see the world you make in the truth you are.

4. A simple question yet remains, and needs an answer. Do you like what you have made?–a world of murder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer before it overtakes you and you disappear. You made this up. It is a picture of what you think you are; of how you see yourself. A murderer is frightened, and those who kill fear death. All these are but the fearful thoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world made fearful by their adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is sad within, and see the sadness there.

And how do you answer the question asked of you? What type of world do you see? Is it one in which you are content, happy and at peace? Is it one feel with fear, terror, and feelings of being alone?

5. Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself. It is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it and makes it real. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by you. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed outside you in the world. And to this world must you adjust as long as you believe this picture is outside, and has you at its mercy. This world is merciless, and were it outside you, you should indeed be fearful. Yet it was you who made it merciless, and now if mercilessness seems to look back at you, it can be corrected.

First note that the world we see 'is not there at all'. So the first step is believing in that fact. Then the second step is much easier – if the world is but an illusion, a thought you hold in your mind, then it can be changed by the holder of the thought – you. There is no reason for us to look upon terrorism, sickness and death; they do not have to be part of the world we see. We are not going to 'adjust' our vision or improve our view. We are going to see the world we make through the eyes of Truth – through the eyes of the Presence within each of us. And how do we do this? Just ask and it is given.

6. Who in a holy relationship can long remain unholy? The world the holy see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like itself. The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their innocence in it. They did not tell it what it was; they did not make adjustments to fit their orders. They gently questioned it and whispered, "What are you?" And He Who watches over all perception answered. Take not the judgment of the world as answer to the question, "What am I?" The world believes in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it is not outside you.

This is one of those paragraphs that could be copied and pasted on the mirror for us to read daily, perhaps several times a day. When we are in a holy relationship, nothing else exists in it. The world we see is one of beauty, love, joy and happiness. We never once are required to 'adjust' our vision for it is a vision of Oneness. And ask that question mentioned above and hear the answer within you. "What are you?" The world made with ego has no idea what we are although it will give us multiple choices at times, none of which would be correct. We are Love – a four letter word not found in ego's dictionary. Ego does use the word 'love' often but never with a capital letter!

7. Seek not to make the Son of God adjust to his insanity. There is a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off. He came without a purpose, but he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the stranger is made homeless and you are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "What am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he you ask, and it is to his answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance, and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn to ask the meaning of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe of truth you ask, "How shall I look upon the Son of God?"

How shall you look upon the Son of God? What other way but in one of awe for the Son of God is but a reflection that you may see yourself the same. We often talk about being led on this journey, but think about who it is that is leading you right now. When you whisper the question "What am I" do you hear the whispered response? Or do you hear the voice of the world you make telling you what it thinks you are. How much trust can you put into the voice of an illusion?

8. Does one ask judgment of what is totally bereft of judgment? And if you have, would you believe the answer, and adjust to it as if it were the truth? The world you look on is the answer that it gave you, and your have given it power to adjust the world to make its answer true. You asked this puff of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship, and adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it make you? Did you meet your brother with joy to bless the Son of God, and give him thanks for all the happiness that he held out to you? Did you see the holiness that shone in both you and your brother, to bless the other? That is the purpose of your holy relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of the one thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it no power to adjust the means and end.

Within this dream we are having, we believe that there are two voices within our mind telling us what to do. One voice we call ego and it is usually loud and first to respond. The second voice is that of Truth – of Spirit – and it responds not in an audible voice but in a quiet 'knowing' within us. No words are often heard, but the message become clear to us. This voice is not within the illusion; it comes from within, not our mind, but from the Spirit we are.

9. Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother's hand, uncertain whether to let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified beside you. And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.

Perhaps some of us have had the experience talked about above; where we did not 'leap' at the truth when we first heard it, but were very skeptical to say the least. And yet, we were drawn into the truth because someone held our hand, someone led us there. But we needed time to grasp what we were being presented with. To suddenly have the chains we placed upon ourselves removed is actually frightening, but in a good way. We tingled maybe with anticipation of what was being laid out for us. Where once we wandered in darkness, now we stood in blinding light.

10. Such is my will for you and your brother, and for each of you for one another and for himself. Here there is only holiness and joining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it? Here are we one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible. You who were a prisoner in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friend, my brother and my Self.

And so here we are at the union of Oneness, where we join with a brother because we each have received the will to enter into the light. What is a union but a completeness of wandering aimlessly apart. As we look upon our world, and our brother, we see only Love for only Love exists.

11. Your gift unto your brother has given me the certainty our union will be soon. Share, then, this faith with me, and know that it is justified. There is no fear in perfect love because it knows no sin, and it must look on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fear without? The innocent see safety, and the pure in heart see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father. And where else would they go but where they will to be? You and your brother now will lead the other to the Father as surely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so. In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of your immortality. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you.

So here is a big test for us – can we see our brother – all brothers – as sinless? That includes ALL with no exceptions. Once we can, we will not experience fear. It is a test that will be before us as we travel this journey. Often we will look at it and try to respond yes to it, but if we attempt to keep one brother out, we have not answered correctly. We must continue to try. Something within each of us knows now that we shall answer this test correctly.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section IV. - Entering the Ark

1. Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. Yet you give power as the laws of this world interpret giving; as you give you lose. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, given by Him and reawakened by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you give you gain. He gives no power to sin, and therefore it has none; nor to its results as this world sees them, – sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free of them. Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives everything to God, Who has already given and received all that is true. The untrue He has neither received nor given.

The title of this section reminds you of what? Remember how they all went on as 'twos' – not one went on alone. Interesting concept? Here in the first line we are again reminded of something that has been told many times, many ways – nothing can harm me unless I have given it the power to do so. Why would I do that? As Hawkins points out in his book "Power versus Force", Power is of God, force is of ego. Can I truly give away a gift from God? Can I truly believe that something can harm me only because I have given prior approval?

2. Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him instead, and Heaven is lost to you. But see him as he is, and what is yours shines from him to you. Your savior gives you only love, but what you would receive of him is up to you. It lies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and therein lies his own salvation. And so it is with yours. Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the reawakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not.

Sin is a word, a concept, of this world we make as egos. It simply does not exist, nor can exist in Heaven. Knowing this and believing this, then when you look upon your brother – any and all of them – if you see 'sin' in just one, Heaven is not open to you. See them all in the Light of Love we are, and Heaven is presented to us in all Its magnitude. This journey we believe we are making is about giving what we are to those we think we see, and in giving, we also receive. A very foreign thought for ego – one that it cannot comprehend. To give is to lose, according to ego. To give is to receive is our truth.

3. Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by accepting their results as your just due. What could this be but madness? And is it this that you would see within your savior from insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in him you see your own. For this you share. What God has given follows His laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.

Our world is our responsibility; no one else made it for us. It is from our thoughts that we see what we see; it is from our thoughts that we believe what we think we believe. And such is the insanity of what we have made. We are far along our path to realize that what we see is not real. What we believe we believe is not truth. So our journey will take us beyond this insanity to the sanity which is just beyond the veil before us. And that veil may be nothing more than an image we hold of a brother before us. Is the image one from our knowing or is it one from what we think is real?

4. Those who choose freedom will experience only its results. Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God has given, to share with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see only this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established and maintained. It is upheld through all temptation to imprison and to be imprisoned. It is of them who learned of freedom that you should ask what freedom is. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for themselves the power to share with you.

And this is about as simple as it can be presented to us. What we choose is what we experience. So why do we choose fear so often? Because we want to experience fear? Have we become victims of ourselves, enslaved by thoughts of fear we hold as something we are not? We can just as easily, just as quickly choose peace and know the essence of our truth. What holds us back is our willingness to let go of what know is false.

5. The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the release from sin you offered him. To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself. In the world of separation each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. Yet those who know that they are all the same need not salvation. And each one finds his savior when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless.

We, you and I, are the sinless mentioned above. We have committed no sin, nor can we commit any sin, because sin is not truth. Remember that if you see in your brother, the power of sinlessness, then you are seeing yourself as sinless as well. See your brother in any way, and it is the way you are seen as well.

6. The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given you to learn. For He Who knows the rest will see to it without your help. But think not that He does not need your part to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies all of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed without your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it shares His purpose. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without fear and where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment and to remember freedom. How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without you? Except you be there, he is not complete. And it is his completion that he remembers there.

And together we do indeed enter the 'ark of peace' which shall float upon the waters of fear, go through major storms of insanity and eventually blow it self out – dry up and the ark shall set down on a holy place. But remember it is only accomplished two by two – reach out now to a brother – take the hand offered you – see beyond the appearance before you and watch as the appearance becomes a light so bright that darkness is not only not seen, but completely forgotten.

7. This is the purpose given you. Think not that your forgiveness of your brother serves but you two alone. For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers. Think you when this has been achieved that you will rest without them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you, and forget part of myself.

And for everyone whose hand you held – for everyone who's hand you grasped as it was extended to you – for everyone of them, there is but yet another waiting for you. Our task is not complete with the joining of one brother, but with the assembly of all. Oneness does not contain one, but it contains All That Is.

8. You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your salvation that does not work. Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort. He will go before you making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Son of God?

Here is a big question we will often think of again – Would God give us a plan that would not work? Is the plan not already complete and we are just catching up with it? Nothing is impossible for a child of God – nothing. Think of who you are and then ask yourself if it is possible for you to lack anything? The way has been laid out before us; all we are to do is to continue to move forward. We may stop along the way to perform 'tasks' of remembering who we are; we may pause along the way to grasp the hand of another and shine the inner light of peace upon their path as well. But as we proceed we have the knowing that this path has already been completed. This is path is one given to us by God and therefore it is a path of Love. There is nothing that will be on this path that is not of God. If we believe we see anything less than love, then we shall recognize the fear immediately and sweep it off our course.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section V. - Heralds of Eternity

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

This is a beautiful paragraph: In this world we make, we come closest to ourselves in a holy relationship – a relationship in which we see the other as One with ourselves. This is our function and in fulfilling this function, the pieces of a puzzle appear to rearrange themselves and fall into their proper place showing the Oneness we have forever been. We are each a piece of that puzzle, needed each to make us whole.

2. Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear. Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices raised together call to the hearts of everyone, to let them beat as one. And in that single heartbeat is the unity of love proclaimed and given welcome. Peace to your holy relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the Son of God together. You give to your brother for everyone, and in your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given you the gifts you give, and through your not forgetting this, will you remember Who gave the gifts to Him to give to you.

We sing the song of the end of sin and fear. We speak not of time, but what is beyond the conception of time. We join with another and experience to heartbeat of One, and in that single beat is the Peace we have been seeking. We give to a brother and yet we give to all. And what we have we receive as well. We gladly unwrap the many gifts given us and share them with everyone.

3. It is impossible to overestimate your brother's value. Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it wants the other for itself, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimable clearly cannot be evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far beyond your judgment you cannot even see it? Judge not what is invisible to you or you will never see it, but wait in patience for its coming. It will be given you to see your brother's worth when all you want for him is peace. And what you want for him you will receive.

What value is given our brother has been given him by us, and can we truly give value to another? What value can possibly be given to the Son of God? Values simply mean that we see a brother as a body and not as the truth standing before us. And at times, we would rather fear that body than see beyond it. To judge another we must first judge ourselves. To judge ourselves, we must first hold a thought from a past that never was. The one before us has a gift for us. We have only to open our heart to him and see him in the light from within.

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

Recall how Jesus in the stories of the Bible, offered peace to all he looked upon? And yet, instead of value, they feared him and put him on a cross to die. And yet the love from within him shone so that all might see in the darkness they were in. And this brother before us is not any different – he holds within him the peace we seek – and that peace is offered to us as a gift. Are we ready, willing and able to receive that gift of gifts? Do we stand before him and judge him or do we stand before him and see beyond the appearance?

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

Read carefully that last two lines: only the present exists – only the holy instant. Our bodies of themselves are nothing. Do they contain our minds? Can anything contain a mind that is limitless and without boundaries? And when will we let go of the notion it is our mind instead of One Mind?

6. You look upon each holy instant as a different point in time. It never changes. All that it ever held or will ever hold is here right now. The past takes nothing from it, and the future will add no more. Here, then, is everything. Here is the loveliness of your relationship, with means and end in perfect harmony already. Here is the perfect faith that you will one day offer to your brother already offered you; and here the limitless forgiveness you will give him already given, the face of Christ you yet will look upon already seen.

I believe every student of the Course who became an author states this over and over again – no other time than now – the present is all that is – the now is it. Time is an illusion we make and it contains no present moments, only illusions. The present contains no time. And this is where we desire to be, to stay, in the present, in the holy instant. Here is the loveliness we seek, the unity we are looking for. Here is the place we exist in the Oneness of It All.

7. Can you evaluate the giver of a gift like this? Would you exchange this gift for any other? This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance. And merely by remembering them, the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death must be forgotten. This is no gift your brother's body offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He is the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet, have faith that He Who sees the gift in you and your brother will offer and receive it for you both. And through His vision will you see it, and through His understanding recognize it and love it as your own.

Could you possibly attempt to evaluate the Holy Spirit? Why would you even attempt to? Would you refuse a gift from God and ask for something else? There is nothing else and no one else to give! We read that we have forgotten all that we are and know, and remembering is as close as the next thought. And likewise, we can lay down those thoughts we hold of a separation that never was. We can change those chains of guilt and sin for the memory of Truth. He who stands before you holds the key for you to open your memory to all that is there. See through the veil before you and see within the Light you have also within you. There is but one vision; see with it all that has forever been before you.

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

Know within your heart that you are never alone, never without the guidance you need, and rest in the knowledge of who you are in truth. You are the Son of God – your brother is the Son of God – and you both are the Son of God. There is no separation, no individuality here, only Oneness. See yourself as God sees you, then look upon your brother as God sees you. What you see is what you are.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section VI. - The Temple of the Holy Spirit

1. The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere it would rest on contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly Self-encompassing and Self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.

This is one of those paragraphs where 'first-person' gets the point across well: My meaning lies solely with God. If my meaning were elsewhere, it would be resting on a contingency, but none exist. My relationship with God is wholly (holy) loving – complete – and eternal. And yet I have made an unholy (not whole) relationship with my brother and with God. The relationship of God is perfect union and continuous flow of love. The one I made is self-centered (ego-centered), broken into segments (not being whole and complete) and dominated by fear. The One created by God and given to me is completely encompassing and Self-extending. That which I have made is self-destructive and self-limiting.

2. Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood.

To state this simply, if the body is involved in a relationship, it is not a holy relationship. A holy relationship is based on love and not illusion. Love hides nothing while fear hides the Truth. We have all been through stages of 'idolatry' in our life – either with a 'star' or another person. We placed them so high on a pedestal, and worshipped them as a God, and then were disappointed when they no longer gave us what we were seeking.

3. But idols do not share. Idols accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. The love of them has made love meaningless. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see.

Here is a description of many relationship we have either been in or have known or both – the other person is our idol and we give and give and never get in return, and yet we continue to give. And when we tire of giving, they are offended that we no longer wish to give. What we have given is meaningless to them. They know only how to take, more is always better. And all their relationships are much the same – they receive and when the other has nothing left to give, they find another relationship. They live in a fear of never being who they wish to be, never having what they want, and the greatest of all fear – they fear that who they think they are is not real.

4. Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for relationships. The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power through relationships. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.

In Love, darkness is unknown – cannot be seen – is not experienced. A relationship of love – a holy relationship is one of enlightenment for each person – one of clarity and beauty – one of acceptance of each other as they appear to be. In a holy relationship the body is not seen for what others think it to be, but it is that which is not the body that is seen in all its splendor. The body is not an idol to be praise, but a means of communication while in this dream. The body is home to ego and as such it demands attention constantly. It will never be satisfied with how it is, only how it might be. And never once will ego look within itself to see what lies hidden in its darkness.

5. The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?

So where does the Holy Spirit build It's temples? Within the mind? Where else is there? The body, an illusion we have made up, cannot contain that which is without darkness. The body cannot contain our truth, and yet we are led to go 'within' constantly. Within where? Within the Mind of Minds – within the Truth we hold – into the Light of Eternity – to the core of our Essence.

6. You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will never be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded in mystery, and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have not be is here kept "safe" from Him. But what you do not realize is what you fear within your brother, and would not see in him, is what makes God seem fearful to you, and kept unknown.

Perhaps you will never again say that your body is a temple after this section is read by you. Recall in the very beginning of the Course how we were told that the body is not real – that we are not this body – that the body is but an illusion we have made? This point is offered to us over and over, each time a little different perhaps, but the same thought is there – we are not, nor could be this body we believe we are. Look what this tells us about the body – it will never be the seat of love – a home of idolater – a place where love is condemned – where love is seen as fearful and hope is given up completely. Knowing this, do you still think of your body as a temple? A temple to what or to whom? There is no Love in a relationship built on the expectation of a body – a temple of no love.

7. Idolaters will always be afraid of love, for nothing so severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Brother, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your temple is not threatened. You are an idolater no longer. The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your body. You have escaped the body. Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His temple there.

Before we took up the spiritual path, many of us did indeed retreat from love – we feared love from another because of our twisted idea of love. We perhaps saw an abusive relationship and said that if that is love, we want none of it. Perhaps we saw a loved one die and felt betrayed and vowed never again to love another. But now on this path we take with others, we see what we truly feared was our escape from the love presented by ego for the Love offered by God. This body, this thought of darkness, this temple of ego, is not real. No longer do we bow to ego, but stand upright in the Presence of who we are. This body is not who we are, and never will be. Who we are and where we are and what we are, the body will never experience. We rest in the Temple of God.

8. There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation, which seems to be what it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea and give it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. For what could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant?

Does this sound familiar to you? No order of difficulties in miracles, no order of difficulty in relationships. Relationships are either holy or they are not truly relationships, a binding of purpose between others. And we are reminded about that one instant where we had this mad idea that we could improve on what God has created, and we made such things as fear, unholy relationships and death. Time was made so that we could focus on it and keep ourselves busy in an illusion of darkness. That way we did not have to face the Light within us, or even perhaps forget completely that It existed. And yet that mad idea was but an instant, and we continue to believe we are living in that instant. It is the present we wish to be in, not an instant in a time we made.

9. Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you want for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood and so invested in a false attraction your preference to the holy instant, which offers you peace and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. For no illusions can attract the mind that has transcended them, and left them far behind.

And so unholy relationship come and go, and come again, and then go once more, but a holy relationship is eternal. Which do you prefer? One of being like a fragile snowflake or one of the Power of God? And fear not about 'laying the body aside' for that is simply to disregard what you have thought they body – you are not being asked to leave the body physically, only within your mind. Rise above the thoughts you had of the body you thought you were to that which you are. And you become the observer instead of the observed.

10. The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality. The Holy Spirit rests within it in the certainty it will endure forever. Its firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the way to true relationships held gently open, through which you and your brother walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love's Arms are open to receive you, and give you peace forever.

The only relationship we have with God is one of wholeness and completeness, for God is whole and complete. And the good news is that we can exchange the unholy instant for the holy instant with but a change of thought. We exchange the illusion for our reality. We exchange the separation for the Oneness we are, and we see others as we are as well. And we all rest in the Arms of God – in the Peace that is our eternal blessing.

11. The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols and then pass on. And here he is more dead than living. Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love. Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or let himself be given freedom from it. Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his salvation, and not his doom.

And here we are – at the 'point of no-return'' where we choose between God and ego – between the body and Truth. Which way shall we go – the one of death or the path of living? Will this instant be one of holy (whole) or one of unholy (incomplete)? Choose now whether you believe you are Love or are you fear. It is but just one thought we have to hold of being in the arms of God or the grasp of ego.

12. You who are learning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. The holy instant is of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned you really want but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement. You have a real relationship, and it has meaning. It is as like your real relationship with God as equal things are like unto each other. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear your brother a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship beyond the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father from themselves, and keep remembrance of His Love apart from their awareness?

And we are lovingly reminded here that a bit of fear is okay to experience, but the fear is not one of keeping us the prisoner we have been. We have remembered more of what we have forgotten, and know within that this time is one of joy and not sadness. Yes, we may appear confused, but something within us leads out of the confusion to the Truth. Our relationship with each other has a new meaning – a meaning of being One with God – of being as God is. Our idolizing the body is a thought of the past, a place that never was, and one we never go back to. And once again, a little fear is okay, but it does not have the hold on us it once had. This is all part of the process of letting go. We look upon each other and see the reflection we hold within – the face of Christ Consciousness looking back at us. And we continue to remember more and more.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section VII. - The Consistency of Means and End

1. We have said much about discrepancies of means and end, and how these must be brought in line before your holy relationship can bring you only joy. But we have also said the means to meet the Holy Spirit's goal will come from the same Source as does His purpose. Being so simple and direct, this course has nothing in it that is not consistent. The seeming inconsistencies, or parts you find more difficult than others, are merely indications of areas where means and end are still discrepant. And this produces great discomfort. This need not be. This course requires almost nothing of you. It is impossible to imagine one that asks so little, or could offer more.

A lot of punch here – the Course has nothing in it that is not consistent – this Course will produce great discomfort which need not be – this Course requires next to nothing from you, but just a little willingness – this Course offers you so much and asks so little. The means to meet the goals of the Holy Spirit come from God direct. There are indeed areas of the Course which appear to be more easily grasped than others, but the others can be grasped as well. Remember you are reading this Course as ego and you are changing your thoughts about who you think you have been up to this point.

2. The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in a relationship from sin to holiness may now be almost over. To the extent you still experience it, you are refusing to leave the means to Him Who changed the purpose. You recognize you want the goal. Are you not also willing to accept the means? If you are not, let us admit that you are inconsistent. A purpose is attained by means, and if you want a purpose you must be willing to want the means as well. How can one be sincere and say, "I want this above all else, and yet I do not want to learn the means to get it?"

So if inconsistency is experienced, it is only because we are inconsistent in our thinking, not the Course. If discomfort is still present in your life, perhaps it is because you have not left go of what you think you can do for what can be done for you by Spirit. We want the goal but do we want it enough to want the means of achieving it as well? As ego, we like to have things given to us with little or no effort. We find we would rather take than give. Can you say to yourself that you want this above all else, and truly the 'all else'.

3. To obtain the goal the Holy Spirit indeed asks little. He asks no more to give the means as well. The means are second to the goal. And when you hesitate, it is because the purpose frightens you, and not the means. Remember this, for otherwise you will make the error of believing the means are difficult. Yet how can they be difficult if they are merely given you? They guarantee the goal, and they are perfectly in line with it. Before we look at them a little closer, remember that if you think they are impossible, your wanting of the purpose has been shaken. For if a goal is possible to reach, the means to do so must be possible as well.

Ever been in the position where you wanted something you believed you needed, and yet when you got it, you were afraid of using it? Such is what is occurring with us. We are given what we need by Spirit as the means of reaching the goal before us, and yet we are apprehensive about using the way provided. Why do you suppose we do that? Sounds crazy? If it sounds crazy it only means that we are still in the ego mode and it is holding us back from where we want to be. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible for us to accomplish! We are never asked to do more than we are capable of doing. We are never shown some obstacle on our path that the means of getting over the obstacle are not also presented. Within any one problem lies it immediate answer.

4. It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of holiness? For holiness is merely the result of letting the effects of sin be lifted, so what was always true is recognized. To see a sinless body is impossible, for holiness is positive and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ or of the ego. Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. And both must be undone for purposes of truth.

For us to see a sinless body is like for us to see a lighted darkness. We cannot see them both – either we see a body or we see a sinless reflection of ourselves. We either see Light or darkness, but never together. This Course, from the very beginning, has emphasized the point that there is no fence here for us to straddle; we must choose one or the other, and never can we have them both. If we see a body, we see an illusion. If we see the Christ reflection, we do not see the body. We either see Truth or falsehood.

5. The body is the means by which the ego tries to make the unholy relationship seem real. The unholy instant is the time of bodies. But the purpose here is sin. It cannot be attained but in illusion, and so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness. Because of this consistency, the means remain unquestioned while the end is cherished. Seeing adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either see or not.

To make it simple – to see a body is to be an ego. To see beyond the appearance of a body is to be who you are in Truth. If your relationship is based on the body, the relationship is not holy, the relationship is not complete, not whole. If you see a body, you are judging, plain and simple. If you see a body, you are not seeing.

6. Who sees a brother's body has laid a judgment on him, and sees him not. He does not really see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin he is invisible. He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept separated. Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality imagined as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant before he dies.

The next person you look upon, see if you are seeing a body, and if so, know that you are judging. What do you see when you look upon another? What is it you see when you see another as not a body? What vision do you hold of them you do not judge? Do you see others in light or darkness?

7. There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining and vision. The difference lies not in them, but in their purpose. Both are but means, each one appropriate to the end for which it is employed. Neither can serve the purpose of the other, for each one is a choice of purpose, employed on its behalf. Either is meaningless without the end for which it was intended, nor is it valued as a separate thing apart from the intention. The means seem real because the goal is valued. And judgment has no value unless the goal is sin.

And what means is there for us to see a brother not as a body? What is that brother to us, but a savior to us – one that we must join with in Mind, for believing we are one and separate, we can never become One with others. Judgment is always of ego, Love is of God. Where are you as look upon a brother? It matters little where the brother is at with his view, it is your view that is important to you.

8. The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To see the body is the sign that you lack vision, and have denied the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose. How can a holy relationship achieve its purpose through the means of sin? Judgment you taught yourself; vision is learned from Him Who would undo your teaching. His vision cannot see the body because it cannot look on sin. And thus it leads you to reality. Your holy brother, sight of whom is your release, is no illusion. Attempt to see him not in darkness, for your imaginings about him will seem real there. You closed your eyes to shut him out. Such was your purpose, and while this purpose seems to have a meaning, the means for its attainment will be evaluated as worth the seeing, and so you will not see.

For us to see a body, our body even, is knowing that we are judging for the body is an illusion, and illusion are judged. In judgment we are blind to what is before us. Read that one line carefully – "Judgment you taught yourself, vision is learned from Sprit". Open yourself to the vision being presented to you – attend the class that is constantly going on in front of you – show up for the demonstrations offered you. Vision is not a difficult subject for us. But we must open our eyes in order to see. How difficult is that to ask of us?

9. Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon is sinless. No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. And what he sees he did not make, for it was given him to see, as was the vision that made his seeing possible.

Do you truly desire to see you brother – all brothers included – as sinless? Perhaps you answer yes, but not this or that one. This is not about leaving some out. They are all brothers and they must all be seen as sinless, not as a body, not as a label or a story. We need each and every brother. Remember he is your salvation as much as you are his. And read that part about 'no one who loves can judge" once more. Remember than line. Judge and you are not loving; love and you cannot judge.

Chapter 20

THE VISION OF HOLINESS

Section VIII. - The Vision of Sinlessness

1. Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to show you what is given you who see your brother sinless. Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open the holy place that you closed off by valuing the "something else," and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.

Remember the first time you saw someone as sinless? Recall that moment of exquisite beauty you saw? Perhaps you have never yet viewed another as sinless, perhaps you have never viewed yourself in that way either. You cannot see another different from the view you hold of yourself. Perhaps the fear that holds you from seeing sinlessness in others, is nothing more than not be able to see it in you. Is there a shroud of guilt covering your view of you? Do you have to rid the shade of shame place down before you? The shade and the shroud are your handicrafts – your making. No one can placed them before you. Begin with a spark of desire deep within you to see yourself as you desire to see others, and allow that spark to flame up and burn the fog away before you.

2. Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking, and think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given, waiting on your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.

Do I want to see my true identity? Would I not happily exchange my doubts for certainty? Would I not be willing to be free of misery, and learn again of joy? You bet I would and do! So what must I do? Just ask to see and receive that which I ask for. With this vision I shall see myself as sinless and I shall see you as sinless as well. And the cost? Nothing but my willingness to let go of what I had valued for that which is beyond value.

3. Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation is. Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother's body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have made of him.

If I see my brother as the sinlessness he is, then I also am able to see myself as the sinlessness I am. And with that vision comes the joy and peace of knowing Truth. With that vision comes the face of Christ shining back to me in a reflection of me.

4. The Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you shall be yours. This is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision that enables you to see the body not. And as you look upon your brother, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter for God's Son? Why would you rather look on it than on the truth? How can the engine of destruction be preferred, and chosen to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where He will dwell with you?

Let's try this in the first person, just to get the meaning deeper perhaps: The Holy Spirit guarantees me that what God has willed and what God has given is mine. This is also my purpose now, the vision that makes it mine is ready to be given me. I have the vision that allows me to not see a body. And as I look upon another, I will see an altar to God, holy as the Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with shining lilies I have laid upon it. What more can I value than this? Why would I think a body is a better home, a safer shelter for me? Why would I look upon a body as being truth? How can I prefer an engine of destruction, to replace the home Spirit offers, a home in which It shall dwell with me?

5. The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability and loss of power. Can such a savior help you? Would you turn in your distress and need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully little the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment will seem to make your savior weak. Yet it is you who need his strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity that vision will not solve. All is redeemed when looked upon with vision. For this is not your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it is.

See the body as it is described here – weak, vulnerable and without any power. Can such a sight help you? Will you look upon such a sight and ask for help from it? As long as you judge the sight, the sight is no strength for you. But the vision given you is all that is required here. See the body for what it is not and you shall see beyond the form. With that vision shall you see the strength needed and the salvation you have been searching.

6. Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place, according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain sight. The end for everything He looks upon is always sure. For it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze. What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to correct? Its eyes adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment.

I remember the days of doing puzzles and after struggling to fit the pieces together, I simply relaxed and look again, only to see the pieces flow with each other, interlocking as they did. Once I allowed the puzzle to be shown, the solution to it was possible. And such is the vision I see a brother with. If I strain to see him, I judge him and likewise myself. If I allow vision to be given to me to see a brother with, I see before me the reflection of Light, the very same Light within me. Once I stop pretending to see what is before me, what is before is seen clearly.

7. Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws. What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? And would you see it?

A lot of questions for us to ponder here. Sure, we think we can answer them quickly but are we willing to abide by the response? If judgment is a toy, when will we tire of it? When will we no longer have an interest in the game of death? And what if you saw with the vision gift you have, that the world you had believed in was not real? What if you could see clearly that it is all your making? And what if all those bodies that were once there are now seen as sinless pictures of beauty? What if all you saw was Oneness and you were in awe of It? What if? It is there now – will you accept it as the Truth? Will you choose to use that vision?

8. Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize that you did this. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from them. One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held they disappear. Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose that they serve? This world seems to hold out many purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order; only a seeming hierarchy of values.

Our dreams will vanish once they are seen for what they are. In this is the healing and remedy one and the same. Stop believing in what you think is your world, and it shall vanish. And know within you that you have the power to do that – to make your world as you have made it up to this point, vanish. The dream had a purpose, but the purpose is no longer of use. Drop the dream. Your world shall appear to offer many purposes, all of which are the same, only the values you have given them shall appear different.

9. Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are all projections made. For it is the projection that gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.

Like everything else in the Course, only two views are given – sin or holiness, love or fear. Nothing is offered between the two for nothing is between the two. Your dream serves you in your goal of madness. Your truth shall show you the freedom. Your dreams are but thoughts you hold and the projection you give them. And the projections are nothing of nothing.

10. What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaning always looks within to find itself, and then looks out. All meaning that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if you saw at all or merely judged against. Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you, and that the errors which you made can be corrected.

Remember in the early lessons how we remembered that the only meaning anything has is the meaning we have given it. If we give meaning to nothing, are we able to see the nothing? We judge and we judge and we judge, and yet we see nothing to judge. The vision given us by Spirit allows us to see beyond the nothingness – to see beyond the darkness of death to a Reality that we never left. Are you not done with the nightmares? Are you not ready for the view that will be given you? Your dreams have given you nothing for they are nothing. Trade them all in for the substitutes offered by Spirit and experience the joy and happiness which are yours. Sin shall not be seen for it is nothing. Errors are noted as being correctable.

11. When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after? Think but an instant just on this; you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you to see.

Look at the ending here: Think but that within an instant you can see the holiness God has given you. And you will never again need to think that anything else is there for you to see.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Introduction

1. Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos.

We perceive because we project, as simple as that. The world I see is the way it is because it is exactly what I have given it, and nothing more than that. So I believe that my world is important, at least to me. What I believe I see is what I hold in mind. As I think, so is my world. Therefore I know I cannot change my world but I can change the thoughts I am holding about it. I note that if I change a thought about my world, my world changes. Perception is a result of my changing my thoughts. And now I am beginning to grasp better the meaning of no difficulty in miracles. They are but a change of thought I am holding in my mind.

2. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to recognize which one you chose. The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as yours. And, if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you.

First person here may be useful:Damnation is my judgment on myself, and this is what I shall project upon my world. If I see my world as damned, I shall but hurt myself. If I see disaster and turmoil, it is but my crucifixion of myself. But if I choose to see happiness and hope, I will join with the Will of God to set myself free. In setting myself free, I set my brother free. Really there is no choice here for me to make. I will see before me which I have chosen and will quickly recognize my choice. The world I see is but a reflection of the joy I have given myself, and how much joy I can see in you. And this power is within us both.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section I. - The Forgotten Song

1. Never forget the world the sightless "see" must be imagined, for what it really looks like is unknown to them. They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever indirect; and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk unharmed through open doorways that they thought were closed. And so it is with you. You do not see. Your cues for inference are wrong, and so you stumble and fall down upon the stones you did not recognize, but fail to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before unseeing eyes, waiting to welcome you.

Within our world, we call some brothers 'blind' for they have no ability to see, and yet here we are depicted as they are – sightless, yet we have eyes to see but do not. Do we see every stone upon our path, and do we stub out toe and then see the stone? Do we notice that a door is open and yet we say it is closed to us, or do we continue to pound upon an unlocked door only because we have failed to open it?

2. How foolish is it to attempt to judge what could be seen instead. It is not necessary to imagine what the world must look like. It must be seen before you recognize it for what it is. You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see where safety lies; and which way leads to darkness, which to light. Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go. Why should you guess?

We read this and yet do nothing. Do we not continue to judge what we could just as easily see? Do we not continue to imagine a world before us that is not there? What we need to know is already known, and yet we continue to go the wrong way, or do the wrong thing. Why do we guess when we already know?

3. There is no need to learn through pain. And gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly. What gives you happiness you want to learn and not forget. It is not this you would deny. Your question is whether the means by which this course is learned will bring to you the joy it promises. If you believed it would, the learning of it would be no problem. You are not a happy learner yet because you still remain uncertain that vision gives you more than judgment does, and you have learned that both you cannot have.

Amazing how our minds are read by the author – we are not yet ready to be a happy learner, because we do not believe what is being said to us. Not easy to take and read, but within each us, we know that a cord of truth has been struck. Many of us struggle with the many teachings of the Course, and yet the many teachings are but a few stated over and over again in a myriad of ways. If Love is real, and fear is false, why do we continue to believe in fear? If this body is not really who I am, why do I continue to believe it is? But we are learning – slowly perhaps – or we wouldn't still be reading the Course. We continue because we have some belief within us that what we are learning is the Truth.

4. The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it. They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome. And still believing this, they hold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot see. They do not understand the lessons keep them blind. This they do not believe. And so they keep the world they learned to "see" in their imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived.

Now the question here is: are those that we consider 'blind' being discussed here, or are we those that are considered blind as well?

5. Thus they define their life and where they live, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have. They try to reach each other, and they fail, and fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have. Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now.

Do we not define our life and where we live, constantly adjusting to it because of the fear that we might lose what we believe we have if we do get more? When you look at the people in your world – all of them – what do you see? Do you see bodies? Are we then not blind because the bodies are illusions acting as a veil over the truth they are? And do we not believe so much in the body that we are trying constantly to protect it and make it into what it is not? The body is an illusion and we are trying to protect an illusion. Just be still for a moment and think if this is not true, and perhaps you shall remember what your truth is...

6. Listen,–perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you.

I will listen and perhaps I shall catch a hint of an ancient state not yet totally forgotten, dim yes, but not completely hidden. I hear a song – a sound – of what I have longed to hear and now remember. Not all of the song has come back to me, but enough of it so that I may hold the memory in my heart. How beautiful the sound, how magnificent the setting, how lovely everything was. Now I have heard the song and it beckons me.

7. The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since.

The notes themselves are nothing, but the love between the notes is everything. I have kept them hidden in a recess of my mind. Forgotten for a while and yet completely familiar. The song is one that draws me to the brink of my dream – to the edge of the illusion. Nothing in the world I made will ever take the place of that sound. Nothing will ever hold more meaning for me than the song I had long forgotten. I am on the edge and desire to surrender all of this dream to be with that song.

8. Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not.

Beyond the edge of the dream, beyond the body I believed I have been, beyond the stars, sun and all of the Universe, past everything I can see and could see – beyond all that illusion is a an arc of golden light as I gaze into the Circle of Love. And that Circle is All That Is as Light. And soon I see that the circle no longer has edges to contain its shape, it expands to infinity, where nothing but Light is seen. And everything is seen as the Love it is, and there is no place Love is not.

9. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within, and joined to all as surely as all is joined in you. Accept the vision that can show you this, and not the body. You know the ancient song, and know it well. Nothing will ever be as dear to you as is this ancient hymn of love the Son of God sings to his Father still.

This is the vision I share with my brother. This is the sight we know is God. Here is the memory of who we are, a part and still the whole of All That Is. We gladly accept this vision together knowing it is one of truth. No longer shall we look upon the body as anything other than a thing of communication. And long afterwards we shall both sit in the silence and hear the ancient sound that calls us back.

10. And now the blind can see, for that same song they sing in honor of their Creator gives praise to them as well. The blindness that they made will not withstand the memory of this song. And they will look upon the vision of the Son of God, remembering who he is they sing of. What is a miracle but this remembering? And who is there in whom this memory lies not? The light in one awakens it in all. And when you see it in your brother, you are remembering for everyone.

And so blindness is no longer an experience in our world, for the ancient call we have all heard has opened all eyes to truth. No one is blind to Light of Love. No one cannot hear the song that beckons to them of life that they still live. And as we look upon all before us, they all change into One Light of Love – the Oneness of us all.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section II. - The Responsibility for Sight

1. We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection. And being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood. Rejected yes, but not ambiguous. And if you choose against it now it will not be because it is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in your judgment, to be too much to pay for peace.

A very powerful paragraph – how much are we willing to 'pay' for the peace we seek? Is a 'little willingness' on our part too much? What really does a 'little willingness' cost? Because we believe yet we are the ego, the word 'little' is used with the word 'willingness' so that we can grasp that no major sacrifice is demanded us – nothing more than our showing a little willingness. And how do we show that 'little willingness"?

2. This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

I am responsible for what I see.

I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.

And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

It doesn't get much easier than this for us. We have but to say the above, and we are showing the 'little willingness' requested of us. But note that we are asked to say this 'no reservations' – no doubt in the process. Are you ready to accept responsibility for what you see, for what you are projecting before you and calling your world? Are you ready to accept the fact that no one else is making what is before you; no one is causing you any pain, suffering and misfortunes?

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.

And again we are being asked to stop deceiving ourselves, stop believing that we are helpless in the world we believe we are in. We have only to admit – and only to ourselves – that we have been mistaken, what we see is not real, is not truth, and the effects of our vision will be changed. It is as if we have to 'say the word' and our vision shall be changed.

3. It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him. It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gives to you to give yourself. For by this gift is given you the power to release your savior, that he may give salvation unto you.

First person: It is impossible for me to be merely driven by events outside of me. It is impossible that happenings that come to me are not my choice. My power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which I seem to find myself by chance or by accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which nothing exists. If I choose to suffer, I have decided sin is my goal. I can have happiness by giving my 'power' over to Spirit for guidance in my decisions. This is my little gift I offer to Spirit, and He gives this to me and I forgive myself. This is the gift given to me in which I have then the power to release my brother from the thoughts I hold about him.

4. Begrudge not then this little offering. Withhold it, and you keep the world as now you see it. Give it away, and everything you see goes with it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant is this exchange effected and maintained. Here is the world you do not want brought to the one you do. And here the one you do is given you because you want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must first be recognized. You must accept its strength, and not its weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to make a world can let it go, and can accept correction if it is willing to see that it was wrong.

If I do not accept this offering from Spirit, I shall continue to see a world I make and continue to see my brother as I am. I have but to give this gift and my world and that of my brother vanish before us. Never has so much been offered for so little a price. In one holy instant of the moment is our world changed completely. But the key to all this is that we must want what is shown to us in place of the world we make. We must accept the view before us as the Love we are. We come to recognize that we have made of world of madness and darkness. If we are powerful enough to make such a world, then we are powerful enough to change it as well.

5. The world you see is but the idle witness that you were right. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. You did this to yourself. See only this, and you will also see how circular the reasoning on which your "seeing" rests. This was not given you. This was your gift to you and to your brother. Be willing, then, to have it taken from him and be replaced with truth. And as you look upon the change in him, it will be given you to see it in yourself.

The world we believe we see is the witness to the insane thoughts we hold within our mind. We have learned this world well and we have been the teachers to ourselves. No one else made our world, only us, and it is this responsibility we must accept before we can let go. This world we believe we see is a 'gift' we gave to ourselves. Knowing this, do you want any more gifts like this? Let go of insanity, of chaos and confusion. Let go of what you believe you believe and accept what you already know and how long forgotten. We are reminded often that this is a Course in 'un-learning' all that taught ourselves.

6. Perhaps you do not see the need for you to give this little offering. Look closer, then, at what it is. And, very simply, see in it the whole exchange of separation for salvation. All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things could happen to the Son of God without his will; and thus without the Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot be separate from his own. This is the Son of God's replacement for his will, a mad revolt against what must forever be. This is the statement that he has the power to make God powerless and so to take it for himself, and leave himself without what God has willed for him. This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars, and which you worship. And anything that threatens this seems to attack your faith, for here is it invested. Think not that you are faithless, for your belief and trust in this is strong indeed.

If we see no need to give up what we have made, then perhaps we must look again, deeper at what we believe so strongly in. Is not your world one in which you sense a separation from each other? Do you not see suffering and pain and tragedy in your world? Do you not see others dieing? Do you not see sickness in your world, and pain as well? Is this world one in which you would prefer to see instead of a world of Light and Love? Is this the world you prefer over the world offered you by God? This is the thought that began this dream, when will be willing to let it go?

7. The Holy Spirit can give you faith in holiness and vision to see it easily enough. But you have not left open and unoccupied the altar where the gifts belong. Where they should be, you have set up your idols to something else. This other "will," which seems to tell you what must happen, you give reality. And what would show you otherwise must therefore seem unreal. All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away.

Recall how we have been told many times, where we see fear, we can not see love? If we still have fears on our altar, Love can not be place there also. This dream is about us making choices – about choosing love instead of fear. We can have the vision offered to us by Spirit if we but choose it. In choosing we are saying that we are willing to sweep the darkness from our minds so that the Light may be seen again. We are being asked to let go of illusions we believe to be true for the Truth within us.

8. Be willing, for an instant, to leave your altars free of what you placed upon them, and what is really there you cannot fail to see. The holy instant is not an instant of creation, but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision and suspended judgment. Then only it is possible to look within and see what must be there, plainly in sight, and wholly independent of inference and judgment. Undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it or not. Faith and desire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what he wants.

Just do for the one instant asked of you – just allow yourself to see what is to be seen upon an altar where Love is present. Once you have seen, the seed for more such views will be planted and your search for Truth will replace your hiding from it.

9. We have already said that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with what it wants, to make it so. There is no better demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore of faith, to make its goals seem real and possible. Faith in the unreal leads to adjustments of reality to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful world to justify its purpose. What you desire, you will see. And if its reality is false, you will uphold it by not realizing all the adjustments you have introduced to make it so.

" **What you desire, you will see." Just think on those words a bit. What is it you truly desire? Something of the world you believe in or in the Truth you know you are. And you can continue to deny the Truth you are, but there is a spot within you that will continue to remind you. Such is our link with God.**

10. When vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The purpose now becomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be a cause. This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as standing by itself, and capable of serving as a cause of the events and feelings its maker thinks it causes. Earlier, we spoke of your desire to create your own creator, and be father and not son to him. This is the same desire. The Son is the Effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to be the cause, producing real effects. Nothing can have effects without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both.

We have learned and unlearned a lot about 'cause and effect'. We have been told that we the Effect of the Cause being God. And yet in Truth, no cause nor effect is seen, We are simply the Oneness of All That Is.

11. It is as needful that you recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize that you did not create yourself. They are the same mistake. Nothing created not by your Creator has any influence over you. And if you think what you have made can tell you what you see and feel, and place your faith in its ability to do so, you are denying your Creator and believing that you made yourself. For if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you are confusing Son and Father; effect and Source.

This may sound a bit confusing but don't allow ego to try to help you in your understanding. We did indeed make the world we see, and we did indeed make the bodies we believe we are, but we did not and could not make that Which we are. And only what God has created is real. Therefore, simple logic will tell us that our world and this body is not real.

12. The Son's creations are like his Father's. Yet in creating them the Son does not delude himself that he is independent of his Source. His union with It is the source of his creating. Apart from this he has no power to create, and what he makes is meaningless. It changes nothing in creation, depends entirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot serve to justify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks the world he made, made him. Thus he denies he made it.

Our 'creations' are not the same as the creations of God. What we make in a world we make is meaningless for there is nothing but illusions. We make this world and yet we deny making it; just another example of the insanity of it all.

13. Yet the truth is you and your brother were both created by a loving Father, Who created you together and as one. See what "proves" otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. But grant that everything that seems to stand between you and your brother, keeping you from each other and separate from your Father, you made in secret, and the instant of release has come to you. All its effects are gone, because its source has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its source that keeps you prisoner. This is the same mistake as thinking you are independent of the Source by which you were created, and have never left.

The truth we seek will show us that not only did God create us all, but that God created us as the Oneness we shall forever be. God did not create us to appear as separate identities, we did that all by ourselves. As long as we hold on to the thought that we separate from God, and from each other; as long we continue to think some of us are more special than others, we shall continue to believe in the world we make. But mistakes are easily corrected.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section III. - Faith, Belief and Vision

1. All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are bargains with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not this; to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate. You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of "fairness," sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps more often of the other. Thus in the "fairness" you attempt to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purpose of the relationship. And that is why the Holy Spirit must change its purpose to make it useful to Him and harmless to you.

And what might be the 'goals' of your relationships? Are you bargaining with others to get something from them or be something with them? Do you have limits on the relationships, such as 'if you do this, then I will that do, but not until you do this'. Are you in a relationship where you are willing to endure pain and suffering as long as the other does what you expect of them? Such is the game of special relationships, a very big 'subject' in the curriculum of the Course. But we already know that such a relationship can be changed into a 'holy' (complete, whole) relationship once we ask and receive the guidance of Spirit. The guidance is given the moment we ask, but all too often we fail to see it.

2. If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for truth. The source of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still experience its effects, but it is not your purpose and you no longer want it. No one allows a purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts. This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of faith is never recognized if it is placed in sin. But it is always recognized if it is placed in love.

As we open our hearts to the change provided us by Spirit, the truth of ourselves becomes known once again to us. We experience a peace and know that fear has left us. We may still feel effects of special relationship, but we shall see only the holy one presented. Slowly will our thoughts be changed to reflect only that which we have asked for. We place our power of faith in the knowledge of Love, our truth.

3. Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in chains as long as he believes he is in chains. And when he is released from them it will be simply because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. It is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions. What faith you give to sin you take away from holiness. And what you offer holiness has been removed from sin.

You know this is not the first time you have been told that faith can move mountains. The first picture presented by ego is of course, a mountain. But is not each obstacle on your path often seen as a mountain, and yet with faith, you walk through it, over it, or it simply vanishes before you. Such is the power of faith, your faith. The very same faith that we have when we believed we were these bodies and this world before us was real. And again the author tells us that this Course is an either-or Course – we must choose one over the other, never holding both.

4. Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness is reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world, and away from all illusions where your faith was laid. This is His direction; the only one He ever sees. And when you wander, He reminds you there is but one. His faith and His belief and vision are all for you. And when you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will have need of them no longer. For faith and vision and belief are meaningful only before the state of certainty is reached. In Heaven they are unknown. Yet Heaven is reached through them.

Our faith, our beliefs, and our vision, are the means by which we reach the holiness (wholeness) we seek. Through them we are led by Spirit to a world of reality, a world not of dreams but of truth. This is the only direction we are led, for no other direction in His view. We, however, may wander in another direction we see, but Spirit is forever there reminding us of the one and only. As we accept Spirit into our lives, we also accept His faith and His belief and vision for us. Once accepted, we have no further need of those we held so dear. Only in this dream are the faith, belief and vision necessary, for in Heaven we simply are as God is.

5. It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can choose where he would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lack of faith, but faith in nothing. Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in faith in his illusions about himself. For faith, perception and belief you made, as means for losing certainty and finding sin. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired.

Again a major point in our unlearning is presented: it is impossible for us – the Son of God – to lack anything for we have All That Is. Faith is one of those beautiful gifts given us by God – one where there is no such thing as more faith or less faith – simply faith. What we do with faith is again a choice we make. We can use faith believing in what we think we are in this world we make, or we can use our faith in knowing who we are in Truth.

6. The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to find it. But as He uses them they lead away from sin, because His purpose lies in the opposite direction. He sees the means you use, but not the purpose for which you made them. He would not take them from you, for He sees their value as a means for what He wills for you. You made perception that you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.

All the illusions we have made, and all the beliefs we have held true are all taken by Spirit and changed before our eyes. Spirit sees how we did what we thought we did, but never judges us as what we believe we did. He takes those 'hows' and uses them as learning devices so that we can see how we took a relationship and twisted it into a relationship of hate and fear. He takes those 'hows' and shows us how they can be used to view a holy relationship with our brother. Once seen, we easily give our faith to such a relationship.

7. Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once served sin are redirected now toward holiness. For what you think is sin is limitation, and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him to the body because the means for sin are dear to you. And so the body has your faith and your belief. But holiness would set your brother free, removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom, but at its source.

What I think is sin is limitation, and whom I try to limit to the body I hate because I fear. And as I see another I see myself! Do I see myself as being limited by this body because I fear the thought of letting go of my body? If I refuse to forgive my brother for having a body, am I not also refusing to forgive myself for my body as well? Once I give up my belief in the body, I shall see my brother and myself as the One we are.

8. Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. As they desire to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of their belief and faith sees far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them. The miracles that follow this decision are also born of faith. For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision, and are led to holiness.

Look at the first line: if we free our brothers from a body, we can have no fear. Isn't that enough to have you free your brother? Can you imagine a life of no fear in a world of no fear? Look at others and see beyond the appearance of a body – see beyond the limitation we had placed on them, and what is it that you see? Do you see a light so bright it is almost blinding? Do you see an image or simply the light? And as you see them, know that you also are part of the same vision. This vision contains only holiness, only truth.

9. Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is accomplished. Brother, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. He makes no bargains. And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid. The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands this side of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awareness to what has been already joined. The faith you give your brother can accomplish this. For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you, without one spot of sin upon it, and in the innocence that makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven.

Sacrifice is often mentioned in the Course and yet at no point are we ever asked to sacrifice anything for the truth of who we are. What is there to sacrifice in a world of illusions? Spirit asks us of no sacrifice, for such actions bring nothing. The recognition you seek, and the recognition your brother seeks, as close to us as our next thought. We are that near to seeing our Oneness. The world of Love is being presented to us by Spirit for our viewing pleasure, as the saying goes. Accept it as the truth it is.

10. Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight; except you do not realize you cannot see because of it. For sacrifice must be exacted of a body, and by another body. The mind could neither ask it nor receive it of itself. And no more could the body. The intention is in the mind, which tries to use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the mind believes. Thus is the joining of mind and body an inescapable belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice invariably a means for limitation, and thus for hate.

I find it most convenient to discuss sacrifice at this time of the year, when Lent was always viewed as a time of sacrifice, depending on what religion you were brought up. I remember how a child, I gave up candy for Lent, or going to the movies, or even my allowance was given up, all as a sacrifice because I was told I had sinned and Jesus dies because of my sins. How's that for a guilt trip to lay on a child? Sacrifice gets nothing accomplished.

11. Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? He gives not what it is His purpose to lead you from. You think He would deprive you for your good. But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites, and cannot meaningfully join in any way. It is like saying that the moon and sun are one because they come with night and day, and so they must be joined. Yet sight of one is but the sign the other has disappeared from sight. Nor is it possible that what gives light be one with what depends on darkness to be seen. Neither demands the sacrifice of the other. Yet on the absence of the other does each depend.

In our past, we have trusted ego, but now we are questioning that loyalty. And we are asking ourselves to be led by Spirit away from a world of illusion to a world of reality of love. It is not that one is better than another, but only that one is truth and the other is false. We have believed long enough in who we thought we were; it is time for us now to believe in who we know we are. No more thinking, just simply knowing.

12. The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is seen. Yet in the light of vision it is looked upon quite differently. You can have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit's goal, and give it power to serve as means to help the blind to see. But in their seeing they look past it, as do you. The faith and the belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave perception and belief and faith from mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced them, and can use them still to save itself from what it made.

It is the time for us to take the thought within our mind that we are this body, and simply see the body as a vehicle of communication with no purpose other than that. We can change our thought, our belief of this body, just as easily as we thought it to be true once. We have the faith to accomplish this. We have the means to accomplish this. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us in accomplishing this.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section IV. - The Fear to Look Within

1. The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within and see the sin you think is there. This you would not be fearful to admit. Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite appropriate, and smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel ashamed. It doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not shake because of this. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to your desire that it be there to see. This merely seems to be the source of fear.

This is one fear we can let go of right now – we shall never be seen by Spirit as sinful. Our errors He will correct with us, but that does not make It fearful. We have a fear to look within ourselves, although we are told often to do just that. What is the fear based on? The fear that our truth lies waiting for us within, and ego does not want us to see our truth. If we believe in sin, we believe in fear. So do you believe in a fear?

2. Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule is tempered, and its unknown "enemy," Whom it cannot even see, it fears. Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not look. Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear, nor yours who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it is; too loudly and too often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble.

By now this far on your path, you have come to realize that God has not struck you blind for looking within, instead God has rewarded you with the many gifts waiting for you to unwrap. The ego will do just about anything to stop you from looking there, from seeing what it is you have been seeking. No one has ever gone blind from looking upon the face of God.

3. What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend. Those who have joined their brothers have detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in truth. And your belief in sin has been already shaken, nor are you now entirely unwilling to look within and see it not.

Have you ever looked within and saw 'sin'? Sin is never seen within, but one of those illusions we project out. So perhaps now this far into the Course, if you have not stop long enough to look within your essence, it is time. What you shall see is real. What you shall not see is fear.

4. Your liberation still is only partial; still limited and incomplete, yet born within you. Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much of your insanity and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you now the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit's purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you. And yet this part, with which you now identify, is not afraid to look upon itself. It knows no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit's purpose as its own?

And even though we but peek into ourselves, it is an opening to shall forever be there for us, to widen and see more of what we hold. The more we see within, the less we see without. The more we see within, the more sanity returns to us. And you are at a point where ego no longer will listen to what you are affirming, for you are not only affirming but knowing you are not what you had thought you were, you are beyond those thoughts. And this is all possible to view because we asked of the Holy Spirit and were given that which we asked for. The purpose of Spirit is now our own as well.

5. This part has seen your brother, and recognized him perfectly since time began. And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free again, as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of freedom; the acceptance of release to come to you. And now you recognize that it was not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit's purpose, and so there must be something else. Think not that this is madness. For this your reason tells you, and it follows perfectly from what you have already learned.

Namaste – the Love in me has seen the Love in you since before time began, and now sees it once again in all our glory. This is a moment of rebirth for all of us. That which has been hidden within us by fears of nothing, is now able to be projected in the world we see. Where darkness was, light is present.

6. There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the reasoning of the sane. You have perceived the ego's madness, and not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. At times it still deceives you. Yet in your saner moments, its ranting strikes no terror in your heart. For you have realized that all the gifts it would withdraw from you, in rage at your "presumptuous" wish to look within, you do not want. A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and catch your eye. Yet you would not "sell" Heaven to have them.

Perhaps there was a time when you would have sold your spot in Heaven for a particular item, place, amount or person, but that insane idea has long left you. You can no more sell Heaven than one can sell one's soul. It is not a transferable property. Heaven is here and now in this moment. It is yours whenever you wish it. It is no illusion, but your reality. Yes you will be tempted along the way, but never as you were in the past. Now you know fear when you sense it, and also know that fear is replaced with love at your request.

7. And now the ego is afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the other part hears as the sweetest music; the song it longed to hear since first the ego came into your mind. The ego's weakness is its strength. The song of freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to it hope of peace. For it remembers Heaven, and now it sees that Heaven has come to earth at last, from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what has been given Heaven as its own.

And keep this point in your mind – the ego does fear, and it fears everything you are in truth. It's very existence depends on you believing that you are this body. What the ego part of your mind holds in terror, the other part rejoices at the sound of a song long ago forgotten, but easily remembered. The louder the song, the weaker the ego. The song is of peace, of love, of joy and happiness, of your truth. The ego fears the truth in you for you shall then see the illusion of it.

8. Look gently on your brother, and remember the ego's weakness is revealed in both your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and looks upon the ego unafraid. Little child, innocent of sin, follow in gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear's insane insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it happily, and question not what must be so.

The weakness of your ego is the weakness of your brother's ego as well. As you both lay down your beliefs in ego, the truth of the Oneness of you is shown to all. We are as little children, totally innocent of what we had believed in. It is but the imagination of a child. Sing together the song you have both forgotten, sing it loudly and proclaim its words. Keep the song forever in your mind, your remembrance of what it is you continue to seek.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section V. - The Function of Reason

1. Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It literally picks it out as the mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are not equal. For what you look for you are far more likely to discover than what you would prefer to overlook. The still, small Voice for God is not drowned out by all the ego's raucous screams and senseless ravings to those who want to hear It. Perception is a choice and not a fact. But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality. Yet it can show you the conditions in which awareness of reality is possible, or those where it could never be.

The Course tells us that perception is nothing more than an outward picture of a wish we have. But do we wish for truth or illusion? Which voice shall you listen to?

2. Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help, because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You will believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you will think the world you made directs your destiny. For this will be your faith. But never believe because it is your faith it makes reality.

Our reality, our truth only requires our awareness, nothing more, and our awareness is a choice we must make. Read again what is the result of listening to ego: it dictates to you what you are to see; it shows you that you are small, vulnerable and afraid. It will give you free of charge, depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of anxiety because you shall die. It will have you believe you are powerless in this world before you. And you will come to believe that the world before you controls you, instead of you in control of the world you see. And yet something is there within you whispering that 'it just ain't so.'

3. There is another vision and another Voice in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And if you place your faith in Them, you will perceive another self in you. This other self sees miracles as natural. They are as simple and as natural to it as breathing to the body. They are the obvious response to calls for help, the only one it makes. Miracles seem unnatural to the ego because it does not understand how separate minds can influence each other. Nor could they do so. But minds cannot be separate. This other self is perfectly aware of this. And thus it recognizes that miracles do not affect another's mind, only its own. They always change your mind. There is no other.

Fortunate for us that we made a world of duality – opposing thoughts. We have one as ego and the other is from within us, so deeply ingrained in us that we begin to feel it as something we long ago forgot. A memory of something beyond all this. With Spirit we see and hear and speak from the place of love. We change our fear based thoughts of ego to loving thoughts of truth. And we call this a miracle, something ego has no concept of. And we begin to grasp and experience the Oneness we speak so often of, the Oneness of all minds being One Mind.

4. You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has interfered with reason. Reason lies in the other self you have cut off from your awareness. And nothing you have allowed to stay in your awareness is capable of reason. How can the segment of the mind devoid of reason understand what reason is, or grasp the information it would give? All sorts of questions may arise in it, but if the basic question stems from reason, it will not ask it. Like all that stems from reason, the basic question is obvious, simple and remains unasked. But think not reason could not answer it.

I am not yet at a point on my journey where I can fully comprehend how this separation I see before me has caused chaos with my reason. Many questions are poised by ego but never an answer. Where does one go to reclaim reason?

5. God's plan for your salvation could not have been established without your will and your consent. It must have been accepted by the Son of God, for what God wills for him he must receive. For God wills not apart from him, nor does the Will of God wait upon time to be accomplished. Therefore, what joined the Will of God must be in you now, being eternal. You must have set aside a place in which the Holy Spirit can abide, and where He is. He must have been there since the need for Him arose, and was fulfilled in the same instant. Such would your reason tell you, if you listened. Yet such is clearly not the ego's reasoning. Your reason's alien nature to the ego is proof you will not find the answer there. Yet if it must be so, it must exist. And if it exists for you, and has your freedom as the purpose given it, you must be free to find it.

Try first person here: God's plan for my salvation could not have been established without my will and my consent. God's plan for my salvation must have been accepted by me, for what God wills for me I must receive. God's Will is not separate from me, nor does the Will of God wait on time to be accomplished. Therefore, what has joined the Will of God is within me now, and for all eternity. I must have set aside a place in which the Spirit of God can be, and where the Presence is always felt. Spirit must have been there since my need for Him arose, and was instantly fulfilled by God. This is what my reason would tell me, if I but listened to it. This is all contrary to the reasoning as offered me by ego. My reason is alien to the very nature of ego and is proof that I shall not discover the answer there. Yet, my reason must be so, and it must truly exist. And if it truly exists for me, and it has my freedom as the purpose given it, then I must also be free to find it.

5. God's plan is simple; never circular and never self-defeating. He has no Thoughts except the Self-extending, and in this your will must be included. Thus, there must be a part of you that knows His Will and shares it. It is not meaningful to ask if what must be is so. But it is meaningful to ask why you are unaware of what is so, for this must have an answer if the plan of God for your salvation is complete. And it must be complete, because its Source knows not of incompletion.

Unlike plans of ego, the plans of God are a given – a sure thing – something you can count on. You will never be led in a circle by God, but you will always be led by God if you so choose. Whereas the ego gives us a world of meaningless thoughts, God gives all meaning we shall ever require.

6. Where would the answer be but in the Source? And where are you but there, where this same answer is? Your Identity, as much a true Effect of this same Source as is the answer, must therefore be together and the same. O yes, you know this, and more than this alone. Yet any part of knowledge threatens dissociation as much as all of it. And all of it will come with any part. Here is the part you can accept. What reason points to you can see, because the witnesses on its behalf are clear. Only the totally insane can disregard them, and you have gone past this. Reason is a means that serves the Holy Spirit's purpose in its own right. It is not reinterpreted and redirected from the goal of sin, as are the others. For reason is beyond the ego's range of means.

And now for some more good news: The answer to everything is to be found in God, and we are that Identity – the answers we seek are within waiting for us to seek and find. And there is a knowing within each us that affirms what we hold in our mind – we are One with God. And we are told here we have gone beyond being totally insane – we have gone past that concept of ego and open ourselves to the reason within us. And ego just does not know what to make of reason – it is completely foreign to it.

7. Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve the great deceiver's needs as well as truth. But reason has no place at all in madness, nor can it be adjusted to fit its end. Faith and belief are strong in madness, guiding perception toward what the mind has valued. But reason enters not at all in this. For the perception would fall away at once, if reason were applied. There is no reason in insanity, for it depends entirely on reason's absence. The ego never uses it, because it does not realize that it exists. The partially insane have access to it, and only they have need of it. Knowledge does not depend on it, and madness keeps it out.

Faith, perception and belief can be misplaced, we are told here, but never reason. As reason enters in the world we make, the world changes before us.

9. The part of mind where reason lies was dedicated, by your will in union with your Father's, to the undoing of insanity. Here was the Holy Spirit's purpose accepted and accomplished, both at once. Reason is alien to insanity, and those who use it have gained a means which cannot be applied to sin. Knowledge is far beyond attainment of any kind. But reason can serve to open doors you closed against it.

So where is reason to be found? Within the Holy Spirit within us. A gift from God to us. With reason, with truth, we open many doors we thought were closed to us. And we walk past them in peace.

10. You have come very close to this. Faith and belief have shifted, and you have asked the question the ego will never ask. Does not your reason tell you now the question must have come from something that you do not know, but must belong to you? Faith and belief, upheld by reason, cannot fail to lead to changed perception. And in this change is room made way for vision. Vision extends beyond itself, as does the purpose that it serves, and all the means for its accomplishment.

If you has not asked the question about reason, about truth, you would not be where you are at this moment – reading the Course. Your faith and your beliefs have shifted from that which you thought once was true. Faith and belief will guide you on the continuance of your journey. And your journey shall become more clear to you as you continue – your vision once impaired is now being restored.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section VI. - Reason versus Madness

1. Reason cannot see sin but can see errors, and leads to their correction. It does not value them, but their correction. Reason will also tell you that when you think you sin, you call for help. Yet if you will not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. For uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power that is in you to make correction. If it can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your brother. And if he shares this same belief you both will think that you are damned. This you could spare him and yourself. For reason would not make way for correction in you alone.

Have you noticed how easy it is to use "Spirit" in place of 'reason'? And yet they are but words. But what is important to us is that we cannot sin, have never sinned, nor will ever sin. Reason sees sin as simple error that can be just as easily corrected. Sin is of ego, correction is of Spirit, reason. When we believe in sin, we are deceiving ourselves and our brother – a no-win situation as we call it. What we correct in ourselves, we also see corrected in others.

2. Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. Sin would maintain it can. Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart from it? Sin would maintain you and your brother must be separate. But reason tells you that this must be wrong. If you and your brother are joined, how could it be that you have private thoughts? And how could thoughts that enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what is yours? If minds are joined, this is impossible.

Most of us by now have come to believe in the fact that minds are truly joined, that they are but One Mind. Sin in our ego world is like a super-glue that has us believing we are forever bound in this dark and dismal world. Spirit – reason – sees nothing binding us to the illusion and shows us how free we actually are. With but only One Mind, nothing is impossible.

3. No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without His Son. Only were Both in bodies could this be. Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet it is easy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was. Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently.

Does this appear that you could use 'love and fear' in place of 'madness and reason'? The Course is not difficult to grasp, It's simplicity is beyond words. Our resistance is only caused by the learning we have to believe in being replaced by the process of unlearning. If my mind and the Mind of God, and yours as well, are but One Mind, then any thought I hold within my mind is held in the Mind of God as well. But the big point to all of this is that God is Love and has but Love as Thought. Therefore if I believe I am holding a thought other than love in my mind, I must see that it is a falsehood, an illusion. Only madness and reason exist – which world do you see?

4. Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind, and takes its place. Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listen to it. But the insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of this. And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the body or yourself.

For me, madness but hides reason behind a veil of darkness. Reason can replace the madness at our request, as our choice. But when we continue to believe that the body is real, reason is not present for us. Reason will never see the body as real for the body is an illusion, and that is its truth. Reason sees nothing but truth.

5. The body does not separate you from your brother, and if you think it does you are insane. But madness has a purpose, and believes it also has the means to make its purpose real. To see the body as a barrier between what reason tells you must be joined must be insane. Nor could you see it, if you heard the voice of reason. What can there be that stands between what is continuous? And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters part be kept away from other parts? Reason would tell you this. But think what you must recognize, if it be so.

Our body does not separate us from our brother, only our mind does. The body is a symbol we see as separation, but only a symbol. Can you look upon another and not see them as a body? Can you go beyond the barrier of the body and see behind it's façade? What you shall see is a reflection of you. In the reflection you will come to understand a little that this is what Oneness is – being One with others.

6. If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. You tell him, by your choice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his Father forever, without a hope of safe return. You teach him this, and you will learn of him exactly what you taught. For you can teach him only that he is as you would have him, and what you choose he be is but your choice for you. Yet think not this is fearful. That you are joined to him is but a fact, not an interpretation. How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.

As you think of your brother, you think also of yourself. Remember this and think again if you are as you believe your brother to be. If you damn your brother, you are damned as well. If you turn your back on your brother, you turn you back on you also. This may not make sense to you, but look again – this is about the Oneness you both are. As one is seen, the other is as well. You are one with your brother – this is not a theory, but a fact. And yet this fact is what is often feared by most of us at one time or another. But within this one fact, lies our release from fear, and that of others as well.

7. Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. But neither can accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. You are responsible for how he sees himself. And reason tells you it is given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole. The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours. Reason is given you to understand that this is so. For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward the goal of truth. And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth. This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.

Early on, the Course tells us that we shall not leave this dream alone – that we need our brother as he needs us – and this is because of the Oneness we share with him. Oneness with another is difficult to comprehend because we have ego screaming out how insane we have become with such a thought. Yet such a thought will release us from this madness. Within the Oneness lies all answers to any problems we may believe we have. Reason is given us to grasp this concept – ask Spirit for guidance and you shall be given all that is required.

8. That you and your brother are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear. Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? In madness, yes. And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. Reason assures you Heaven is what you want, and all you want. Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings your reason into line with His. Be willing to let reason be the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. Hide not behind insanity in order to escape from reason. What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.

In that one and only thought of Oneness is the salvation of all us, a gift from God given to us by Spirit as reason. Allow all the madness of your world to be replaced with joy and happiness. Listen to Spirit as It whispers within you, assuring you that it is your Truth that you seek. Allow Sprit to lead you to where your Truth is waiting for you. Allow Spirit – allow reason – to light up your world of darkness where you shall see all brothers as One with you.

9. You are your brother's savior. He is yours. Reason speaks happily indeed of this. This gracious plan was given love by Love. And what Love plans is like Itself in this: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be. And being one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and gives still. Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give your brother, and learn with him what has been given both of you. To give is no more blessed than to receive. But neither is it less.

This is not the first time we have been told about being a savior to our brother and he to us. It is a message repeated several times until we can grasp the truth therein. This is given us by God as a plan of God. It is about our Oneness, our being united as a Whole, complete. And we have only to 'spend but an instant' in acceptance of this truth.

10. The Son of God is always blessed as one. And as his gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reason will tell you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. The gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your Father gives you for completing Him. And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what you must be. Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your Self?

We are blessed as One. And as my gratitude goes out to you who bless me, reason tells me I cannot stand separated from the blessing. The gratitude you offer me reminds me of the thanks God gives from completing Him. And here alone does reason tell me that I can truly understand what I must then be. God is as close to me as you are. And yet, what is there that could nearer to me than God?

11. The power you have over the Son of God is not a threat to his reality. It but attests to it. Where could his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free already? And who could bind him but himself, if he deny his freedom? God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. And it is by his own desire that he is freed. Such is his strength, and not his weakness. He is at his own mercy. And where he chooses to be merciful, there is he free. But where he chooses to condemn instead, there is he held a prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.

So which are you – prisoner waiting for release or one who is free? It is always about a choice we make.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section VII - The Last Unanswered Question

1. Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless? Being helpless is the cost of sin. Helplessness is sin's condition; the one requirement that it demands to be believed. Only the helpless could believe in it. Enormity has no appeal save to the little. And only those who first believe that they are little could see attraction there. Treachery to the Son of God is the defense of those who do not identify with him. And you are for him or against him; either you love him or attack him, protect his unity or see him shattered and slain by your attack.

And so, how do you answer these questions? Do you see misery in your world? Do you feel powerless over doing anything about it? Do you find yourself helpless as well? Do you feel small, tiny, or no importance? And the big question: are you for your brother or are you against him? And one brother is all brothers, and yourself as well. Are you for yourself or do you find you are against you?

2. No one believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who see themselves as helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. What can they be except his enemy? And what can they do but envy him his power, and by their envy make themselves afraid of it? These are the dark ones, silent and afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of the Son of God will strike them dead, and raising up their helplessness against him. They join the army of the powerless, to wage their war of vengeance, bitterness and spite on him, to make him one with them. Because they do not know that they are one with him, they know not whom they hate. They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack his brother or turn upon himself as to remember that they thought they had a common cause.

Do you believe in the power of God? Do you believe in the Son of God? Do you believe in you? You are the Son of God – you and all you see are the Son of God – the Oneness we speak of. You are not powerless, nor sinful, nor fearful. You do not fear God, for that would be fearing yourself, or do you fear yourself? The questions continued to flow until the answers are heard.

3. Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet they know not their "enemy," except they hate him. In hatred they have come together, but have not joined each other. For had they done so hatred would be impossible. The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the presence of strength. Those who are strong are never treacherous, because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their dream. How would an army act in dreams? Any way at all. It could be seen attacking anyone with anything. Dreams have no reason in them. A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant and a mouse roars like a lion. And love is turned to hate as easily. This is no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam.

Have you ever experienced a place in your life where you were told to hate someone or something, and later you began to question why did you hate them or that? Hatred is fear and is accomplished in the darkness of fear. As with most fears, we never even are told why we are to fear. Have you ever been in a group where suddenly you found yourself in a frenzy of fear and excitement at the same time, but not knowing why? Or you thought you knew, but then began to question yourself? Is this not often experienced in the world of mayhem we make and believe we see?

4. The army of the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons and it has no enemy. Yes, it can overrun the world and seek an enemy. But it can never find what is not there. Yes, it can dream it found an enemy, but this will shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never comes to rest in victory. And as it runs it turns against itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the great enemy who always eludes its murderous attack by turning into something else. How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes so it is impossible even to recognize him.

Does this paragraph remind you of any happenings in your world right now? Have you noticed that we seek an enemy so that we may do battle as we search for what we never find? And then ego will lead us to another battle once again, seeking what we shall never find?

5. Yet hate must have a target. There can be no faith in sin without an enemy. Who that believes in sin would dare believe he has no enemy? Could he admit that no one made him powerless? Reason would surely bid him seek no longer what is not there to find. Yet first he must be willing to perceive a world where it is not. It is not necessary that he understand how he can see it. Nor should he try. For if he focuses on what he cannot understand, he will but emphasize his helplessness, and let sin tell him that his enemy must be himself. But let him only ask himself these questions, which he must decide, to have it done for him:

Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me?

Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless?

Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin?

And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?

And what target could hate possibly choose but oneself? We are then our enemy. All of this insane thinking from our belief in sin. Can we admit to ourselves that no one made us feel powerless, only us? No one is our enemy, except us? Can we begin to comprehend that what we seek in darkness we shall never find?

And how do you answer the questions posed to you by the author? What do you desire? Do you truly want to see your Truth?

6. You may already have answered the first three questions, but not yet the last. For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. Yet reason would assure you they are all the same. We said this year would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. This final question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have lost for you. And this imagined difference attests to your belief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find. Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of finding sin, and not accepting power.

So don't feel bad if you did not answer all of the questions, here we see have not yet answered the last. We have not come to the place on our path where we are willing to let go of the fact that we have denied our Truth, that we have denied the very thing we seek. But reason tells us that all the questions are the same. Do you truly fear that your truth may indeed by your enemy that you have not yet found? This is the last remaining thread we hold onto, holding us from experiencing the Power we are.

7. Forget not that the choice of sin or truth, helplessness or power, is the choice of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power, and attack of helplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal. And whom you would have healed must be the one you chose to be protected from attack. And what is this decision but the choice whether to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be revealed to you through vision? How this decision leads to its effects is not your problem. But what you want to see must be your choice. This is a course in cause and not effect.

' **But what you want to see must be your choice.' No one else makes choices for us. We ask for and receive guidance from Spirit on the choices presented to us, but it is a matter always of our choosing. Do you choose helplessness, attack, and sickness? Or do you choose power, truth, healing? And which eyes do you want to use to see truth? Certainly not the eyes of a body that is not real?**

8. Consider carefully your answer to the last question you have left unanswered still. And let your reason tell you that it must be answered, and is answered in the other three. And then it will be clear to you that, as you look on the effects of sin in any form, all you need do is simply ask yourself:

Is this what I would see? Do I want this?

So is this what you would like to see? Is this what you want in truth?

9. This is your one decision; this the condition for what occurs. It is irrelevant to how it happens, but not to why. You have control of this. And if you choose to see a world without an enemy, in which you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given you.

Forget how this all happened, simply decide whether you want it to continue. This decision is within your power, you do have control over it. If you want your Truth, it shall be given you.

10. Why is the final question so important? Reason will tell you why. It is the same as are the other three, except in time. The others are decisions that can be made, and then unmade and made again. But truth is constant, and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. You can desire a world you rule that rules you not, and change your mind. You can desire to exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes and change what you desire.

So why is the final question of great importance? Ask Spirit and you shall be told. Look at the answer give to us – the first three response are decision that can be made again and again by us, and are...but the final one is about Truth, our Truth. It is impossible to change that which has forever been and will be. It is impossible to change what God has created. It is impossible to change God. So the last decision appears more difficult for us because we have to let go of an awful lot of beliefs – all fears.

11. In content all the questions are the same. For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world. Yet the last question adds the wish for constancy in your desire to see the real world, so the desire becomes the only one you have. By answering the final question "yes," you add sincerity to the decisions you have already made to all the rest. For only then have you renounced the option to change your mind again. When it is this you do not want, the rest are wholly answered.

So the questions are basically the same, but the answers change everything. If you answer 'no' to the last question, you stay in the world you make. If you answer 'yes' to that question, you are stating a sincere desire regarding the other decisions you have made. When you truly want this, it shall be so presented to you, but first you must truly want it. Sounds like a repeat of another phrase in the Course, right?

12. Why do you think you are unsure the others have been answered? Could it be necessary they be asked so often, if they had? Until the last decision has been made, the answer is both "yes" and "no." For you have answered "yes" without perceiving that "yes" must mean "not no." No one decides against his happiness, but he may do so if he does not see he does it. And if he sees his happiness as ever changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing, he does decide against it.

And how do you perceive your happiness? Is it everlasting or does it come and go with the breeze? If your happiness is not constant, look again not so much at the questions, but your answers.

13. Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning. Happiness must be constant, because it is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy cannot be perceived except through constant vision. And constant vision can be given only those who wish for constancy. The power of the Son of God's desire remains the proof that he is wrong who sees himself as helpless. Desire what you want, and you will look on it and think it real. No thought but has the power to release or kill. And none can leave the thinker's mind, or leave him unaffected.

Ego has us chasing after rainbows, but never allows us to find the end to one. We chase after happiness promised us by ego but never really experience it. When we get to a place where we think this is it, ego has continue on. Happiness is not know by ego, face it. We are but chasing our own tails. If you want happiness, accept your Truth – accept who and what you are and allow that is within you to become your way of living this dream.

Chapter 21

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Section VIII. - The Inner Shift

1. Are thoughts, then, dangerous? To bodies, yes! The thoughts that seem to kill are those that teach the thinker that he can be killed. And so he "dies" because of what he learned. He goes from life to death, the final proof he valued the inconstant more than constancy. Surely he thought he wanted happiness. Yet he did not desire it because it was the truth, and therefore must be constant.

Do you believe that you will die? Think carefully before answering that. Can you possibly believe in death if you also believe in Truth?

2. The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding. Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it although you understand it not. The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind. It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation. Sure in its vision as its Creator is in what He knows, happiness looks on everything and sees it is the same. It sees not the ephemeral, for it desires everything be like itself, and sees it so. Nothing has power to confound its constancy, because its own desire cannot be shaken. It comes as surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to the rest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal and not to judge.

As with Love, joy is not definable to us – it is but an experience of Truth, and Truth is not to be described but experienced. We all have said we have experience the Love of God – an experience that has hungry for more and yet we fail to dine when the meal has already been prepared. Nothing in the world we make, including fear, is ever constant; everything is always changing simply because ego does not know what it is seeking – seek and you shall not find is its motto. Love, Truth, joy and happiness are constant states of being – never changing. So to help you decide what you desire, do you want a constant experience of unconditional love or do you wish to continue on with chaos, confusion and mayhem?

3. Reason will tell you that you cannot ask for happiness inconstantly. For if what you desire you receive, and happiness is constant, then you need ask for it but once to have it always. And if you do not have it always, being what it is, you did not ask for it. For no one fails to ask for his desire of something he believes holds out some promise of the power of giving it. He may be wrong in what he asks, where, and of what. Yet he will ask because desire is a request, an asking for, and made by one whom God Himself will never fail to answer. God has already given all that he really wants. Yet what he is uncertain of, God cannot give. For he does not desire it while he remains uncertain, and God's giving must be incomplete unless it is received.

Reason – Spirit – tells us that we cannot continue to ask for happiness, for once asked it is given and is constant. If we continue to ask for it, then we have not perhaps recognized it when it was given us, or we were hesitant about receiving it and blocked its awareness to ourselves. What ever we believe we want at any time in this life, already exists within us. God has given us All That Is – God has given us God. But this is our Truth, which some of us fear to look at, and some of us will look at and have a difficult time in its acceptance.

4. You who complete God's Will and are His happiness, whose will is powerful as His, a power that is not lost in your illusions, think carefully why you have not yet decided how you would answer the final question. Your answer to the others has made it possible to help you be already partly sane. And yet it is the final one that really asks if you are willing to be wholly sane.

So it comes down to this – do you want to be sane or continue with the insanity you have believed in for so long? Do you know the difference? Do you want to look out into your world and see sickness, and death, or would you prefer to see happiness and joy, and the Oneness which is forever present?

5. What is the holy instant but God's appeal to you to recognize what He has given you? Here is the great appeal to reason; the awareness of what is always there to see, the happiness that could be always yours. Here is the constant peace you could experience forever. Here is what denial has denied revealed to you. For here the final question is already answered, and what you ask for given. Here is the future now, for time is powerless because of your desire for what will never change. For you have asked that nothing stand between the holiness of your relationship and your awareness of its holiness.

This is what we have been actually asking for: that nothing stand between the Oneness we are and our awareness of that Oneness. Are you ready for the answer to be shown to you?

Chapter 22

SALVATION AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Introduction

1. Take pity on yourself, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. No two can look on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place and time. Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different error, and one the other cannot understand. Brother, it is the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the same way. The holiness of your relationship forgives you and your brother, undoing the effects of what you both believed and saw. And with their going is the need for sin gone with them.

With others, with your brother, we no longer see sin in each other. Any two of us could not agree if we were to see sin together, for sin is matter of separation, of the individual we believe we are. Sin is strictly a perception and no two of us have the same perception. But all sin is really one sin – separation – made by us and forgiven by us. And in so doing, our brother is seen without sin as well.

2. Who has need for sin? Only the lonely and alone, who see their brothers different from themselves. It is this difference, seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but seen, seem justified. And all this would be real if sin were so. For an unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not. They come together, each to complete himself and rob the other. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers, unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a world apart.

Look at the first two lines carefully – who has need of sin? We do because we are those lonely and alone who see our brother as different from us and from themselves. That very difference makes our need for sin appeared justified. And it would be just that, if sin were real. Those differences are what unholy relationships – special relationships have in common, it is their bond. We each think we are different from others and that difference defends separation. In this type of relationship we come together only to drain the other, and then move on. We come together believing they have something for us, something we need and yet when we discover that nothing is there for us, we move on. And this frantic search takes us from relationship to relationship which could even bring us to the same room each day with them, and yet being in two different worlds it would appear.

3. A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. He sees no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body. Therefore, he looks on nothing he would take. He denies not his own reality because it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has Heaven's Holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven be?

This is not the first time we have heard of a holy relationship, one in which I need nothing from you to fulfill me, and nothing I have that will complete you. It is a whole – complete – relationship of Oneness. Differences are present but only in the form of a body. And within the holy relationship a knowing flows over both, a knowing that this relationship is as close to God as possible.

Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is belief in differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. And here is sight of differences transformed to vision. Reason now can lead you and your brother to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend, as you extended when you and he joined. It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body, to let you and your brother be joined. And now the sameness that you saw extends and finally removes all sense of differences, so that the sameness that lies beneath them all becomes apparent. Here is the golden circle where you recognize the Son of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can never end.

What can a holy relationship teach? Only that it is possible in our world of chaos that two or more separate bodies can exist as One with all others. It shall teach others that differences can be seen and laid aside. It will show that bodies are not what it is all about. And the Oneness of the holy relationship will extend to all who look upon it.

Chapter 22

SALVATION AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section I. - The Message of the Holy Relationship

1. Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your Creator have a different will. Yet if you are His Will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. You can indeed believe this, and you do. And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain.

Allow Spirit to lead you further, to show you the next step. If you believe you can attack whom God has heal and created, then you also believe that you have a will separate from God. Yet, in Truth, your will is God's Will, they are One and the same. So if you believe you can attack another, then you must also realize that this is not who you are, this is some other image. And deep within you, you know this is Truth. But where does that other feeling of attack and hate come from?

2. Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of you. But still this strange idea which it does accurately describe, you think is you. Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. To whom would seeing such as this send back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes that look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would understand. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But what it says you cannot understand. Yet you have listened to it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages.

And once again we are told very politely, that who we think we are up to this point of life, is not who we have always been, and yet we have believed in it. Reason – Spirit – tells us that world I see through eyes of a body that does not exist can make no sense to me, and yet I say it does. And the messages given back to you from that which you believe you see are as confusing as is the world you see.

3. You have not realized it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach you. You have received no messages at all you understand. For you have listened to what can never communicate at all. Think, then, what happens. Denying what you are, and firm in faith that you are something else, this "something else" that you have made to be yourself becomes your sight. Yet it must be the "something else" that sees, and as not you, explains its sight to you. Your vision would, of course, render this quite unnecessary. Yet if your eyes are closed and you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen, nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you it cannot be true because you do not understand it. God has no secrets. He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey's end, why He did this to you.

First person: I have not realized it is impossible for me to understand what fails entirely to reach me. I have received no messages that I can understand. This is because I have listened to ego – that which cannot communicate at all. And look what happens to me: I deny who I am, and firmly believe in who I am not, that being who I have made up to be me, and that is what I use as my vision. And even with my eyes open, they are closed, and I am asking my image to lead me on this journey. With gratitude, reason – Spirit – will gladly tell me that this is not true because I do not understand it. God has no secrets from me. It is clear from the start what God has in mine for me. I need not wait until the end to discover this.

4. What could be secret from God's Will? Yet you believe that you have secrets. What could your secrets be except another "will" that is your own, apart from His? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be hidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed! Let not your fear of sin protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love, and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness. Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to lead you through the world it made for you.

What could I possibly keep from God's Will? Absolutely nothing, and yet I go on with a belief that I can hide things from God – that I can hide thoughts for One Mind. Spirit tells us that nothing need be hidden from God, nor can anything be hidden from God. And be sure you read the line "Here is the one emotion that you made" several times. Fear is your making, not God's. Love is from God, fear is from you. Which one do you believe has the Power to change your mind forever? Fear leads us to seeing differences and darkness. We are blinded by fear, and yet we trust that it will lead us through this life.

5. Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what he thinks he is. And what your sight would show you, you will understand because it is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien. Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.

God did not short-change us at any time – what God gave is complete of itself. The sight given us, includes all that is necessary for us to understand what we must understand. We will have no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells us because it sees only Truth. And truth is all that we can see for nothing else exists. Truth needs no interpreter as Truth is known by us. Any interpretation is seen as being foreign to truth. Ego could never interpret truth unless it could acknowledge love.

6. Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this course alone is open to your understanding and can be understood. This is your language. You do not understand it yet only because your whole communication is like a baby's. The sounds a baby makes and what he hears are highly unreliable, meaning different things to him at different times. Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he sees are stable yet. But what he hears and does not understand will be his native tongue, through which he will communicate with those around him, and they with him. And the strange, shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his comforters, and he will recognize his home and see them there with him.

Now those of you who are fairly new to the Course can appreciate what is being told you here: the language of the Course is not complicated, it is new to you, as if you were a small child learning how to speak. For those of who have been through it several time, we know that we also have a way to go before we can speak clearly. But we are told that the Course is open to our understanding and this Course can be understood. So you see, it is about unlearning all that we have learned. It is about dropping everything and being open to Truth.

7. So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant is your vision returned to you, and he will speak the language you can understand. He is not nurtured by the "something else" you thought was you. He was not given there, nor was received by anything except yourself. For no two brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.

In a holy relationship, we are actually reborn from the death of the unholy one, and now in our infancy, we begin to crawl forward, knowing that a path is indeed beneath us. But even as an infant – a child of God – we have a vision beyond visions. We see now and speak now in a language we can understand. We no long have thoughts of who we thought we were – we now know exactly who we are. And as we look upon a brother, we see in them that which is within us – the vision of Christ – the light of Christ Consciousness.

8. Think what is given you, my holy brother. This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue. He will need no interpreter to you, for it was you who taught him what he knows because you knew it. He could not come to anyone but you, never to "something else." Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for never could He find a home in separate ones. Yet must He be reborn into His ancient home, so seeming new and yet as old as He, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of your relationship to let Him live.

Can you see a brother as one who shall teach you in a language not foreign to you? This same brother that perhaps, moments ago, you wished to attack and hate? And you are his as well. No interpreter is required where only one language is spoken – love. And within each is the resting place of the Christ Spirit – the Holy Spirit – making us know we are One.

9. Be certain God did not entrust His Son to the unworthy. Nothing but what is part of Him is worthy of being joined. Nor is it possible that anything not part of Him can join. Communication must have been restored to those who join, for this they could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one. Rather, in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self could be reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him; such he believed because it was the truth.

God did not make us to be unworthy of anything. Nothing of God is but worthy of being joined as One. And it is not possible that anything joined as One can not be of God. Once touched by a holy relationship, communication becomes easy and clear, vision is corrected. No fearful sights nor sounds are noted. In your brother and in you, you both saw what was clear to be seen – the Light within in the safety and peace of the Presence there.

10. Here is the first direct perception that you can make. You make it through awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that instant brought; the recognition that the "something else" you thought was you is an illusion. And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be. It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.

And so our first perception is that we see who we are in Truth and not who we thought we had been. And we see that truth came to us instantly once we acknowledge who we were not. And entering into a holy relationship with another gave us the language required and the sight needed to move forward in love. Now we see that what we made – fear – is a meaningless mass of nothing. Now where we had seen the dark shadows of fear, we see the Light from within.

11. Christ comes to what is like Himself; the same, not different. For He is always drawn unto Himself. What is as like Him as a holy relationship? And what draws you and your brother together draws Him to you. Here are His sweetness and His gentle innocence protected from attack. And here can He return in confidence, for faith in another is always faith in Him. You are indeed correct in looking on your brother as His chosen home, for here you will with Him and with His Father. This is your Father's Will for you, and yours with His. And who is drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as Both are drawn to every holy relationship, the home prepared for Them as earth is turned to Heaven.

The Christ Consciousness within each of us is the same for all of us. It is drawn to that Which It Is and become One with you and all others. And now looking at your brother – others – you no longer see a body different from others, but you see the Christ in them looking back into you.

Chapter 22

SALVATION AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP

Section II. - Your Brother's Sinlessness

1. The opposite of illusions is not disillusionment but truth. Only to the ego, to which truth is meaningless, do they appear to be the only alternatives, and different from each other. In truth they are the same. Both bring the same amount of misery, though each one seems to be the way to lose the misery the other brings. Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hides its nothingness. Yet by these dark and heavy garments are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth.

The opposite to this dream – these fears – these limitations is Truth – that which we have forever been and will eternally be. Ego places a lot of importance on illusions simply because illusions are carriers of fear, and fear is what ego does best.

2. Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers joy. What else but joy could be the opposite of misery? To leave one kind of misery and seek another is hardly an escape. To change illusions is to make no change. The search for joy in misery is senseless, for how could joy be found in misery? All that is possible in the dark world of misery is to select some aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the difference as joy. Yet to perceive a difference where none exists will surely fail to make a difference.

In truth there is joy; in us is joy. And note that joy is not to be found elsewhere – there are no alternatives listed by the author – in truth there is joy. But to look upon illusions – a veil of fear – and decide that we can see joy in the illusion is ridiculous. We can see the illusion differently but never see it as truth.

3. Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery in reason's eyes can be confused with joy. Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the eternal. Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but everything in time can change with time. Yet if the change be real and not imagined, illusions must give way to truth, and not to other dreams that are but equally unreal. This is no difference.

Remember that 'reason' is Spirit, who sees no joy in misery. Joy is truth; truth is joy. Look again what the world we make carries for us: guilt, suffering, sickness and death. Not a great menu by any stretch of the imagination. And the happiness we believe we have had has vanish almost as quickly as we had it – a sign that it was only fear made up as happiness. What the ego offers us is only temporary at best; what are our truth presents to us is eternal.

4. Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to recognize it and go the other way. Truth is the same and misery the same, but they are different from each other in every way, in every instance and without exception. To believe that one exception can exist is to confuse what is the same with what is different. One illusion cherished and defended against the truth makes all truth meaningless, and all illusions real. Such is the power of belief. It cannot compromise. And faith in innocence is faith in sin, if the belief excludes one living thing and holds it out, apart from its forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit guides us away from misery in as much as there is nothing there for us but fear. Misery is misery and truth is truth, and never can the two be confused; there just isn't any comparison possible. Look closely at the last couple of lines here. Again we are told that this is an all or nothing path – we either believe completely or not at all. We cannot have the best of both worlds, and why would we want to when one is but a dream.

5. Both reason and the ego will tell you this, but what they make of it is not the same. The ego will assure you now that it is impossible for you to see no guilt in anyone. And if this seeing is the only means by which escape from guilt can be attained, then the belief in sin must be eternal. Yet reason looks on this another way, for reason sees the source of an idea as what will make it either true or false. This must be so, if the idea is like its source. Therefore, says reason, if escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as His purpose, and by One to Whom nothing He wills can be impossible, the means for its attainment are more than possible. They must be there, and you must have them.

And so the two voices we hear will both be telling us pretty much the same thing. Ego tells us that everyone is guilty of sin, while Spirit tells us that no sin exists so no guilt is possible. And Spirit goes one step further and tells us where this idea is coming from and how to change it. We willing give to Spirit that which we do not understand with the belief that it is taken from us and we can then see as Spirit sees – no sin.

6. This is a crucial period in this course, for here the separation of you and the ego must be made complete. For if you have the means to let the Holy Spirit's purpose be accomplished, they can be used. And through their use will you gain faith in them. Yet to the ego this must be impossible, and no one undertakes to do what holds no hope of ever being done. You know what your Creator wills is possible, but what you made believes it is not so. Now must you choose between yourself and an illusion of yourself. Not both, but one. There is no point in trying to avoid this one decision. It must be made. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but reason tells you misery lies only on one side and joy upon the other.

First person:This is a crucial period in this course, for here the separation of me and ego must be complete. For if I have the means to let Spirit's purpose be accomplished, those means are to be used. And through their use I will gain faith in them. Yet to ego this must be impossible, and no one undertakes to do what holds no hope of even being done. I know what God wills is possible, but what I made believes it is not so. I now must choose between myself and the illusion I think is myself. Not both, only one. There is no point is trying to avoid this one decision. It must be made, and I shall make it. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but Spirit tells me misery lies only on one side and joy upon the other.

7. Forsake not now your brother. For you who are the same will not decide alone nor differently. Either you give each other life or death; either you are each other's savior or his judge, offering him sanctuary or condemnation. This course will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly true or wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed. And you will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery.

A truly powerful message here and one that is repeated several times in the Course: This world we chose to make is one of duality – one of an either/or situation, but never an opportunity to be on middle ground. There is no middle of the road in this Course. We must choose between Love and fear, between Truth and falsity.

8. There is no part of Heaven you can take and weave into illusions. Nor is there one illusion you can enter Heaven with. A savior cannot be a judge, nor mercy condemnation. And vision cannot damn, but only bless. Whose function is to save, will save. How He will do it is beyond your understanding, but when must be your choice. For time you made, and time you can command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made.

For those of us who at least once thought about leaving this dream with a token piece of illusion, this says it all – no way – cannot be done. Heaven in Truth and an illusion is false. Begin now to know your function, and begin now to apply that function to your daily life. And look again at the last line: I am no more a slave to time that I made, than I am to the world I also made. Say this and feel the power that this brings to you. You are not tied down to time and a world of illusions.

9. Let us look closer at the whole illusion that what you made has power to enslave its maker. This is the same belief that caused the separation. It is the meaningless idea that thoughts can leave the thinker's mind, be different from it and in opposition to it. If this were true, thoughts would not be the mind's extensions, but its enemies. And here we see again another form of the same fundamental illusion we have seen many times before. Only if it were possible the Son of God could leave his Father's Mind, make himself different and oppose His Will, would it be possible that the self he made, and all it made, should be his master.

Just reading the first line has me questioning all my beliefs: this illusion that I have made is enslaving me, the maker. How insane is that? This is the thought of separation; this is the meaningless idea that a thought of mine can actually leave my mind. Only if we could leave God would this even be possible. And we cannot leave that which we are One with.

10. Behold the great projection, but look on it with the decision that it must be healed, and not with fear. Nothing you made has any power over you unless you still would be apart from your Creator, and with a will opposed to His. For only if you would believe His Son could be His enemy does it seem possible that what you made is yours. You would condemn His joy to misery, and make Him different. And all the misery you made has been your own. Are you not glad to learn it is not true? Is it not welcome news to hear not one of the illusions that you made replaced the truth?

Ever know of anything that could be or was cured by fear? What we believe we project can correctly be seen by asking for assistance from Spirit. Nothing we make has any power over us, including the power that we believe it has – it is all an illusion. We can give no power to an illusion and change the illusion. It will forever be just an illusion. Not to be feared nor believed in, but simply acknowledged for what it is.

11. Only your thoughts have been impossible. Salvation cannot be. It is impossible to look upon your savior as your enemy and recognize him. Yet it is possible to recognize him for what he is, if God would have it so. What God has given to your holy relationship is there. For what He gave the Holy Spirit to give to you He gave. Would you not look upon the savior that has been given you? And would you not exchange, in gratitude, the function of an executioner you gave him for the one he has in truth? Receive of him what God has given him for you, not what you tried to give yourself.

How do you like being told that only your thoughts have been impossible? Sort of shows us just how foolish we have been believing in this illusion. We cannot look at a brother as an enemy and recognize him for what he is to us – a savior. Nor can a brother see in us that which we are to him as well. But we have at the next thought, the Holy Spirit who will have each of us seeing each other in the truth we are, and we shall be seen as the savior we seek.

12. Beyond the body that you interposed between you and your brother, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright, endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God Himself. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. How great the power that lies in it. Time waits upon its will, and earth will be as it would have it be. Here is no separate will, nor the desire that anything be separate. Its will has no exceptions, and what it wills is true. Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked and disappears. For at its center Christ has been reborn, to light His home with vision that overlooks the world. Would you not have this holy home be yours as well? No misery is here, but only joy.

We must look beyond the body, beyond the limiting framework that is before us, and we shall see the Light of Truth shining eternally extending in all directions and yet in an endless circle of beauty. This is the Light of Truth that we are. This is what we see when we look beyond the illusion we have come to believe in. Notice within that Light, there is no separation, in fact, there is but only Oneness visible. And that Light we see is within us as well, and in our brother as well. It is our identification mark we see in each other.

13. All you need do to dwell in quiet here with Christ is share His vision. Quickly and gladly is His vision given anyone who is but willing to see his brother sinless. And no one can remain beyond this willingness, if you would be released entirely from all effects of sin. Would you have partial forgiveness for yourself? Can you reach Heaven while a single sin still tempts you to remain in misery? Heaven is the home of perfect purity, and God created it for you. Look on your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead you there.

So you may think you know it all, even perhaps think you can get to Heaven alone, you don't need anyone else. But we do need others, and they are the brothers before us that we must see as the Light we are. In this sight we are both led to what we seek. We go within and dwell there in the stillness and silence of All That Is. But remember, there is no partial light to see, and a sometimes view of a brother – what is truth shall never change.

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Section III. - Reason and the Forms of Error

1. The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing, for reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to coexist in your awareness. For reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.

Recall that 'reason' is the Holy Spirit as you read this. Read this perhaps this way: The introduction of Spirit into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing, for Spirit and ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to coexist in my awareness. For Spirit's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious to me. I can see Spirit. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning for me. Vision is sense, quite literally. Vision is not the body's sight, it must be understood. For vision is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do Spirit and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.

2. The ego's whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego's opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego damn, and reason save.

My ego's existence depends on the belief that I cannot learn this course, that I cannot 'unlearn' all that I believe I have learned. Spirit assists me in seeing the error in my thinking and allows me to make the necessary corrections. Spirit's vision sees a difference between sin and a mistake, and corrects the mistake and sees no sin. Spirit's vision shows me that what I thought was 'etched in stone' is easily erased. Ego sees all as being as it is in fear, while Spirit sees all as being in love.

3. Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you. Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No one who looks on it without the help of reason would try to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily, because it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes.

Spirit is not salvation of Itself, but it shows me a way for peace and brings me to a state of mind in which I can receive salvation. Sin, according to ego, is a heavy block, a locked gate having no key, and placed before me on this path. Looking upon it as ego, I see no way beyond it. And yet, Spirit will show me how to see beyond it, for it is nothing. It is but a form of nothingness that I have come to believe in as ego.

4. Only the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not see if it is there or not. Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors and make them sins. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the rock on which its church is built, and where its worshippers are bound to bodies, believing the body's freedom is their own.

This is one of those paragraphs that contain so much. Ego sees no meaning to anything, for anything is nothing. Read once again the line about 'everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake' and then realize that you already know that mistakes are correctible. Sin, as seen by ego, is nothing more than a mistake in a special form it has devised to frighten us and keep us chained in guilt and shame. And read the last line a few times and just think of the thoughts you have as they flow through your mind. A very powerful message here.

5. Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. The body's eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived.

So if Spirit tells us that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake, what then is it that makes a mistake? Nothing more than a thought we hold, perhaps? The body's eyes (the body being form) sees only form. Our physical eyes see only what we project, but never beyond the projection. They see error, they see sin, and that is all. And everywhere the eyes appear to see, it sees but form.

6. These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's goal but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured.

Can you grasp that you are but blind in this dream you make? The physical eyes of a body we believe in shall never see other than what ego presents to us to be seen. Those eyes shall never go beyond what we think we see, shall never see through the illusion of nothingness.

7. Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. You can change form because it is not true. It could not be reality because it can be changed. Reason will tell you that if form is not reality it must be an illusion, and is not there to see. And if you see it you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must perceive illusions as the truth. Could it, then, recognize the truth?

Remember that mistakes are correctible. And mistakes, we are told, come in a variety of forms, all forms being illusions of fear, and all fears can be seen as love. If what we think we can see in this world we believe we make can be changed, then this world we make cannot be our true reality, for in reality nothing can be changed.

8. Let not the form of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see. Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body, which you believe can sin? Beyond his errors is his holiness and your salvation. You gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him to save yourself. And yet, his holiness is your forgiveness. Can you be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness is your salvation?

Don't let the various forms of mistakes you believe your brother has made, keep you from the holiness (wholeness) you both are. Don't allow the vision of his holiness be kept from you because of the physical eyes of your body, which is not real. Become aware of the truth of your brother and see beyond the sins and errors you once saw. And beyond those forms of illusion is your truth and his truth as well. And together as you forgive him, he forgives you, and you are then the One you have forever been.

9. A holy relationship, however newly born, must value holiness above all else. Unholy values will produce confusion, and in awareness. In an unholy relationship, each one is valued because he seems to justify the other's sin. Each sees within the other what impels him to sin against his will. And thus he lays his sins upon the other, and is attracted to him to perpetuate his sins. And so it must become impossible for each to see himself as causing sin by his desire to have sin real. Yet reason sees a holy relationship as what it is; a common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily be healed as one.

A holy (whole) relationship is one of no confusion, of seeing no sin nor error in each other. Each sees the other as the innocence they are in truth. Each sees each bare of any illusions of guilt and sin. And in this holy of holy relationships, Spirit takes any error that comes up and corrects it so that each may heal.

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Section IV. - The Branching of the Road

1. When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now. The way you came no longer matters. It can no longer serve. No one who reaches this far can make the wrong decision, although he can delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go.

And so we are where we must choose – to go nowhere or to the path of your Truth. Recall how many times in the Course, we are told about an either/or situation, but never a middle of the road alternative. And look what is being told to us here: we cannot make the wrong decision, but we can delay that decision. How long we delay is a choice for us as well. But this is where we are; this is how far we have come on this spiritual journey we began long ago. This is the point of no return for us. We are told that the way we came no longer matters – there is no turning back. What happen along that path no longer matters; we are to let go of it all. So here we stand and a decision is to be made – a thought is to be thought and held.

2. It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is decided. There will be nothing you will not be told, if you acknowledge this.

Remember in the first paragraph, there is no other decision to make other than to go ahead or to delay going ahead. When you make the decision, the path may appear difficult but you will also know that you are not alone on it. You are leaving behind all that you believed you were and are moving ahead knowing all that you are in Truth. Ego will try to get you back, but there is no turning back remember. Ego may have you believing you can, but you know you cannot. You have come this far because you have chosen each step along your way. And you have chosen each step with the guidance of Spirit. Acknowledge this – accept this as your truth – and nothing will be hidden from you – your Truth shall be shown to you.

3. And so you and your brother stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. Let it be lifted! Raise it together with your brother, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either you or your brother alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it is almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here, before the veil. Think what will happen after. The Love of Christ will light your face, and shine from it into a darkened world that needs the light. And from this holy place He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will become His messenger, returning Him unto Himself.

And so here you stand with your brother, at the crossroads of your path; one going nowhere and the other going to Truth. And before you both is this veil of sin, this shroud of fear, hanging in your way. One of you cannot lift it alone, but together it will be lifted as if it were not there. Once lifted, the Light that is ever present will be seen by both of you and a glow of Love shall be visible. And this place you both stand is now a holy place, a place of Truth. And you both shall then Light up your worlds for others to see, becoming the One you are.

4. Think of the loveliness that you will see, who walk with Him! And think how beautiful will you and your brother look to the other! How happy you will be to be together, after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone. The gates of Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful. And none who looks upon the Christ in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight you saw beyond the veil, which you will bring to light the tired eyes of those as weary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come among them, offering Christ's forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin.

Think of the beauty that you each shall see in the other, as you move ahead as One. You shall walk through the gates of Heaven together and the journey of loneliness shall be over, the illusion shattered and no more visible. And all who see you shall see the Christ Spirit within shining to them. And the sight of Love will be seen by all.

5. Every mistake you and your brother make, the other will gently have corrected for you. For in his sight your loveliness is his salvation, which he would protect from harm. And you will be your brother's strong protector from everything that seems to rise between you both. So shall you walk the world with me, whose message has not yet been given everyone. For you are here to let it be received. God's offer still is open, yet it waits acceptance. From you who have accepted it is it received. Into your hand, joined with your brother's, is it safely given, for you who share it have become its willing guardian and protector.

We are told a very important reminder here – you and your brother will continue to make mistakes, but you shall each correct them in each other. You shall each see each other only in the truth you are. And together we shall walk this earth, this world, this dream, and share Love with others for not everyone of us has yet made the decision of the crossroads. Accept the offer of God and get on with the task at hand.

6. To all who share the Love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted that seemed to rise and block their way before. This veil you and your brother lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and release from suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him.

And to all of us who share the Love of God – our Truth – ours is given so that we may share. We know by now on this path that what we give we never have less of, in our giving is also our receiving. As we raise that veil of illusion that appears to separate each of us from the other, we allow the Truth to be seen by others. It is as if a dam has been broken and the flow of Love is rushing forth to fill our world.

7. How easy is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No one who has received it for himself could find it difficult. For by receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to receive together and give as you received. Standing before the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your hand, joined with your brother's, and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and your brother, and the holy Self you share together.

And yes, it is all too easy to extend Love, it is our nature to do so. While we may have resisted it at first, once received, we can only but want to give. In Love, in Truth, we see no veil before us, no shroud to pull down or life up, for nothing stands before that which we are in Truth.

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Section V. - Weakness and Defensiveness

1. How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger, nor by opposing them in any way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they contradict reality. They go against what must be true. The opposition comes from them, and not reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is needs no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense because of weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of truth when only weakness interferes? You are the strong one in this seeming conflict. And you need no defense. Everything that needs defense you do not want, for anything that needs defense will weaken you.

So how do we overcome the illusions we have believed in? The only way is by allowing Spirit to show us that they are not our reality, they are not our Truth and therefore they must be false. Any opposition to illusions come from the illusions and the power we believe we have given them. What is real needs no defense and offers none. What is real exists. See how difficult we make it for ourselves when we believe something is before us that we cannot go beyond, and yet what is before us is nothing? There is nothing we must be defensive about for truth needs no defense and we are truth. Defense is only of an illusion, and an illusion is but nothing.

2. Consider what the ego wants defenses for. Always to justify what goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason and makes no sense. Can this be justified? What can this be except an invitation to insanity, to save you from the truth? And what would you be saved from but what you fear? Belief in sin needs great defense, and at enormous cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against and sacrificed. For sin is carved into a block out of your peace, and laid between you and its return.

Do consider what ego wants defenses for and also consider that only as ego, are defense required. There is no sanity in that! Ego raises all sorts of defense against our Truth, and yet our Truth is forever who we are. It is like hitting your head against a brick wall – no possible outcome except a bump on the head.

3. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is still whole, and nothing has been taken from it. See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing. In truth you and your brother stand together, with nothing in between. God holds your hands, and what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your Father Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions. Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all uncertainty is doubt about yourself.

So if we see peace as being fragmented – in pieces – then we must not be seeing peace. Peace is peace and will forever be peace. It is not something to be divided up and spread around in pieces, but it is to be shared in the wholeness it is. If we see peace as fragmented, we know we are dreaming. What we are shall never change. What God is shall never change. God and we are One. Peace is of God, Love is of God. What is of God shall never change. Knowing this, each time we see what appears as a fragment of a gift of God, has to be an illusion of ego offering instead. There is no doubt about who we are. There is no doubt about God.

4. How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless. How insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom love has joined! This is your "enemy,"–a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will succeed? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one? Which is the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse or everything that God created? You and your brother are not joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse betray whom God has joined?

If this sound absurd, it is meant to be read that way. And yet, as the ego we all too often believe we are, this absurdity becomes our reality within the dream we call our world. We believe that what God has made can be separated from God. We believe in the absurdity of sin, of fear, of guilt, shame, and all the rest of ego's offerings to us in place of our Truth. How ridiculous it is for us to even consider a handful of nothing as offered by ego, for the knowing of everything that we already are in Truth.

5. If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union with your brother! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet within you is a Force that no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended from what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?

What is it that truly stands between you and your brother? Nothing more than a thought you do not wish to hold in your mind. Look upon your brother and know that you can see beyond the body before you. You can see beyond the form of illusion you believe you see. And what you see therein is what is within you as well. Seeing yourself in your brother is seeing the Oneness you seek.

6. Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak because you are alone. This is the cost of all illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not seem to stand, heavy and solid and immovable, between you and your brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly, and so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you thought it was, that it is nothing. If you forgive your brother, this must happen. For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you and your brother that makes it look impenetrable, and defends the illusion of its immovability.

If ever we feel a need to be defensive, a need to defend our words or our position perhaps, any need in which we feel defensives, we shall know instantly that we believe in the world we make and the body we think we are. And the cost of all illusions to us is the feeling of being all alone in this fearful world, of being lost in a maze of hopelessness. And yet we are beginning to unlearn all that we have learned about illusions, and begin slowly to see them for what they are, a nothing from nothing. Illusions can be walked through; they can be made to vanish before our eyes, if we forgive our brother for what he believes he has done, and we forgive ourselves as well. And it takes but the 'little willingness' from us – that phrase that continues to appear before us in a myriad of ways – but always the same – we are to show but a little willingness. When will we do what we are to do?

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Section VI. - The Light of the Holy Relationship

1. Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. Yet he will seek for it where he believes it is and can be found. He will believe it possible of mind or body, and he will make the other serve his choice as means to find it.

Once again the Course asks us the big question: either/or, but not both ways. Do we want freedom of the body or of the mind? Which we do give more value to, the body or the mind? The body is see as an end for it shall cease to be, but the mind is a means to see beyond the body. We constantly seek for freedom, constantly search for what we feel like we have abandoned, lost, and yet we do not know where to find them. We believe if we focus all of our thoughts on the body, it will last for a long time, but not forever. If we focus all of attention on the thoughts we hold in our mind, we simply come to the understanding that we are forever.

2. Where freedom of the body has been chosen, the mind is used as means whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body's freedom. Yet freedom of the body has no meaning, and so the mind is dedicated to serve illusions. This is a situation so contradictory and so impossible that anyone who chooses this has no idea of what is valuable. Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot be described, the Holy Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the outcome as He is sure of His Creator's Love. He knows this mad decision was made by one as dear to His Creator as love is to itself.

For all us at one time or the present time, we have chosen to be free of the body, and yet being free of an illusion has no meaning. In all this madness that we enter, Spirit patiently waits for us to tire of what is hopeless.

3. Be not disturbed at all to think how He can change the role of means and end so easily in what God loves, and would have free forever. But be you rather grateful that you can be the means to serve His end. This is the only service that leads to freedom. To serve this end the body must be perceived as sinless, because the goal is sinlessness. The lack of contradiction makes the soft transition from means to end as easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before forgiving eyes. You will be sanctified by your brother, using your body only to serve the sinless. And it will be impossible for you to hate what serves whom you would heal.

Can you see this body as sinless and can you see your brother the same way? Can you give up all the notions you have about the body, and try to see beyond it? Sin is an illusion within the illusion we have come to believe in. Sin does not exist in our reality. How will you see you and your brother, in truth or in illusion?

4. This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yours not at all. Nothing entrusted to it can be misused, and nothing given it but will be used. This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Neither you nor your brother alone can serve at all. Only in your joint will does healing lie. For here your healing is, and here will you accept Atonement. And in your healing is the Sonship healed because your will and your brother's are joined.

Read this paragraph carefully for in it is the solution to healing of all illusions we believe in. In the holy relationship of seeing our brother and ourselves as the One we seek, lies all healing of all pain, regardless of its form of illusion it appears in. You want healing of the body that you believe you are experiencing pain, then start seeing your brother as you have never before seen him. But see all brothers the same. Leave not one brother out or the pain of the illusion continues. Here is the healing we seek, and our brother as well. Neither of us can have it alone, but together in this holy relationship – this relationship of being whole – we can share that healing. Where we are joined as One, healing takes place.

5. Before a holy relationship there is no sin. The form of error is no longer seen, and reason, joined with love, looks quietly on all confusion, observing merely, "This was a mistake." And then the same Atonement you accepted in your relationship corrects the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. How blessed are you who let this gift be given! Each part of Heaven that you bring is given you. And every empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the eternal light you bring, shines now on you. The means of sinlessness can know no fear because they carry only love with them.

Once entered into a holy relationship, sin no longer will be seen. That particular form of error is gone, and Spirit, sees nothing but our confusion. And Spirit tells us ever so gently that what we thought was sin was but a mistake, and a mistake is correctible. And Spirit does that correction for us. In that correction we shall see the sinlessness in each other, the innocence we are.

6. Child of peace, the light has come to you. The light you bring you do not recognize, and yet you will remember. Who can deny himself the vision that he brings to others? And who would fail to recognize a gift he let be laid in Heaven through himself? The gentle service that you give the Holy Spirit is service to yourself. You who are now His means must love all that He loves. And what you bring is your remembrance of everything that is eternal. No trace of anything in time can long remain in a mind that serves the timeless. And no illusion can disturb the peace of a relationship that has become the means of peace.

I truly enjoy being called 'child of peace'. My brother has come before me as the light I have failed to see within me. And from his light, shall my own shine, and what I thought I did not know, I shall begin to remember. And I begin to feel within me Spirit working through me to others. This is my purpose now – to share with others what I have been given. And what I begin to remember shoves time aside as the illusion it is. Time has no place in the eternity that is mine. I now know what sinless means, and what timeless means.

7. When you have looked upon your brother with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you cannot overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it? And what illusion could there be you will not recognize as a mistake; a shadow through which you walk completely undismayed? God would let nothing interfere with those whose wills are His, and they will recognize their wills are His, because they serve His Will. And serve it willingly. And could remembrance of what they are be long delayed?

When entered into a holy relationship, no error is overlooked that is not corrected. Nothing prevents us from seeing beyond the form we believed in. And no illusion could exist that we both do not see beyond. Once entered the holy relationship, our will is God's Will, we recognize it as such, and willingly give in to It.

8. You will see your value through your brother's eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place of the attacker who he thought was there. Through this releasing is the world released. This is your part in bringing peace. For you have asked what is your function here, and have been answered. Seek not to change it, nor to substitute another goal. This one was given you, and only this. Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with gifts you give your brother, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him. He will bestow them where they are received and welcomed. He will use every one of them for peace. Nor will one little smile or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone.

I have asked many times what is my function and many times I have been answered, and here once again is my answer. Perhaps I should no longer ask but rather listened to what I am to do. I need do no more than see my brother, all brothers, as the One we are – as the sameness we all are. This is all that is required of me. Nothing more, and yet how many times have I attempted to change it, to substitute my way instead? Only this is given me, not the ones I thought were correct. This is given to me by Spirit, and it requires no correction from me. I accept it and willingly offer it to all I look upon, and Spirit will do all the rest for me.

9. What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your Father loves with charity? Extension of forgiveness is the Holy Spirit's function. Leave this to Him. Let your concern be only that you give to Him that which can be extended. Save no dark secrets that He cannot use, but offer Him the tiny gifts He can extend forever. He will take each one and make of it a potent force for peace. He will withhold no blessing from it, nor limit it in any way. He will join to it all the power that God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to your brother lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness; look away from it and toward your brother. And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each quiet smile of faith and confidence with which you bless your brother.

Extension of forgiveness is NOT our function; it is of Spirit to do. What we must do is to offer to Spirit any and all thoughts we hold of our brother which are not thoughts of love. We offer these thoughts of fear and allow them to be shown in love to us. And our brother shall be seen by us in a Light of the World – in a light within each of us. No need for fear of darkness, for shall be present in the Light.

10. On your learning depends the welfare of the world. And it is only arrogance that would deny the power of your will. Think you the Will of God is powerless? Is this humility? You do not see what this belief has done. You see yourself as vulnerable, frail and easily destroyed, and at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. Let us look straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavy anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, immovable and solid as a rock. While this remains, so will it seem to be.

Have we, even for a brief moment, considered that the Will of God could be powerless? What is it that begins our recovery so often in this dream? It is the statement that we are powerless over something – anything – everything. We are but not the Will of God. This body we have given a label to is not the Will of God. We are powerless and that is the first step in our remembering. We are not the vulnerable, frail and easily destroyed form we believe we were; we are a child of God lost in a dream of illusions, or so it appears most often.

11. Who can attack the Son of God and not attack his Father? How can God's Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed unless his Father is? You do not see that every sin and every condemnation that you perceive and justify is an attack upon your Father. And that is why it has not happened, nor could be real. You do not see that this is your attempt because you think the Father and the Son are separate. And you must think that They are separate, because of fear. For it seems safer to attack another or yourself than to attack the great Creator of the universe, Whose power you know.

If we wish to say that we are created in the image and likeness of God, then can we possibly say that our brother is not? Can we truly believe one of us is and the other is not? If we go against a brother, we are going against God. If we call another a name of hate, we are calling God that same name. And what we call a brother, we call ourselves as well. And yet none of us would knowingly attempt to attack God, and yet we do it everyday.

12. If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. The only way it could be justified is if you and your brother were separate from the other, and all were separate from your Creator. For only then would it be possible to attack a part of the creation without the whole, the Son without the Father; and to attack another without yourself, or hurt yourself without the other feeling pain. And this belief you want. Yet wherein lies its value, except in the desire to attack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. It is impossible. And this is so because the universe is one. You would not choose attack on its reality if it were not essential to attack to see it separated from its maker. And thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful.

The first line says it all: if we are One with God – most of the time we are not! But we could just as easily experience that if we but let go of the feelings we have towards our brother. We are not separate as we both believe we are, as we both appear to be. We are not two different forms of many shapes and sizes, colors and religions. That is the illusion, the dream. Beyond the dream, beyond the illusion is where we must look to see our truth. Beyond the dream we are but One with God. No difference is seen for as God is, we are.

13. Only the different can attack. So you conclude because you can attack, you and your brother must be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. Because you and your brother are not different, you cannot attack. Either position is a logical conclusion. Either could be maintained, but never both. The only question to be answered in order to decide which must be true is whether you and your brother are different. From the position of what you understand you seem to be, and therefore can attack. Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that you have other experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what is natural and true.

So it all comes down to this: either we and our brother are different, or we are One and the same. But once again the Course reminds us that we can never be both, we must choose. If we attack each other, we are different. That seems simple enough for most of us. But remember the attack is in the mind – a thought we hold of a brother which is not a thought of love is a thought of attack. And remember, if we appear this way, we also believe we can attack God. So a choice is to be made: we are either One or we are different.

14. This is the function of your holy relationship. For what one thinks, the other will experience with him. What can this mean except your mind and your brother's are one? Look not with fear upon this happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For when you have accepted it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds there is no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. Joy is unlimited, because each shining thought of love extends its being and creates more of itself. There is no difference anywhere in it, for every thought is like itself.

For those of us who believe we are in holy relationships right now, remember this: what one of us thinks, the other shall also experience. This is a great example of being of one mind. If you think of joy and happiness, the other will share that with you. If you think for less than love, the other will also share that with you. Loving minds cannot be separate.

15. The light that joins you and your brother shines throughout the universe, and because it joins you and him, so it makes you and him one with your Creator. And in Him is all creation joined. Would you regret you cannot fear alone, when your relationship can also teach the power of love is there, which makes all fear impossible? Do not attempt to keep a little of the ego with this gift. For it was given you to be used, and not obscured. What teaches you that you cannot separate denies the ego. Let truth decide if you and your brother be different or the same, and teach you which is true.

Remember as you read this, this Course is about either/or. We cannot keep a piece of the ego and be in a holy relationship. Release that which you have thought you had been for the acceptance of that which you have forever been and see your brother as One with you. But there is no other way.
Chapter 23

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Introduction

1. Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is weakness. The show of strength attack would use to cover frailty conceals it not, for how can the unreal be hidden? No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he 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 God's "enemy." And God is feared as an opposing will.

Remember in the very beginning of the Course how we learned that only love and fear exists, and only love is real, therefore fear is false. Here is the same message with different words – strength and weakness. We have to have this message in as many different forms as we can get so that it does penetrate into our mind replacing thoughts of fear. Who we think we attack is no one but ourselves. Who we think is an enemy is none other than ourselves.

2. How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself! You will believe that everything you use for sin can hurt you and become your enemy. And you will fight against it, and try to weaken it because of this; and you will think that you succeeded, and attack again. It is as certain you will fear what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you perceive as sinless. He 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.

When you are told that you are waging a war against yourself, you have to laugh at the sound of it. How insane indeed is a thought that we wage a war against no one but ourselves. We attack ourselves, fear ourselves, weaken ourselves, even try to slay ourselves, all in the honor and glory of waging a war within our mind. But this is all insane gibberish – this is not who we are in truth, and truth shall never, ever change. God will never change from being God. In our truth, we walk through this world we make, and we see therein, reflections of the Christ Spirit in everyone – no one can be left out or they all are left out.

3. Walk you in glory, with your head held high, and fear no evil. The innocent are safe because they share their innocence. Nothing they see is harmful, for their awareness of the truth releases everything from the illusion of harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining in their innocence, released from sin and fear and happily returned to love. They share the strength of love because they looked on innocence. And every error disappeared because they saw it not. Who looks for glory finds it where it is. Where could it be but in the innocent?

We all know the song about walking through a storm with our head held high – the storm is fear from a single thought we hold in our powerful mind. We walk through this or any fear knowing that it is but a thought – a nothing we have projected from our mind. And those that we thought we feared are now seen in the love they are, and we are as they are as well. This is the view of innocence, the view of being sinless.

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

Don't allow those temptations of thoughts you hold, slow you down on your path of truth. You are an innocent child of God and you shall forever be just that. You hold no sin within you nor could such a thing be a part of you. Guilt and shame are offerings of fear, and you know nothing of fear – it is but an illusion. You know within you that you are on the right path, that you are in your right and perfect place, and that you can and will continue to move along your spiritual path of truth.

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

It is not that we are large, that we do not consider ourselves little. It is simply that there is no description to give to Truth – to God. There exists no duality in our Reality. We are beyond being measured or being timed, we are indeed eternal beings in a dream of fear. But dreams are not real so there is nothing here to frightened us.

6. 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 reinterpreted 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.

Nothing exists which is not you, nothing. An illusion does not exist, so an illusion is not your truth. You are not this body, this label, this story. You are as you shall forever be in Truth. What exists is beauty, a beauty beyond all words known to any man. Some have tried to describe what Truth must be like, but all have failed. Within each of us lies hidden from us, truth as it has forever been. We go there at times, and we sit in the silence and solitude of the Presence of all presence. But we fail to even begin to describe the experience that takes place there. It is not of this dream.

Chapter 23

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Section I. - The Irreconcilable Beliefs

1. The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.

So when does the memory of God – the memory of who you are in truth – come to you, other than when you quiet the mind? Never – no place. The mind appears to be all that is in this dream – everything else being an illusion from the mind. Do you ever shut the mind off – shut it down? Can you do it? Can it be done? Not according to most scholars. The mind is continuous, the thoughts coming from we know not. But we can quiet the mind – slow it down a bit, and even focus on but one thought. And all the time, ego is present protested loudly at our intentions.

2. Do you not realize a war against yourself would be a war on God? Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death. Is this a victory? The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness, and will seem to have replaced love there. This is the conflict's purpose. And to those who think that it is possible, the means seem real.

It is difficult for us to imagine that we are at war with ourselves, when we believe what we think we see in the world we make, but this is what we are being told, and slowly it is beginning to make sense – to be seen as correct. Knowing what you know right now, would you even consider a war against God? Who would you place your money on to win? Joking of course, but we do wage wars against God constantly, and most of them unknowingly. There may have been times in your life where you told God to buzz off, you could do it better – you didn't need God for what you had to do. Remember those times, and how you felt afterwards. And then remember the surrender later when you no longer could continue on the way you were living – you quit the race, and were ready for the path?

3. Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will ever meet. You seem to meet, and make your strange alliances on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is yours. You meet at a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet illusions cannot join. They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself.

Is there any chance that ego and God could meet or would meet? If God is All There Is and there appears no question about that, then what could God possibly meet that God wasn't already, and an illusion He is not. Can you meet your ego – yourself? Ever tried the conversation in the mirror, especially the one where you simply stare at your reflection for a long period of time allowing all the thoughts you have about what you see flow through your mind. Then you slowly begin to speak to your reflection, telling it that you love it – that you love it just the way it is. You tell it that you love without conditions – as God loves you. Loving without conditions means you let go of all the pain, guilt, shame, hatred, etc., you are holding about yourself and allow it to be taken from you. Tell yourself that you accept you as you are in the mirror, but know that what you see is not who you are. Then tell the reflection who you really are.

4. Brother, the war against yourself is almost over. The journey's end is at the place of peace. Would you not now accept the peace offered you here? This "enemy" you fought as an intruder on your peace is here transformed, before your sight, into the giver of your peace. Your "enemy" was God Himself, to Whom all conflict, triumph and attack of any kind are all unknown. He loves you perfectly, completely and eternally. The Son of God at war with his Creator is a condition as ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in anger, proclaiming it is part of itself no more. Could nature possibly establish this, and make it true? Nor is it up to you to say what shall be part of you and what is kept apart.

Good news to read – the war against ourselves is almost over. What must we do to hasten its ending? Could it be that we must accept our brother as he is, and not judge him as we see ourselves? Could it be that we must accept all brothers who ever they appear to be and wherever they appear to be, as all being in their right and perfect places, just as we are? Could it be that we are to see the Christ reflection in each person we look upon, starting with ourselves? Did you see the Christ reflection in the mirror exercise suggested above? If not, go back to the mirror and look again, and this time when you tell your reflection that you love it unconditionally, allow the image before you to reveal to you that which you are. And if you feel like crying in joy, please do so.

5. The war against yourself was undertaken to teach the Son of God that he is not himself, and not his Father's Son. For this, the memory of his Father must be forgotten. It is forgotten in the body's life, and if you think you are a body, you will believe you have forgotten it. Yet truth can never be forgotten by itself, and you have not forgotten what you are. Only a strange illusion of yourself, a wish to triumph over what you are, remembers not.

One of the main concepts taught in the Course has to do with our belief in the body we think we are. Many times throughout the Course, the point is brought up for us to grasp once more. As long as we continue to believe we are this body, that is how long our war with God will continue. The war will not end in a victory or a truce, it will end in our Truth – we are not this body. And something within us is stronger than any thing we can believe in this illusion. Something is constantly reminding us that who we think we are, we are not.

6. The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them different from each other, in the belief the one that conquers will be true. There is no conflict between them and the truth. Nor are they different from each other. Both are not true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is insane, and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality, and has no influence upon it. Illusions cannot triumph over truth, nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality that they deny is not a part of them.

Who I do war with other than myself? And who could possibly win, me or myself? Conflict is within the ego mind, truth is within Spirit mind. Truth sees no conflict for no conflict exists, only love.

7. What you remember is a part of you. For you must be as God created you. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. You will remember what you know when you have learned you cannot be in conflict. One illusion about yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where nothing happens. There is no victor and there is no victory. And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God.

We recall from a past that never was, but we remember from that which we are. A knowing deep within us constantly reminds us of our Source – that we never separated from that Source – that what we believe is before us is nothing more than an illusion which happened in an instant, and we added time to the illusion so we could stretch it out. We seek not to be a victor nor win a victory, for neither is truth. We are as we shall forever be, as we have forever been.

8. Conflict must be between two forces. It cannot exist between one power and nothingness. There is nothing you could attack that is not part of you. And by attacking it you make two illusions of yourself, in conflict with each other. And this occurs whenever you look on anything that God created with anything but love. Conflict is fearful, for it is the birth of fear. Yet what is born of nothing cannot win reality through battle. Why would you fill your world with conflicts with yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you, and turn in peace to the remembrance of God, still shining in your quiet mind.

And once again we are reminded that the thought of conflict is so very foreign to us; that conflict is nothing more than the illusion we believe in. We are having conflict with ourselves, and that is insanity at its best. Conflict is fear, fear is conflict, neither is love so therefore they are illusions – not real. We surrender this madness we have made and gladly accept the peace offered us.

9. See how the conflict of illusions disappears when it is brought to truth! For it seems real only as long as it is seen as war between conflicting truths; the conqueror to be the truer, the more real, and the vanquisher of the illusion that was less real, made an illusion by defeat. Thus, conflict is the choice between illusions, one to be crowned as real, the other vanquished and despised. Here will the Father never be remembered. Yet no illusion can invade His home and drive Him out of what He loves forever. And what He loves must be forever quiet and at peace because it is His home.

And in our surrender we see how quickly the conflict vanishes, how quickly our view is changed. Such is a miracle for us – a change of thought. This is more powerful than any war we could imagine, barring none. No force is greater than a thought we hold of love. And always it is about choice – the choice we must constantly make as to whether we wish to continue to see the illusion and all its fears, or shall we choose to see beyond the illusion to the Truth waiting for us.

10. You who are beloved of Him are no illusion, being as true and holy as Himself. The stillness of your certainty of Him and of yourself is home to Both of You, Who dwell as One and not apart. Open the door of His most holy home, and let forgiveness sweep away all trace of the belief in sin that keeps God homeless and His Son with Him. You are not a stranger in the house of God. Welcome your brother to the home where God has set him in serenity and peace, and dwells with him. Illusions have no place where love abides, protecting you from everything that is not true. You dwell in peace as limitless as its Creator, and everything is given those who would remember Him. Over His home the Holy Spirit watches, sure that its peace can never be disturbed.

We who are the Beloved of God are no illusion, being true and holy as God is. As God is, we are. There will never exist another choice for us, for the Truth is forever the Truth. We are that Truth. Sit in the silence and be there in the Presence of that Which is a part of you, a part and yet the whole. See your brother as never before seen – as a reflection of the Christ Spirit within yourself shining back to you. Illusions are not real and can not be seen in the State of Love – the State of your Truth.

11. How can the resting place of God turn on itself, and seek to overcome the One Who dwells there? And think what happens when the house of God perceives itself divided. The altar disappears, the light grows dim, the temple of the Holy One becomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered except illusions. Illusions can conflict, because their forms are different. And they do battle only to establish which form is true.

Nothing exists to ever change God from being God. All that exists is God, and nothing exists which is not God. Does anything exist in your world, and if you believe it does, do you also believe God made it? The first test would be to ask if the thing is eternal, or will someday vanish from the illusion. What God has created is immortal, eternal and True. Is there anything is your illusion which can claim this?

12. Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusions' battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.

Look carefully at your world and see what happens when an illusion comes up against another illusion – conflict – war – pain – suffering. When truth meets truth, truth is reflected back to truth, and within truth is joy, happiness, and peace. Choose which voice you will listen to and thus your world will be seen. The power is within you.

Chapter 23

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Section II. - The Laws of Chaos

1. The "laws" of chaos can be brought to light, though never understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they appear to be an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain. It is essential it be understood what they are for, because it is their purpose to make meaningless, and to attack the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need not be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.

The first line of this is a reminder to us that anything and everything of this world we make as ego is beyond all understanding, including the laws of ego – the laws of chaos. So much of our learning has been geared to our understanding everything, and now with this Course and our remembering or re-learning, we are told we know nothing and understand nothing. And the laws of they are presented to us are to be seen for what they are – an illusion of the illusion by the illusion. Like all illusions, we will walk through and beyond them.

2. The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. Each one establishes this for himself, and makes it true by his attack on what another values. And this is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies.

Remember as a child, how the rules were different for your older siblings than they were for you? And such is truth as we are told in our ego world, that truth is different for everyone. Truth is truth is truth, and nothing ever will change what truth is. When we grasp this we will begin to see others as not being separated, but coming together as one.

3. Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of truth among illusions, making it seem that some of them are harder to overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and equally untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to all of them. Errors of any kind can be corrected because they are untrue. When brought to truth instead of to each other, they merely disappear. No part of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than can another.

There are no more levels to truth than there are with miracles – a miracle is a miracle, like truth, it simply is. And the more we read in this Course, the more we become aware that no degree of anything is possible in our world. Nothing is greater than another, nor less than something else. Does a big mountain change because it is big, or is it still a mountain?

4. The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death. This principle, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call for punishment and not correction. For the destruction of the one who makes the error places him beyond correction and beyond forgiveness. What he has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence upon himself, which God Himself is powerless to overcome. Sin cannot be remitted, being the belief the Son of God can make mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable.

Just having completed the Easter Season where much is presented about our sin and how Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and then we read the above; suddenly we begin to see what is being said here. Ego has us believing we are sinners and that because we are, we must be punished. Not only that but ego will tell us that Jesus died for our sins, so that we may carry our cross of guilt around our mind and eventually climb upon our own cross. But we are far enough along this Course, and this path, to know that we are nothing like what ego says we are. We know our truth and we accept our truth – we are in the image and likeness of God; and we have never our Source.

5. Think what this seems to do to the relationship between the Father and the Son. Now it appears that They can never be One again. For One must always be condemned, and by the Other. Now are They different, and enemies. And Their relationship is one of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet only to conflict but not to join. One becomes weak, the other strong by his defeat. And fear of God and of each other now appears as sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done both to himself and his Creator.

Is it conceivable to you that the Son of God – YOU – could sin if God cannot? Or do you possibly believe that God is capable of sin as well? Pure chaotic thoughts here. We are as we shall forever be, as God is we are. This is a dream in which we believe we in but know we are not of it. Why would we possibly fear that which we are? Why would we possible fear All That Is?

6. The arrogance on which the laws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges here. Here is a principle that would define what the Creator of reality must be; what He must think and what He must believe; and how He must respond, believing it. It is not seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been established for His belief. His Son can tell Him this, and He has but the choice whether to take his word for it or be mistaken. This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son's belief in what he is, and hate him for it.

Fortunately for us, that God is God and will forever be God. And God is Love and God is Truth, and God is not subject to change because All That Is has no area of change possible. We, on the other side here, are able to change the split mind we have taken in this dream. We can change from truth to falsehood and back again. We can change for thoughts of love to thoughts of fear and back again. But God is as God is, and in Truth we are as well.

7. See how the fear of God is reinforced by this third principle. Now it becomes impossible to turn to Him for help in misery. For now He has become the "enemy" Who caused it, to Whom appeal is useless. Nor can salvation lie within the Son, whose every aspect seems to be at war with Him, and justified in its attack. And now is conflict made inevitable, beyond the help of God. For now salvation must remain impossible, because the Savior has become the enemy.

I remember from my childhood times when I was sure God would strike me dead for what I had done, not so much for what I thought. And I got that message of fear from my mother who got it from her mother and was simply passing it down to me. There are some things that have been passed down which have also been laid down to rest, as they say. I was never a threat to God, nor an enemy of God, and God was never my enemy and seen as a threat to me. What I feared most of my life was myself, and myself as I now know, is nothing to fear for it is nothing.

8. There can be no release and no escape. Atonement thus becomes a myth, and vengeance, not forgiveness, is the Will of God. From where all this begins, there is no sight of help that can succeed. Only destruction can be the outcome. And God Himself seems to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. Think not the ego will enable you to find escape from what it wants. That is the function of this course, which does not value what the ego cherishes.

Are you far enough into the Course that you have begun to let go of what you had thought to be important to you in this dream, and instead have attached yourself to the peace you have forever sought? You know the world you make as ego is one of never ending conflict, of forever chasing something and perhaps eventually catching up to it, only to find that you are now chasing after something else. You know that the world you make as ego is a world of darkness, of death and destruction. Nothing lasts in your world, including the body you think you are. But you know now that this is not your reality – this is not your truth. You are passing through this dream, but it is just that, a dream. Like all dreams, you know you will wake from it and you have the knowing already within you, that when you awaken, you shall discover that you had never left that which you thought you had.

9. The ego values only what it takes. This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself. Yet all the other laws must lead to this. For enemies do not give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to share the things they value. And what your enemies would keep from you must be worth having, because they keep it hidden from your sight.

Remember early on in the Course how we learned that giving and receiving were one and the same? Ego believe that if you give, you have less of something and therefore you must have more so you go out of get more of it. But what have you gotten more of? Remember this is a dream you are in – this is a world of illusion – can anything here be real? What can you possibly possess in an illusion but more illusion?

10. All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here: the "enemy" made strong by keeping hidden the valuable inheritance that should be yours; your justified position and attack for what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss the enemy must suffer to save yourself. Thus do the guilty ones protest their "innocence." Were they not forced into this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, they would respond with only kindness. But in a savage world the kind cannot survive, so they must take or else be taken from.

We have all been to a place in life where we simply state a known fact: "This is madness!" There are those time when we simply want to world to stop so we can get off! This world does come off as madness so often, but we see it and do nothing because we are just led in another direction by ego. By now you must have noticed that ego never gives you an answer about anything, only another question. The reason is obvious – ego knows no answer, only questions.

11. And now there is a vague unanswered question, not yet "explained." What is this precious thing, this priceless pearl, this hidden secret treasure, to be wrested in righteous wrath from this most treacherous and cunning enemy? It must be what you want but never found. And now you "understand" the reason why you found it not. For it was taken from you by this enemy, and hidden where you would not think to look. He hid it in his body, making it the cover for his guilt, the hiding place for what belongs to you. Now must his body be destroyed and sacrificed, that you may have that which belongs to you. His treachery demands his death, that you may live. And you attack only in self-defense.

Are you still seeking something from others and have not yet found it? And do you know what it really? Are you seeking something from another in a relationship perhaps? You know, a special relationship? Are you filled with greed that you must have what another has and will 'kill' another to obtain it? Has this madness taken over you? Do you fear others that they have something that will 'kill' you? Perhaps at your work, you figure it is either them or you who will succeed so you do what ever you think necessary to obtain it first, even to the point of harming them perhaps?

12. But what is it you want that needs his death? Can you be sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what it is for? And here a final principle of chaos comes to the "rescue." It holds there is a substitute for love. This is the magic that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness that makes it "sane." This is the reason why you must attack. Here is what makes your vengeance justified. Behold, unveiled, the ego's secret gift, torn from your brother's body, hidden there in malice and in hatred for the one to whom the gift belongs. He would deprive you of the secret ingredient that would give meaning to your life. The substitute for love, born of your enmity to your brother, must be salvation. It has no substitute, and there is only one. And all your relationships have but the purpose of seizing it and making it your own.

And do you so believe in death that you are willing to have another die for what you believe you want? And here is the big question: Do you believe you know what love means in your world? Does it mean more than 'like'? Does it mean less than 'adore'? Or does it mean nothing more to you than a word you use to appease people to do things for you; to get things for you; to give you things. You say you love them, but you know you will only say it as long as they do what they are to do for you. I can not think of another word in our world that is so misunderstood and misused than this word: love. Have you forgotten that is your name? Is God not Love? Are you not of God? Are you not Love?

13. Never is your possession made complete. And never will your brother cease his attack on you for what you stole. Nor will God end His vengeance upon both, for in His madness He must have this substitute for love, and kill you both. You who believe you walk in sanity with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning can be found, consider this: These are the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These are the principles which make the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it is here you look for meaning. These are the laws you made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven which you prefer. This is their purpose; they were made for this. There is no point in asking what they mean. That is apparent. The means of madness must be insane. Are you as certain that you realize the goal is madness?

Ever know of anyone who wanted it all, got it all, and then died and took it all with them? Such are the laws of chaos. Look at ancient history and see the evidence back then as well. The Egyptians buried their dead with treasure, and today we find the treasure just where they left them. No one took them with them. This is a world not only of chaos, but of insanity in which we believe live. Nothing here could possibly make sense because everything is chaos. On this chaos we walk through this illusion. Is it any wonder we feel so unstable at times? And those moments when we believe we have found heaven only to discover it was just a backdrop for another fear. Nothing before us in this world we make as ego has meaning, nothing here is to be understood nor accepted as truth.

14. No one wants madness, nor does anyone cling to his madness if he sees that this is what it is. What protects madness is the belief that it is true. It is the function of insanity to take the place of truth. It must be seen as truth to be believed. And if it is the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, completely turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, is the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God appear to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin appear to hold love captive, and let sin go free.

Remember those times when someone told you that you wouldn't know the truth if it were in front of you? Truth, like love, means something different in the world of chaos. Ego will tell us it is true and we have believed it, only to discover that is not real. And this is the humor of ego. And who is it that laughs at himself, but an idiot according to ego. And yet when you take the time to become an observer of yourself, you will have to laugh at hilarious you appear? Those of us who do laugh at ourselves believe that we are not the bodies we had once thought, but that we are the spirits we have forever been.

15. These do not seem to be the goals of chaos, for by the great reversal they appear to be the laws of order. How could it not be so? Chaos is lawlessness, and has no laws. To be believed, its seeming laws must be perceived as real. Their goal of madness must be seen as sanity. And fear, with ashen lips and sightless eyes, blinded and terrible to look upon, is lifted to the throne of love, its dying conqueror, its substitute, the savior from salvation. How lovely do the laws of fear make death appear. Give thanks unto the hero on love's throne, who saved the Son of God for fear and death!

Can you think of any laws within the world you make with ego? Anything other than chaos? Can you count on something happening if you do so and so, or is there always a doubt about it. Nothing is for sure here, for nothing is real here. Ever stop to think we might be paying tribute to the prince of darkness (fear) instead of the Prince of Peace. Nothing is sacred in this world we make as an ego – nothing.

16. And yet, how can it be that laws like these can be believed? There is a strange device that makes it possible. Nor is it unfamiliar; we have seen how it appears to function many times before. In truth it does not function, yet in dreams, where only shadows play the major roles, it seems most powerful. No law of chaos could compel belief but for the emphasis on form and disregard of content. No one who thinks that one of these laws is true sees what it says. Some forms it takes seem to have meaning, and that is all.

What ever is seen in this world we believe to be true, according to the rules of this world. But what if the rules of this world were but illusions as well? What if what you thought was truth was fear? What if a light could illuminate all that you see so that you could see that nothing is before you. What happens if you stop believing in the body, even for a moment of your time you make? Have you disappeared? No, you are still where you thought you were but you see that the body is not real, it is but a form we call mine. And in that word 'mine' lay most of our problems – for anything we believe to be 'mine' continually separates us more from each other. The more 'mine' we want, the more we believe in the body as real and the separation as being truth.

17. How can some forms of murder not mean death? Can an attack in any form be love? What form of condemnation is a blessing? Who makes his savior powerless and finds salvation? Let not the form of the attack on him deceive you. You cannot seek to harm him and be saved. Who can find safety from attack by turning on himself? How can it matter what the form this madness takes? It is a judgment that defeats itself, condemning what it says it wants to save. Be not deceived when madness takes a form you think is lovely. What is intent on your destruction is not your friend.

Read this carefully again, and listen as you attempt to answer the questions. In the world of chaos attack is viewed as love, how crazy can that be? How can your brother be your savior if you see him powerless? And all this while, as you do whatever to your brother, you are actually do that to you. How does it feel when you finally realize that you are believing you are attacking yourself? If this is not seen as insanity, then what else could there be?

18. You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they cannot be believed. Brother, you do believe them. For how else could you perceive the form they take, with content such as this? Can any form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them for the form they take, and do not recognize the content. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content with an illusion that you are living?

Okay, we all deny believing in these senseless laws, but denying isn't enough; we have to stop believing in them as to be truth. We may deny we do, but we continue to believe. Look at yourself. Do you see a body and do you believe it to be you? We have work to do here. You will never see another as a brother until you see yourself without the body. You can never see Oneness as long as you believe in separation.

19. There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true.

We read in the beginning of the Course that only Love existed, all else was an illusion. Nothing else exists as nothing else is. In this dream of separation we believe we are alive, but not knowing what 'to be alive' means. We know that in living is birth, a beginning, and death, an ending. But within us is hidden the truth of who we are, and we know somehow that we are without a beginning and will be without an ending. Illusions are truly form, but we are not form, therefore we are not illusions.

20. The laws of chaos govern all illusions. Their forms conflict, making it seem quite possible to value some above the others. Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos are the laws of order as do the others. Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. The seeming gentler forms of the attack are no less certain in their witnessing, or their results. Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs that they imply, not for their form. And lack of faith in love, in any form, attests to chaos as reality.

So if we are not illusions, the laws of chaos do not govern us. If they do not govern us, then we do not believe in them. If we do not believe in them, we know that they too are but illusions. So if we are not illusions, what are we. We are as God is. God is Love and Love is Truth – so that makes us Truth, Love.

21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end.

So this dream is but a thought we hold within our mind, a thought that we have the power to change at any moment. What do you suppose stops us from having the change of thought – that change of heart? Are we still convince we have sinned, and that we are not deserving anything because we have sinned? Why do you suppose many of us choose to see hell when Heaven in also a choice?

22. Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. And they will follow. Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? Quite easily. How do you feel? Is peace in your awareness? Are you certain which way you go? And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go.

Which would you rather step into – a pile of dung or the softness of spring grass? Reading about stepping up or stepping down is in line with what authors like Hawkins talk about – our raising our consciousness – moving up or moving down – the choice is always ours to make. And Spirit is as close as the next thought, and we have only but to ask and we shall be guided after we make the choice. Who guides us depends on the choice we make. Which would you prefer to guide you through an illusion – an illusion or the Truth?

Chapter23

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Section III. - Salvation without Compromise

1. Is it not true you do not recognize some of the forms attack can take? If it is true attack in any form will hurt you, and will do so just as much as in another form that you do recognize, then it must follow that you do not always recognize the source of pain. Attack in any form is equally destructive. Its purpose does not change. Its sole intent is murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel? He may deny he is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks. Yet he will suffer, and will look on his intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still. For no one thinks of murder and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes?

Do we not come into this dream with the intent of experiencing death? Are birth and death not part of this world? Could not this concept be seen as murder of ourselves? And what about the addictions we hang onto, are they not a form of murder of ourselves as well? This is the world we make, is it not truly insane?

2. Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may seem to be, a blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks through you to your brother? The wrapping does not make the gift you give. An empty box, however beautiful and gently given, still contains nothing. And neither the receiver nor the giver is long deceived. Withhold forgiveness from your brother and you attack him. You give him nothing, and receive of him but what you gave.

How a brother appears to you, or how you appear to a brother has no meaning when we consider what we carry to each other. Not in any form, but in truth. Why does a brother offer you noting? Could it simply be that you also offer nothing to him? And would you know truth if it were offered you?

3. Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the idea of compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation's purpose is lost because it is not recognized. It is denied where compromise has been accepted, for compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would maintain you can attack a little, love a little, and know the difference. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different, and yet the same remain intact, as one. Does this make sense? Can it be understood?

In a special relationship, we give to another with the expectations of getting something back, usually more than what we gave. Such is a compromise. Salvation is not a compromise, require nothing of us to give up, to let go of, to release. It is complete of itself. This sounds a lot like what we are in truth, right?

4. This course is easy just because it makes no compromise. Yet it seems difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible. They do not see that, if it is, salvation is attack. Yet it is certain the belief that salvation is impossible cannot uphold a quiet, calm assurance it has come. Forgiveness cannot be withheld a little. Nor is it possible to attack for this and love for that and understand forgiveness. Would you not want to recognize assault upon your peace in any form, if only thus does it become impossible that you lose sight of it? It can be kept shining before your vision, forever clear and never out of sight, if you defend it not.

Here we are told in an easy to understand manner that this Course is easy because it makes not compromise – there is nothing asked of us in return for what is offered in the Course. But for many, this is difficult at best to be understood, and understanding is an obstacle on our path. Ego wants to always understand. We simply know in truth. We have come far enough in this Course to know that forgiveness is of itself complete – that is, forgiveness means that every thought we had is forgiven ourselves. Every gesture that another has made to us, or words that have been spoken to us, are all forgiven. Not one single thought – not one word – not one action – can be left out of our forgiveness, or it is not forgiveness.

5. Those who believe that peace can be defended, and that attack is justified on its behalf, cannot perceive it lies within them. How could they know? Could they accept forgiveness side by side with the belief that murder takes some forms by which their peace is saved? Would they be willing to accept the fact their savage purpose is directed against themselves? No one unites with enemies, nor is at one with them in purpose. And no one compromises with an enemy but hates him still, for what he kept from him.

Does peace truly need to be defended? Is attack of any kind ever justified? Can one ever unite with an enemy without seeing the enemy? Compromises are a part of this world, not in our Reality.

6. Mistake not truce for peace, nor compromise for the escape from conflict. To be released from conflict means that it is over. The door is open; you have left the battleground. You have not lingered there in cowering hope that it will not return because the guns are stilled an instant, and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent. There is no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above and not be touched. But from within it you can find no safety. Not one tree left still standing will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. Think you the form that murder takes can offer safety? Can guilt be absent from a battlefield?

Just think about the last line "Can guilt be absent from the battlefield?" Is truce the same as peace? Does not history show that it is not. And is a compromise an end to conflict? To end conflict is to have the conflict over – finished. You leave the battleground because the war is over. Or you linger because you do not believe it is over. Does it take more courage to leave the war because it is over, or to stay just in case in might begin again? Can you take the peace for the moment and move forward on your path, or are you glued down to a position in the conflict?

Chapter 23

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Section IV. - Above the Battleground

1. Do not remain in conflict, for there is no war without attack. The fear of God is fear of life, and not of death. Yet He remains the only place of safety. In Him is no attack, and no illusion in any form stalks Heaven. Heaven is wholly true. No difference enters, and what is all the same cannot conflict. You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth.

If there is attack, then there is no war and if there is no war, then there must be peace. And what do you think as a first response to the second line – that you fear life, not death. Are you truly afraid of living this dream? You are in it but not of it. Make the most you can of the dream you live. You are in charge of the thoughts you choose, and the thoughts you choose are the thoughts you project into a world you believe you see. In our Truth, in God, lies the safety of eternity and being eternal nothing will ever change it. Accept that and go on with the life you have and you will begin to see a life that God gives you. Remember that any thought no of love is a thought of attack – against yourself and God.

2. What can be equal to the truth, yet different? Murder and love are incompatible. Yet if they both are true, then must they be the same, and indistinguishable from one another. So will they be to those who see God's Son a body. For it is not the body that is like the Son's Creator. And what is lifeless cannot be the Son of Life. How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can it create, and be what it creates? And can it offer its creations all that it is and never suffer loss?

Read this complete paragraph through once more, and let the thoughts presented to you sink deep into you. Can anything be equal to Truth, when Truth is All That Is? And let us speak of Truth – the one with the capital letter 'T' – and not the word 'truth' that is bantered around in our world and has lost all meaning. Recall at the beginning of the Course that we read about Love and fear, Love be real and fear being false – an illusion? Thus far into the Course, this message has been given us several ways. Nothing is compatible with Love, for Love is All That Is. Nothing is true but Love. Therefore, and once again, everything else is false – including this world we believe in and the body we often think is who we are. A Creation of God is eternal – one without a beginning nor ending. What we believe we make in this world, doesn't last very long in the time we also made.

3. God does not share His function with a body. He gave the function to create unto His Son because it is His Own. It is not sinful to believe the function of the Son is murder, but it is insanity. What is the same can have no different function. Creation is the means for God's extension, and what is His must be His Son's as well. Either the Father and the Son are murderers, or neither is. Life makes not death, creating like itself.

God does not share His function with us, the body, for the body is an illusion and not real. God only shares what God is with the Creation of God. God is Love and only Love is real, nothing else exists. So everything and anything which is not God – which is not Love – which is not real – is false – an illusion. An illusion has no function other than what we believe we give it. And we can 'give' everything we can think of to an illusion and the illusion still remains an illusion. What can we possibly give that is beyond Truth – beyond the Love we are and God is? Nothing else exists.

4. The lovely light of your relationship is like the Love of God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son, for your forgiveness of your brother is not complete as yet, and so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose.

And how very difficult it is to overlook the battleground and not be in the war. How difficult it is for us to forgive some and yet hold back from others. Have we forgiven at all? If you extend Love to others, do you really think you can be selective in your extension? Is God selective in His? And isn't your function the function of God? We might say that it is difficult for us to accept all brothers in the world we have before us because of the media and it's interpretation of what it perceive is happening elsewhere. What happens to you if you read no newspaper, watch no news, listen to no news on the radio, and stop most of the periodicals you might read? Nothing truly happens other than you are not sucked into the makings of mayhem as presented to you as news. This is a form of fear for you – to keep you angry and upset, fearful and doubting the existence of God.

5. Be lifted up, and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different. Here in the midst of it, it does seem real. Here you have chosen to be part of it. Here murder is your choice. Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead of murder. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is not real, and easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless. And it is over when you realize it never was begun. How can a battle be perceived as nothingness when you engage in it? How can the truth of miracles be recognized if murder is your choice?

Ever stop and think how high you can go in this dream? There are no limitations other than those you made. Recall the old expression, 'How high is up?' The words 'high' and 'low' are words we have given meaning to, defining our limitation which we have imposed upon ourselves as to who we think we are in these bodies. But we are not these bodies; we are not who we think we have been. So we can be above the drama of life – we can look at it with the eyes of the Christ Spirit and see it for what it is. And what is that we view with this Sight? We see that the chaos, the war, the battle, the turmoil, the problem – all are not real – simply illusions that can be seen through and beyond. And we see it all as if all the characters were just 'wind-up toys' and there simply are running down. It is not even amusing because chaos is never amusing, chaos is sad.

6. When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you know well. When they occur leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder. And God Himself and all the lights of Heaven will gently lean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where He would have you, and no illusion can attack the peace of God together with His Son.

Remember when some 'problem' is before you, and fear sweeps through you, that you can lift yourself up above what you believe you see, and see what is actually before you. I like to think that no problems exist, only solutions. And if you should grow weary above the drama, and feel as if you can no longer continue to be above it, know that God is holding you up and unless you choose to go lower into the mess of life, God will continue to support you.

7. See no one from the battleground, for there you look on him from nowhere. You have no reference point from where to look, where meaning can be given what you see. For only bodies could attack and murder, and if this is your purpose, then you must be one with them. Only a purpose unifies, and those who share a purpose have a mind as one. The body has no purpose of itself, and must be solitary. From below, it cannot be surmounted. From above, the limits it exerts on those in battle still are gone, and not perceived. The body stands between the Father and the Heaven He created for His Son because it has no purpose.

Could we say that if we arrive at no longer believing in this body, then we shall see the Heaven as we remember it? If we lay down all thoughts of being this body, then will we be where we have always been? But we have always been where we will always be, and Heaven in a thought we hold in our mind of the place of Peace we believe is Home. If we no longer believe in ourselves as bodies, we will no longer attack ourselves, we will no longer judge ourselves, we will no longer withhold forgiveness from ourselves, we will no longer hold back our Love from ourselves – and then we shall extend Truth to all we see.

8. Think what is given those who share their Father's purpose, and who know that it is theirs. They want for nothing. Sorrow of any kind is inconceivable. Only the light they love is in awareness, and only love shines upon them forever. It is their past, their present and their future; always the same, eternally complete and wholly shared. They know it is impossible their happiness could ever suffer change of any kind. Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something you can win. Can it be anything that offers you a perfect calmness, and a sense of love so deep and quiet that no touch of doubt can ever mar your certainty? And that will last forever?

And what is given to those who function as the purpose of God? Their own awareness now shows them all that they are, all that possess, and All That Is. They exist in Reality and yet appear to be in this world, but not of it – a point to remember often. They are seen as a Light of the World and wherever they are, the Light is present for all to see. They appear to be in the moment – the now – the holy instant – not thinking of any past, or future. And they know from within them, that the state of happiness is their natural state.

9. Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body's offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?

And those that function as the purpose of God see nothing but Love regardless of where they look. They can see beyond any form to be imagined. They can see beyond all fears shown. They can see beyond any body and view that which is within each of us. And how easy it is to function as the purpose of God when you remember that God continues to hold you up.

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Introduction

1. Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained. It is not necessary to tell Him what to do. He will not fail. Where He can enter, there He is already. And can it be He cannot enter where He wills to be? Peace will be yours because it is His Will. Can you believe a shadow can hold back the Will that holds the universe secure? God does not wait upon illusions to let Him be Himself. No more His Son. They are. And what illusion that idly seems to drift between Them has the power to defeat what is Their Will?

First person:I will not forget that the motivation of this course is my attainment and keeping the state of peace which is my Truth. Given this state, my mind is quiet, which is the condition in which the memory of God is attained for me. It is not necessary for me to tell God what God must do. God will not fail. Where God enters, there God is already. And is it possible for God not to enter where God wills to b e? God is already there. Peace is mine because it is the Will of God for me. Can I possibly believe that a mere shadow can hold back the Will of God? God does wait upon illusions to let God be God. No more than I do. I am as God is. And any illusion that idly appears to drift between me and God has no power to change the Will of God.

2. To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternative. The truth arises from what He knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind because of what He knows.

Still first person:For me to learn this course requires my willingness to question each and every value that I hold. Not one is to be kept aside and hidden, for it will jeopardize my learning. I will have no neutral beliefs. Every belief has the power to dictate to me every decision I make. This is because a decision is a conclusion based on everything I believe to be true. A decision is the outcome of my beliefs just as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom follows sinlessness. I have no substitute for peace for there is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternatives, no substitutes, and that includes who I am in Truth. Truth comes from God. My decisions come from my beliefs just as Creation comes from the Mind of God.

Chapter 24.

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section I. - Specialness as a Substitute for Love

1. Love is extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but one belief, one offering, and love is gone, because you asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the substitute for peace, come with the one alternative that you can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it all the reality it seems to have.

Love is God and God is extension. To hold back extending Love is not to know the purpose of God. God offers everything forever, eternally. If but one belief is held back, love is not present and fear has taken the place it occupy. And holding back but one belief has us choosing chaos for peace.

2. Beliefs will never openly attack each other because conflicting outcomes are impossible. But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and never brought to reason, to be considered sensible or not. And many senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden, to become beliefs now given power to direct all subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it is at their mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election. Do not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but not their outcome.

All we can do is to deny the reality of fear. Fear is not real, fear is false, fear is an illusion, fear is a veil before what we think we see. Fear is present in this world for this world is built on fear – built on illusion – veils of nothingness. Within our mind are held many beliefs we prefer to ignore, to deny their existence, to claim no response to them. But they are there. How do we know? Do you still see chaos in the world before you? Do you still bodies moving around you? Do you still recognize this body as yours?

3. All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This takes many forms, but always clashes with the reality of God's creation and with the grandeur that He gave His Son. What else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his, and Whom he knows? Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped.

And the subject of 'specialness' is repeated once again for us. The reason for the repetition is that we are still holding onto the thought of 'specialness' – about ourselves and about others. You know already that special relationships are but battlegrounds where war is played out. You know that in special relationships, you turn quickly from love to hate as soon as what you expected of another is not given you? And you know from special relationships that all you do is judge in them. And can the Son of God ever be thought of as 'special'? Is one of us different from another? Was Jesus more than you or I?

4. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself. But what is different calls for judgment, and this must come from someone "better," someone incapable of being like what he condemns, "above" it, sinless by comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart, but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem "beneath" the special one is "natural" and "just." The special ones feel weak and frail because of differences, for what would make them special is their enemy. Yet they protect its enmity and call it "friend." On its behalf they fight against the universe, for nothing in the world they value more.

What God created is like God, and therefore what God created could not attack but only love. Who is there to be attacked? Only our perception of another places them as a possible target for attack. Only our judgment sets up the battleground. Only our choosing to call someone 'special' does the war begin.

5. Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you are and what your brother is. And here is what must make the body dear and worth preserving. Specialness must be defended. Illusions can attack it, and they do. For what your brother must become to keep your specialness is an illusion. He who is "worse" than you must be attacked, so that your specialness can live on his defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory is his defeat and shame. How can he live, with all your sins upon him? And who must be his conqueror but you?

We might even go so far to say that ego is the great dictator of the wrong decisions, but who is it that is making those wrong decisions? Remember that there are two choices always available to you for everything in this life – love or fear – and you alone make the decision as to which it shall be. Choose fear and you will see your brother as a body, and you will fear him, and yourself. And you will also protect your body even though it is an illusion. In choosing fear, we choose specialness – we choose that one of us is better than the other, and therefore conflict is started. One of us will survive we believe, and be the victor.

6. Would it be possible for you to hate your brother if you were like him? Could you attack him if you realized you journey with him, to a goal that is the same? Would you not help him reach it in every way you could, if his attainment of it were perceived as yours? You are his enemy in specialness; his friend in a shared purpose. Specialness can never share, for it depends on goals that you alone can reach. And he must never reach them, or your goal is jeopardized. Can love have meaning where the goal is triumph? And what decision can be made for this that will not hurt you?

Now here is a question that demands you answer: would you hate your brother if you knew you were as he is? Would you attack him, knowing that you are attacking yourself? The image of your brother can change within a thought you hold of him – a body or a reflection, special or One with you. And the choice of that thought is yours to make.

7. Your brother is your friend because his Father created him like you. There is no difference. You have been given to your brother that love might be extended, not cut off from him. What you keep is lost to you. God gave you and your brother Himself, and to remember this is now the only purpose that you share. And so it is the only one you have. Could you attack your brother if you chose to see no specialness of any kind between you and him? Look fairly at whatever makes you give your brother only partial welcome, or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is it not always your belief your specialness is limited by your relationship? And is not this the "enemy" that makes you and your brother illusions to each other?

First person:My brother is my friend because God created him like me. There is no difference in us. I have been given to my brother so that Love will be extended, not withheld from him. What I believe I keep is lost to me as well. God gave me and my brother Himself – God – and remembering this is the purpose my brother and I share with each other. And so this purpose is the only purpose I have. Could I possibly attack my brother if I chose no specialness between him and I? I will no longer extend to my brother a partial welcome – partial love – for there is no difference between us. There is no limit on my relationship with my brother. My belief is specialness has always been the cause of specialness, of conflict, between me and my brother. My brother and I are not the bodies seen, but we are the Oneness we know.

8. The fear of God and of your brother comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness. For you demand your brother bow to it against his will. And God Himself must honor it or suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice, or stab of hate or wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose that you and your brother share becomes obscured from both of you. You would oppose this course because it teaches you you and your brother are alike. You have no purpose that is not the same, and none your Father does not share with you. For your relationship has been made clean of special goals. And would you now defeat the goal of holiness that Heaven gave it? What perspective can the special have that does not change with every seeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on itself?

My fear of God and my fear of my brother all come from my belief in specialness – I think I am better than God could make me. Isn't this how this dream started? An insane thought that I failed to see the humor in? I have no opposition to this Course even though it teaches me that my brother and I are one and the same. I gladly accept that truth, and lay down all the specialness that has been present in my mind for so long. All the attributes of fear – suffering, sorrow, malice, hatred, - all those gifts from ego – are see for what they are – illusions at best and choices I do not want to make.

9. Those who are special must defend illusions against the truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God? You love your brother not while it is this you would defend against him. This is what he attacks, and you protect. Here is the ground of battle which you wage against him. Here must he be your enemy and not your friend. Never can there be peace among the different. He is your friend because you are the same.

Remember the lesson about 'in my defenselessness lies my safety'? Only if I see myself special, will I find it necessary to defend me. I will remember and remember that I am created in the image and likeness of God – not only me but each and every one I believe I see. WE are all the Son of God. It is impossible for one of us to special to another. Can God be special to God?

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section II. - The Treachery of Specialness

1. Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And always whom it thus diminishes would be your savior, had you not chosen to make of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied, by comparison with what you see. Nor do you understand it is yourself that you diminish thus.

Another helpful hint here: any time we notice that we are comparing, we are being ego; accepting is with spirit. To have specialness, we must compare, and in comparing we are placing either ourselves or the other person in a different view than we are all in. We see each other as being different, not being one. We will never see the 'savior' in our brother unless we see our brother as one with us.

2. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack his savior and cut him down, yet recognize his strong support? Who can detract from his omnipotence, yet share his power? And who can use him as the gauge of littleness, and be released from limits? You have a function in salvation. Its pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit of specialness must bring you pain. Here is a goal that would defeat salvation, and thus run counter to the Will of God. To value specialness is to esteem an alien will to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth.

We have all been here – chasing our 'tails' and never catching up with us – chasing after the rainbow only to find the rainbow had moved – seeking joy and happiness with a material item only to have the item get old, worn out or lose its charm. Whatever we seek as ego will never provide us with what we yearn for. Happiness is not found as ego, but pain and suffering are offered as alternatives. I am not unique, you are not unique, we are not unique – we are but One and forever shall be One.

3. Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible even to imagine without this base. For sin arose from it, out of nothingness; an evil flower with no roots at all. Here is the self-made "savior," the "creator" who creates unlike the Father, and which made His Son like to itself and not like unto Him. His "special" sons are many, never one, each one in exile from himself, and Him of Whom they are a part. Nor do they love the Oneness which created them as one with Him. They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of peace, and wrapped it carefully in sin, to keep it "safe" from truth.

We have all come much to far on our spiritual quest – our journey of return – to believe anymore in 'sin'. Many of us had learned much about sin as children, and some later as adults, but all that we learned had to do with nothing more than a thought we took as truth. Now we have new beliefs – actually old beliefs coming to the surface of our mind. We know that we are not capable of sin no matter what!

4. You are not special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you really are, how can you know the truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody that pours from God to you eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and unheard before its "mightiness." You strain your ears to hear its soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you.

We can never 'hear' the truth as long as we are connected to the 'specialness' of being separated from God. Let go of this belief, and you will discover that your connection with God is eternal – you were never disconnected – you couldn't hear over the noise you were making in hopes that you would not hear what was being told you. Do you ever really hear a Voice for God or is it not simply realizing the thought in your mind?

5. You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it. They speak a different language and they fall on different ears. To every special one a different message, and one with different meaning, is the truth. Yet how can truth be different to each one? The special messages the special hear convince them they are different and apart; each in his special sins and "safe" from love, which does not see his specialness at all. Christ's vision is their "enemy," for it sees not what they would look upon, and it would show them that the specialness they think they see is an illusion.

When we enter into the silences of our being – the stillness of our soul – we enter into a place for One, not for specialness. We are but the truth we are in the silence. We are not the body we think is so special, or the title, or the other labels placed on us making us special – different from others. In the stillness the truth is the truth and nothing beyond the truth, for nothing is beyond the truth. And yes, the ego part of us will create quite a time for us as we attempt to stay there in the sanctuary of our heart. But it is just that which is an illusion itself – time. In the stillness, there is no time.

6. What would they see instead? The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the memory of Him springs instantly to mind. And with this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to him as he is to his Father. And all the world he made, and all his specialness, and all the sins he held in its defense against himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the truth about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is the only "cost" of truth: You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?

Without time as a factor, we see all others for that which they are – One with us. Not one is different from others. Not one is separated in any way for all others. And where the faces of the individuals were is now a reflection of the radiance of all of us. And as we look upon the world we believed in to be real, we shall see that it too, has changed to a picture of Love. With truth we shall so see. The act of sacrifice that once meant so much to us, is now seen as but an illusion as well. We give up nothing for we are everything.

7. You who have chained your savior to your specialness, and given it his place, remember this: He has not lost the power to forgive you all the sins you think you placed between him and the function of salvation given him for you. Nor will you change his function, any more than you can change the truth in him and in yourself. But be you certain that the truth is just the same in both. It gives no different messages, and has one meaning. And it is one you and your brother both can understand, and one that brings release to both of you. Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. Let not the dream of specialness remain between you. What is one is joined in truth.

As long as continue to categorize our brother, the longer we are from returning to the Kingdom of Heaven. As long we judge another, that which is within us as truth, will not experienced. Before us stands the key to our awakening. What prevents us from awakening is our choice to judge.

8. Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself, when you have looked on him as on a friend. He is the enemy of specialness, but only friend to what is real in you. Not one attack you thought you made on him has taken from him the gift that God would have him give to you. His need to give it is as great as yours to have it. Let him forgive you all your specialness, and make you whole in mind and one with him. He waits for your forgiveness only that he may return it unto you. It is not God Who has condemned His Son, but you, to save his specialness and kill his Self.

Recall all the times you were told that God will condemn you for your sins? Now read this carefully again: it is only ourselves that condemn ourselves; only us that judge another and therefore place limitations on ourselves. By changing our mind, changing our thoughts about others, we change our thoughts about ourselves. Once we experience the Love we are in Truth, then we shall see others in that same love also. We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves.

9. You have come far along the way of truth; too far to falter now. Just one step more, and every vestige of the fear of God will melt away in love. Your brother's specialness and yours are enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same. Yet it is not illusions that have reached this final obstacle which seems to make God and His Heaven so remote that They cannot be reached. Here in this holy place does truth stand waiting to receive you and your brother in silent blessing, and in peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. Leave all illusions of yourself outside this place, to which you come in hope and honesty.

I don't believe we ever can go back to all our old beliefs when we have come this far on our journey. We can stop on our journey, stop believing in our truth, but that changes nothing. Here we are told that we have to take but one more step and every fear shall fade away. What could possibly be holding us from taking that step? What is causing us to have a paralysis of the mind? What have we not let go of yet that is the key to open the door before us?

10. Here is your savior from your specialness. He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. You are alike to God as God is to Himself. He is not special, for He would not keep one part of what He is unto Himself, not given to His Son but kept for Him alone. And it is this you fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son to be like Him, and your brother is like you. Not special, but possessed of everything, including you. Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to you and your brother in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided, and kept separate from what it is and must forever be.

The one before you – at any given time – is the one you are to see beyond the image of a body and into the truth before you. Can you do that? Can you look at any and all people with the eyes of the Christ Spirit within you and see the same within them? Are there any you are setting aside perhaps? There is no specialness in them, and there is no specialness in you.

11. You are your brother's; part of love was not denied to him. But can it be that you have lost because he is complete? What has been given him makes you complete, as it does him. God's Love gave you to him and him to you because He gave Himself. What is the same as God is one with Him. And only specialness could make the truth of God and you as one seem anything but Heaven, with the hope of peace at last in sight.

What you are searching for is what you brother is searching for, and both of you have found in seeing each other, but are you both aware of it? What you have been seeking is before you. Accept him and be complete as you are. Deny him and continue to feel lost.

12. Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love. Whatever serves its purpose must be given to kill. No gift that bears its seal but offers treachery to giver and receiver. Not one glance from eyes it veils but looks on sight of death. Not one believer in its potency but seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish sin love's substitute, and serve it faithfully. p And no relationship that holds its purpose dear but clings to murder as safety's weapon, and the great defender of all illusions from the "threat" of love.

In the world we make, in the language we put together, we banter about the word 'love' until the meaning of it has all but disappeared. We use the term so flippantly – so matter of fact – so not in the meaning of the word. It is not so much that I love you or you love me, but it is important that we understand that we are Love – we are God in action. Specialness was invented so that we would forget the meaning of love – the meaning of that which is within us.

13. The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison house that keeps His Son from Him. For it demands a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding place where none is welcome but your tiny self. Nothing is sacred here but unto you, and you alone, apart and separate from all your brothers; safe from all intrusions of sanity upon illusions; safe from God and safe for conflict everlasting. Here are the gates of hell you closed upon yourself, to rule in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom, apart from God, away from truth and from salvation.

God did not make the body we believe in – did not make the body we see others as. Does God even see this body? Does God see an illusion? Does God see that which is not there? This is all of our doing, and our undoing as well. When we speak of going within, we do not mean going within this framework of a body, but within the center of our essence. When we talk about the sanctuary of our heart, we are not referring to a physical heart, but to the center of our essence. We use words in an attempt to describe to ego that which we are, and ego not knowing anything, doe not comprehend what we are saying. It will only respond with more illusions.

14. The key you threw away God gave your brother, whose holy hands would offer it to you when you were ready to accept His plan for your salvation in the place of yours. How could this readiness be reached save through the sight of all your misery, and the awareness that your plan has failed, and will forever fail to bring you peace and joy of any kind? Through this despair you travel now, yet it is but illusion of despair. The death of specialness is not your death, but your awaking into life eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.

The call for awakening we are calling to each other. We are to each other, the savior that we thought we must seek. That which we sought has always been before us, just waiting for us to see beyond the veil. Death in this world is nothing more than the last experience ego has, nothing more, and death is but for ego alone. We simple are as we have forever been and shall be.

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section III. - The Forgiveness of Specialness

1. Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can be forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release from all illusions, and that is why it is impossible but partly to forgive. No one who clings to one illusion can see himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as lovely still. And so he calls it "unforgivable," and makes it sin. How can he then give his forgiveness wholly, when he would not receive it for himself? For it is sure he would receive it wholly the instant that he gave it so. And thus his secret guilt would disappear, forgiven by himself.

What a great paragraph! Our forgiveness is the end of specialness. And only illusions can be forgiven and once forgiven they vanish. But how about those thoughts we had once where we said words like "I shall never forgive you for this" or 'This is unforgivable"? If we but cling to one thread of a thought of fear, we do not forgive – just one tiny thread of fear. It is an all or nothing situation – either I forgive myself for all my thoughts of fear, or I do not forgive myself at all. If I do not forgive, I carry with me the baggage of guilt or perhaps it is seen as hate or jealousy or whatever.

2. Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. Inviolate it stands, strongly defended with all your puny might against the Will of God. And thus it stands against yourself; your enemy, not God's. So does it seem to split you off from God, and make you separate from Him as its defender. You would protect what God created not. And yet, this idol that seems to give you power has taken it away. For you have given your brother's birthright to it, leaving him alone and unforgiven, and yourself in sin beside him, both in misery, before the idol that can save you not.

One might say that specialness is sin, and sin is an illusion which also makes specialness an illusion. This thought we might want to keep in the front of our mind, as the saying goes, so that any moment we see ourselves in a "specialness' situation, we know we are in error and believing more in another illusion. As long as we judge 'specialness' in another or in ourselves, we shall continue with the lonely feeling of separation, and we shall see others as separate also.

3. It is not you who are so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed. But specialness is not the truth in you. It can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on nothing never can be stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze.

If we feel vulnerable, if we feel as if we are open for attack, if we take issue with even a look someone might have on their face – if any of this is evident, then specialness of some issue or issues is apparent. We are Truth, the truth we seek within. We are not vulnerable, frail or able to be attack by anything. We are not just one of the many illusions of this world we move around in. We are Truth and shall forever be.

4. Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left His Son in such a state, where safety has no meaning? No, His Son is safe, resting on Him. It is your specialness that is attacked by everything that walks and breathes, or creeps or crawls, or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, and it is safe from nothing. It will forevermore be unforgiving, for that is what it is; a secret vow that what God wants for you will never be, and that you will oppose His Will forever. Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same, while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies.

If we affirm that we are as God is, we also affirm that as God is, we are. Is God secure? Only the specialness of this dream makes us think we are insecure – we are in need of something all the time – that we might simply disappear if we stop believing in this body. We are as God is – and that says it all.

5. God asks for your forgiveness. He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you and what you will. They are the same, for neither One wills specialness. How could They will the death of love itself? Yet They are powerless to make attack upon illusions. They are not bodies; as one Mind They wait for all illusions to be brought to Them, and left behind. Salvation challenges not even death. And God Himself, Who knows that death is not your will, must say, "Thy will be done" because you think it is.

Why should God ask me for forgiveness? Certainly God has done nothing to me that I have to forgive – but it isn't about God (at least no directly) – it is all about me. God asks me to forgive myself for the thoughts I held as truth in my mind; thoughts of fear – of separation – of specialness. I forgive myself these thoughts and I instantly see before me what has always been there – Love.

6. Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of life, of love and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect Son, for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be your home. He chose not this for you. Ask not He enter this. The way is barred to love and to salvation. Yet if you would release your brother from the depths of hell, you have forgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace, in perfect safety, and without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to mar your rest. Forgive the Holy One the specialness He could not give, and that you made instead.

What we so often forget is that hell and heaven are always available to us here in this dream – either is a choice we make – either we choose to continue to see separation or we choose to acknowledge our Truth. God does not know of this dream – this is an illusion which does not exist. Only what God has created exists, and God certainly did not create this dream we are having. It is our doing from the very beginning. And we can choose to be of this world but not a part in it.

7. The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death. Yet they hear nothing. They are lost in dreams of specialness. They hate the call that would awaken them, and they curse God because He did not make their dream reality. Curse God and die, but not by Him Who made not death; but only in the dream. Open your eyes a little; see the savior God gave to you that you might look on him, and give him back his birthright. It is yours.

Would you take offense if you knew you were one of the 'special' ones referred to above? We are, you know. We think and believe we are separate bodies, some better than others, some less than others. We believe that we can judge others and tell them what they are to do in this dream – their dream. We believe we can favor some and hate others. And this specialness is just a badge that we wear as separate forms of illusions.

8. The slaves of specialness will yet be free. Such is the Will of God and of His Son. Would God condemn Himself to hell and to damnation? And do you will that this be done unto your savior? God calls to you from him to join His Will to save you both from hell. Look on the print of nails upon his hands that he holds out for your forgiveness. God asks your mercy on His Son and on Himself. Deny Them not. They ask of you but that your will be done. They seek your love that you may love yourself. Love not your specialness instead of Them. The print of nails is on your hands as well. Forgive your Father it was not His Will that you be crucified.

But here is the good news! We can once again taste the freedom that we are. In the first place, we are not separate from God, so all the rest mean nothing. We are as God created us, and we shall forever be as God created us – in the image and likeness of God – whatever you picture God as, you are. Do not think it brazen to admit to your Truth. Admit it and allow it to flood your mind with the torrents of truth just waiting for you to remember. And any print of nails in your hand, you placed there as a matter of choice in the specialness you believed you were.

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section IV. - Specialness versus Sinlessness

1. Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy; feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction. Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its hate is real. In danger of destruction it must kill, and you are drawn to it to kill it first. And such is guilt's attraction. Here is death enthroned as savior; crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can only mean destruction of the world, except yourself.

So whom do you trust other than yourself, or do you trust no one but you? And why? Do you see that if you trust in yourself alone, you are just that, alone, separated? And what do others appear then to you? The enemy of course, to be feared, to be fled, to kill if you feel so inclined. And what is the way out of all this? Death, of course. Our belief that death is the answer to all our problems, that death is real.

2. What could the purpose of the body be but specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was conceived to make you frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse. Yet bodies have no goal. Purpose is of the mind. And minds can change as they desire. What they are, and all their attributes, they cannot change. But what they hold as purpose can be changed, and body states must shift accordingly. Of itself the body can do nothing. See it as means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as means to heal, and it is healed.

Pause for a moment and think about the many purposes you have given the body since you first discovered it, and how many of those purposes do you still hold onto? See the body and you see specialness. We have been told of what the body is to be used for several times now. Any purpose is of the mind and only of the mind. The mind changes rapidly and repeatedly, but not so the body. All the plastic surgery possible really doesn't change the body, it only appears to. We might see the body as large or small, tall or short, or even see the body as ethnic. But the body of itself does nothing, we have been told this before. Why repeat it? Because we are still holding onto the body as something special, we are still judging others and their actions. We have not change the thought in our mind that we are not what we believe we are as this body. And many of us have learned that indeed the body can heal itself of illnesses, once the mind holds the thought that the body is not sick.

3. You can but hurt yourself. This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet. To minds intent on specialness it is impossible. Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack, it is quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the mind, and its effects are felt but where it is. Nor is the mind limited; so must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. Nothing could make less sense to specialness. Nothing could make more sense to miracles. For miracles are merely change of purpose from hurt to healing. This shift in purpose does "endanger" specialness, but only in the sense that all illusions are "threatened" by the truth. They will not stand before it. Yet what comfort has ever been in them, that you would keep the gift your Father asks from Him, and give it there instead? Given to Him, the universe is yours. Offered to them, no gifts can be returned. What you have given specialness has left you bankrupt and your treasure house barren and empty, with an open door inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and destroy.

We learned very early in reading the Course that a miracle is but a change of thought – that simple and that powerful. And the one behind the change of thought is only ourselves. No one change a thought we hold unless we agree to have that thought changed, and then we have changed the thought we hold, not someone else. If you are in fear, a change of thought will give you love, not more fear. Some say but they become more afraid, and yet if you are in fear, you are in fear. The opposite is Truth, Love. Love and fear are only a thought apart from each other. The end of separation is but a thought away from your mind.

4. Earlier I said consider not the means by which salvation is attained, nor how to reach it. But do consider, and consider well, whether it is your wish that you might see your brother sinless. To specialness the answer must be "no." A sinless brother is its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, would be its friend. Your brother's sin would justify itself, and give it meaning that the truth denies. All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real. If he is sinful, then is your reality not real, but just a dream of specialness that lasts an instant, crumbling into dust.

So the big question is placed before us: how do you want to see your brother? Don Miquel Ruiz, in the Four Agreements, speaks about us being impeccable with our words. Before you answer the big question, choose your words well. How do you want to see your brother, how do you want to see yourself? Are you afraid that if you see your brother in the Truth he is, that you will lose your identity as well? Perhaps you are attached to your physical looks and fear that you will lose them in Truth. How do you want to see others? And how do you want to see yourself?

5. Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. Only this is certain in this shifting world that has no meaning in reality: When peace is not with you entirely, and when you suffer pain of any kind, you have beheld some sin within your brother, and have rejoiced at what you thought was there. Your specialness seemed safe because of it. And thus you saved what you appointed to be your savior, and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. So are you bound with him, for you are one. And so is specialness his "enemy," and yours as well.

So is 'specialness' your choice? Are you content with the world you make and happy with the separation that you see existing between you and others? Do you desire to continue to experience pain and suffering as a price for your world? Are you still believing you are special and believing in your death at the same time? What so special about death? Can you comprehend just for a moment what your world would be seen as if you saw others as not being separate from you; not being bodies, some special and some not so special? Can you grasp that death is but an experience in this world, but it affects you in no way? Are you afraid of being immortal? Are you afraid of the truth about yourself?

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section V. - The Christ in You

1. The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves, and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He sees, because He knows that it is one with Him and with His Father. Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees, although it is not true. Yet what you seek for is a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing makes real, as surely as does will create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend itself. Except that one deludes; the other heals.

I know that for me, the word "Christ" has always caused some confusion to me. From my childhood, it meant the second person in the Trinity – it meant Jesus Christ – but it never meant "the Self that God created by extension of His spirit" as one of the Course dictionary puts it. So for me, the Christ within me is my Truth – that which I am. And it is indeed a still small voice within, and yet is ready to speak to me at any given moment whenever I choose to listen – that of course being the key. Listening to that 'voice' gives me the feeling of what I had been searching for – a satisfaction to the longing I all too often feel.

2. There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or disguised the form, however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain, in which you suffer not your condemnation. In dreams effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him. He does not realize he picked a thread from here, a scrap from there, and wove a picture out of nothing. For the parts do not belong together, and the whole contributes nothing to the parts to give them meaning.

There is no dream of separation in which I do not suffer from my own condemnation – from my own thoughts that I hold within my mind and believe to be real. I am not even aware most of the time that I am the maker of this drama called my life. When I am, I change what is before me. I step from fear to love with but a thought.

3. Where could your peace arise but from forgiveness? The Christ in you looks only on the truth, and sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. He is at peace because He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He that you have not? He is your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet. How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He hears. How beautiful His hand that holds His brother's, and how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him what can be seen and heard, and where he will see nothing and there is no sound to hear.

First person:Where could my peace arise but from forgiveness, my forgiveness? The Spirit in me – the God in me – looks only on truth and sees no condemnation that requires forgiveness. I am at peace because the Christ within me sees no sin. As I identify with the Christ within me, I realize that I am the Christ within me, and what is seen by the Christ is seen be me. The Christ is my eyes, ears, hands and feet. How gentle are the sights shown to me and how soft the sounds now heard. How beautiful my hand appears as I hold my brother's, and how lovely it is to walk with my brother, showing him also what is to be seen and heard.

4. Yet let your specialness direct his way, and you will follow. And both will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams that spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl him over it. For what can specialness delight in but to kill? What does it seek for but the sight of death? Where does it lead but to destruction? Yet think not that it looked upon your brother first, nor hated him before it hated you. The sin its eyes behold in him and love to look upon it saw in you, and looks on still with joy. Yet is it joy to look upon decay and madness, and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself?

But when I see my brother as just another body, perhaps judge him as being less than me, then we both are led into darkness. If I see myself different – special – from my brother, then my world and his are but a dream of nothingness. There is no joy in the darkness of madness. There is no peace in the belief of sin. There is no happiness in knowing death will take us both.

5. Rejoice you have no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them. They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet because they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light, that you may lead as you were led.

Listening to the Christ within me, I realize that my physical body, my illusion I have made, is simply that. I cannot see with this body, nor hear with it, nor can I hold my brother. Listening to the Christ within me – that still small voice that is my Guidance – I see Love, I hear Love, and I hold Love. And what was once darkness is now Light, my Light from within me.

6. The Christ in you is very still. He knows where you are going, and He leads you there in gentleness and blessing all the way. His Love for God replaces all the fear you thought you saw within yourself. His Holiness shows you Himself in him whose hand you hold, and whom you lead to Him. And what you see is like yourself. For what but Christ is there to see and hear and love and follow home? He looked upon you first, but recognized that you were not complete. And so He sought for your completion in each living thing that He beholds and loves. And seeks it still, that each might offer you the Love of God.

First person: The Christ in me is very still. He knows where I am going, and He leads me there in gentleness and blessing all the way. His Love for God replaces all the fear I thought I saw within myself. His Holiness shows me Himself in my brother whose hand I hold, and whom I lead to Him. And what I see is like myself. For what but Christ is there to see and hear and love and follow home? He looked upon me first, but recognized that I was not complete. And so He sought for my completion in each living thing that He beholds and loves. And seeks it still, that each might offer me the Love of God.

7. Yet is He quiet, for He knows that love is in you now, and safely held in you by that same hand that holds your brother's in your own. Christ's hand holds all His brothers in Himself. He gives them vision for their sightless eyes, and sings to them of Heaven, that their ears may hear no more the sound of battle and of death. He reaches through them, holding out His hand, that everyone may bless all living things, and see their holiness. And He rejoices that these sights are yours, to look upon with Him and share His joy. His perfect lack of specialness He offers you, that you may save all living things from death, receiving from each one the gift of life that your forgiveness offers to your Self. The sight of Christ is all there is to see. The song of Christ is all there is to hear. The hand of Christ is all there is to hold. There is no journey but to walk with Him.

I know that the Christ is within me; I experience the Love I am. I also know that my brother is as I am as well, that the Christ is within him also. The hand I hold is that of the Christ, not of a brother I thought I saw as another body. And we all know that we are all held by but One Hand of Love. And in Love, no specialness is seen, none is needed and none can be sought. As I see from within, Love is my view. As I hear from within, the song of Love is heard. As I reach out from within to hold the hand of another, I know I hold the Hand of the Christ within.

8. You who would be content with specialness, and seek salvation in a war with love, consider this: The holy Lord of Heaven has Himself come down to you, to offer you your own completion. What is His is yours because in your completion is His Own. He Who willed not to be without His Son could never will that you be brotherless. And would He give a brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to Him in holiness as you must be?

And for those of us who might yet consider specialness an option, we are to consider what is being offered to us: Within us is the completion we seek of ourselves, the missing piece to the puzzle of separation. That which we thought was lost was always there. Our completion and our brother's as well is there for the acceptance – that is all we must do – simply accept that which we have forever been. In that acceptance we see no specialness and only Oneness.

9. There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must be about yourself. Christ has no doubt, and from His certainty His quiet comes. He will exchange His certainty for all your doubts, if you agree that He is One with you, and that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp because your hands are His. He is within you, yet He walks beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. His quietness becomes your certainty. And where is doubt when certainty has come?

And here is one of the many little keys that are presented to us, in aiding us to become aware of who we are. If we are aware of doubt, we are not in our Truth. There exists no doubt within us as to who we are. There exists there only the certainty, the knowing of our Truth. Be certain and know that you are that which is within you – the stillness and silence within you – the Christ within you.

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section VI. - Salvation from Fear

1. 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 fear. 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.

Several times in the Course we are reminded that our brother is our savior, and we are his. Once again here it is pointed out to us that our brother is our savior from this dream of fear. Our brother is the healing of our sense of sacrifice and fear that we have here will just turn to dust and blow with the wind. In our brother is our assurance that the Christ is present here and now, within us all. God could no longer be separated from God than we could separate from God. Look into your brother and see the Christ reflection looking back at you.

2. 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 nor from his Father.

Read this short paragraph carefully and slowly – did you get the magnitude of how important you and your brother are? Nothing exists that we are not of – all of us – not one separated and left alone. What is of God is real, all else in false, an illusion. What we are is no illusion; what we think we are is.

3. 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.

And this goes on to tell us that nothing is kept from us – what God is, we are. God has but one thought and that is what we are. And that is all of us. The brother before you that you may have turned away from, that you may have judged, that you may not have sent love to – that brother is as you are. None of us are different. We are all as God is.

4. 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 nor yourself. For you will use the world for what is not its purpose, and will not escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in all respects, in every way and every circumstance, in all temptation to perceive what is not there, and all belief God's Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not.

This world we have made and continue to make, so it appears, is before us for the purpose of healing our brother and ourselves, and for no other reason. But until we see the Son of God as healed, we will continue to see this world. And remember the Son of God is each and every one of us. We are here for everyone and must leave no one aside. If we are to heal then we must heal together. And once healed, our world become no longer necessary and so we shall leave and wake where we have forever been. Remember that any laws of this world that we make, we have also made. Those laws are like this world – an illusion within an illusion.

5. 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.

Just look at your brother – all your brothers – and see the laws of this world become reversed. See that darkness is not present, but only light. See them as sinless and you also are seen as sinless. Do not see one of them as special for they are but One with you. Seeing just one special separates all of you. Even if you think see one that you believe is more holy than you, more perfect than you could ever be. That brother is as you are.

6. 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 nor place nor 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.

Remember how the Christ within us allows us to see, hear and touch so differently? From that Which is within you, see your brother in the innocence he is. See him in the Light from within you and him. Listen to the song your brother sings to you and all others. Hear the sound of God coming to you, a sound long ago heard but since hidden from you. See your brother without any veil separating you from him, for no veil is visible in his completeness. Look at the body of your brother and see beyond it to the truth of both of you.

7. 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 that seems to have no end, until the truth be your decision. For eternity is not regained by still one more denial of 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?

And as you continue to move through your dream, which do you see when you look upon your brother – a body or the Truth? Do you see the form of an illusion or are you looking beyond the form to the Christ within? And what you see in him is a choice you must constantly make. And that choice is also how you shall see yourself. If you see a body, is that body a form of eternity – of life eternal – or is a form waiting the final experience of death to claim its ending?

8. Your brother's holiness is sacrament and benediction unto you. His errors cannot 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 begun, and needs no end. What never was is not a part of you. Yet you will think it is, until you realize that it is not a part of him 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.

This is a beautiful thought – my brother's holiness (wholeness) is a sacrament and a benediction to me – it is a gift of God. My brother may have made mistakes, as I have. But his mistakes and mine are not real, what is false never existed. This journey that we think we are on will end when we come to understand that it never began, because it could not have. We never left our Source. We need not return to anyone, for we have never left.

9. See him as what he is, that your deliverance may not be long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while your brother lies asleep, till what has been assigned to you is done and he is risen from the past. He who condemned himself, and you as well, is given you to save from condemnation, along with you. And both shall see God's glory in His Son, whom you mistook as flesh, and bound to laws that have no power over him at all.

This is almost like being implored to see our brother in the Truth he is! So much depends on our view! See him for what he is in Truth, and our wandering ends. See him separate and the 'senseless' journey appears to continue, without a purpose and with no ending – such is the hell we make. It is but a thought we have to hold in our mind as we look at another – see in him the Christ within, and the Christ within us both will become One.

10. 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. Would you decide against the holiness He sees?

Although we live in what is a world we make, and believe we are govern by the laws we have also made, we must be able to see that these laws are about illusions, not Truth. These laws have us behaving as prisoners in self-made jails instead of experiencing the freedom that we are. The rules we make in this world are not for just a few, but for all. Not one can live differently from the rest. Specialness is a title for ego, holy is a phrase for who we are in Truth. The Christ in me see the Christ in you – Namaste. If I am to be impeccable with my word, then I must believe in what I see in you.

11. 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.

Specialness was made when I made me – ego. Specialness means that I am alone – that I am separated from God and you – that I am unique and different from all others. It means the world to ego, but means nothing to me in truth.

12. 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.

Does the thought of letting go of all you believe in the world you make, seem like a sacrifice to you, one that perhaps appears too big for you to take on? But yet this letting go is of an illusion only – a nothingness – where time exists and is your master. We have but to indicate a little willingness (a phrase repeated so often in the Course) or how about the thought of just a 'nod to God' – this one really gets to me – just a nod to God – a knowing tip of the head to signify my little willingness. And how about just being still and being in the presence of the Christ within you – in the stillness and silence we hear what we are to do. And all of this is no task too difficult for us to take on – it is all within the reach of one thought.

13. 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 cannot 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 comes the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.

See a body and you see as ego; see the Christ within and you see in Truth. In Truth there is no judgment, simply the knowing of who we are. In Truth we hear the voice of the Christ within and we listen. Judging we hear nothing but ego. But beyond the vision of ego, beyond the sounds of ego, is the sight and sound of the Christ within us – the Truth of who and what we are. And with that sight and sound we experience the Oneness we are.

Chapter 24

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Section VII. - The Meeting Place

1. How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth! His wish is law to him, and he obeys. Nothing his specialness demands does he withhold. Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. And while it calls to him he hears no other Voice. No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest reverence. This is your son, beloved of you as you are to your Father. Yet it stands in place of your creations, who are son to you, that you might share the Fatherhood of God, not snatch it from Him. What is this son that you have made to be your strength? What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? What is this parody of God's creation that takes the place of yours? And where are they, now that the host of God has found another son whom he prefers to them?

Ever stop for a brief moment and realize how much energy you spend in being who you are not? What would we be if we did not give any more thought to what we think we are and gave all of our attention and awareness to that which we are? And what stops us from doing just that?

2. The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you.

And for those who believe that they are indeed as God created them in eternity; that they are not these bodies moving through this dream, can you also grasp that all others are the same as you in this regard? All of us are but One with God; not one of is separated in Truth, although we may judge some to be separated from God. How we react to a brother is how a brother will react to us. In this Course we are told over and over again, as we give we receive – a message given us many ways but always the same. Some of us are indeed slow in learning this one.

3. How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? How can you fail to know it in his holiness? Seek not to make your specialness the truth, for if it were you would be lost indeed. Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see his holiness because it is the truth. And what is true in him must be as true in you.

How does it feel when you tell yourself that even you are not special to God? That even you are not better than another brother in the eyes of God? Specialness is of ego, Oneness of God. One you think you are, the other you have forever been.

4. Ask yourself this: Can you protect the mind? The body, yes, a little; not from time, but temporarily. And much you think you save, you hurt. What would you save it for? For in that choice lie both its health and harm. Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to house your specialness in better style, or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see this purpose in your brother's, such is your condemnation of your own. Weave, rather, then, a frame of holiness around him, that the truth may shine on him, and give you safety from decay.

So how have you answered the first question: can you protect the mind? Not even your mind, but the mind. And do you really protect the body but within your mind? And your purpose in wanting to live forever in this dream is what? Do you fear death so that you will do whatever you can to prevent it, never once giving any thought that the 'time' of your death is not up to you? Death is but the end of this dream, an awakening for us to where we have eternally been.

5. The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true, its safety rests secure. If not, it has no purpose, and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness, and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them.

So if God did not create the 'you' you believe you are in this body, then is God responsible for the health of this body? This is an illusion, a falsehood. God only knows Love – Truth. What you are that God created is beyond all words known to us, and yet a feeling deep within us can explain a little to us. A knowing from within calms us down from the fear we have made. Do you believe that you can be in this dream without fear? Do you believe that this dream can be seen through Love – your Truth? And who is making this dream that you believe in?

6. The test of everything on earth is simply this; "What is it for?" The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve. Here you are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood.

So perhaps the underlining message here might just be: "I do not know" – not a statement of ignorance but an act of surrendering, of letting go of all the notions that we hold onto about this dream. While in this dream, if we ask that question "What is it for?" we will give ourselves many answers as to something's use or purpose. But never once will we respond that something is for eternity – forever – for nothing in this dream is. Then what about us, we are in this dream? But only in mind that thinks a body is real.

7. A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.

For the times you wonder who you are, here is an answer worth remembering: What God creates must be as God for nothing else exists. I am the creation of God – a perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to be added and nothing that could be taken, not born of size or place nor time, nor held by limitations or uncertainties of any kind. I am as God Is. What God is I AM. I am the means and end, the Oneness of All That Is.

8. This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned. Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. Here are the means and the purpose separate because they were so made and so perceived. And therefore do we deal with them as if they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. Perception does not seem to be a means. And it is this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what you see it for. Perception seems to teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. It is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you wanted to be true.

Some very important points here for us all: the Course does not try to teach us what we cannot learn. The scope of the Course does exceed our own scope. The difficulties we believe we encounter in the Course are but our own resistance to what is being told us. Remember we still believe that what we see is real, even though it is all a perception of thoughts we hold. Even this Course is but a perception of a thought we hold.

9. Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this body in a different light and it looks different. And without a light it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it with your hands and hear it move. Here is an image that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listen to the sounds it makes. It proves its own reality to you.

Perhaps you have had the experience of being in place of such total darkness that you could not see your own hand before you face. In the darkness, is your body still there? We believe it is, we believe we can feel it, but is it still there? And yet in light we are reassured because now we can see it – not just think it is present, now we are sure, or so we think. And is the body you have now the same you had several years ago? But what about that which is within you – has it changed any?

10. Thus is the body made a theory of yourself, with no provisions made for evidence beyond itself, and no escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you apart from it. You brand it sinful and you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialness whispers, "Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Thus does the "son" become the means to serve his "father's" purpose. Not identical, not even like, but still a means to offer to the "father" what he wants. Such is the travesty on God's creation. For as His Son's creation gave Him joy and witness to His Love and shared His purpose, so does the body testify to the idea that made it, and speak for its reality and truth.

In reading this over a few times, one has to laugh at how much attention one gives one's body – a body that grows, withers, flourishes and dies. Not much to look forward to as a body? And yet we do believe we are this body. We see it before us in the mirror. People see the body and call its name and it responds to them, and we believe we are that body. And yet being a body leaves an emptiness in us that we cannot fill from anything in the world we make. And the point is just that – the body is empty – it is nothing.

11. And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting place and no encounter. One do you perceive outside yourself, your own beloved son. The other rests within, his Father's Son, within your brother as he is in you. Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor even what they do. They have a different purpose. It is this that joins them to their like, and separates each from all aspects with a different purpose. The Son of God retains his Father's Will. The son of man perceives an alien will and wishes it were so. And thus does his perception serve his wish by giving it appearances of truth. Yet can perception serve another goal. It is not bound to specialness but by your choice. And it is given you to make a different choice, and use perception for a different purpose. And what you see will serve that purpose well, and prove its own reality to you.

And so as we move through this dream, we meet others – some we call brothers, others we call sisters, and all of them we refer to as the Son of God at some point on our path. But does God have many 'sons' or is there simply the Son of God and we are it? With God, there is no 'one' Son, there is but the Son. In Oneness, we never speak of the 'one' Oneness, do we? The son of man is as man is – an illusion that will end with the dream. The Son of God is as God – and shall be for all eternity.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Introduction

1. The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you. And thus it must be that you are not within a body. What is within you cannot be outside. And it is certain that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life. What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can you. Christ is within a frame of Holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not, that He may call to them to come to Him and see Him where they thought their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His Holiness in them.

So simply stated and yet so difficult for some to grasp. The Christ within you is not with your body, the illusion of form you believe in. But the Christ is still within you, but within the Truth of you. And so we come to grasp a little that we cannot be this body if the Christ within us is not present there. This body cannot be who we are in Truth. We live a life of eternity, but yet the body is a temporary carrier for us. The body will cease to be, but never us. The Christ within us is not outside of us, and yet the Christ within us can be seen by others.

2. No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere. Except in bodies. And as long as he believes he is in a body, where he thinks he is He cannot be. And so he carries Him unknowingly, and does not make Him manifest. And thus he does not recognize Him where He is. The son of man is not the risen Christ. Yet does the Son of God abide exactly where he is, and walks with him within his holiness, as plain to see as is his specialness set forth within his body.

If we become so aware of the Christ within us, we then begin to see the Christ within others as well. But if we continue to focus on the body, we will see only bodies before us, bodies separated and wandering no where and yet seemingly everywhere. Would you recognize the Christ in another if you did not first acknowledge It in yourself? Would you recognize God if God stood before you?

3. The body needs no healing. But the mind that thinks it is a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His purpose folds the body in His light, and fills it with the Holiness that shines from Him. And nothing that the body says or does but makes Him manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for you. And such it must be that your mission is for him.

Such is the mission a brother has for us, and we for him – to heal the mind that thinks a body can be sick. Some people can grasp this easy while other state it takes a tremendous leap of faith to get there. If you believe that everything in your world is a projection of a thought you hold, then you must be also able to grasp that if a body is sick, it is only because a thought of sickness is being held in mind. The Christ in us all, is there so that others may see theirs as well. In seeing the Christ is the mind healed.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section I. - The Link to Truth

1. It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that Christ appointed you to do, since it is He Who does it. And in the doing of it will you learn the body merely seems to be the means to do it. For the Mind is His. And so it must be yours. His Holiness directs the body through the mind at one with Him. And you are manifest unto your holy brother, as he to you. Here is the meeting of the holy Christ unto Himself; nor any differences perceived to stand between the aspects of His Holiness, which meet and join and raise Him to His Father, whole and pure and worthy of His everlasting Love.

Is anything in life truly difficult or hard, or is just us that make it so? And it has to be us for we make life. If only we will accept our truth and lay down the dream of darkness. Allow God to work through you, use your body for it's intended purpose. Remember that we are but One Mind – nothing else exists. When you see your brother, truly see your brother. See him as the reflection of the Christ Consciousness you have within you, and he within him. For those who recently watched the History Channel and saw the painting of daVinci's that has longed been said to depict Jesus and John the Baptist as infants, recall how the thought now is that perhaps daVinci was trying to tell us that it is simply ourselves meeting ourselves – seeing ourselves as we are.

2. How can you manifest the Christ in you except to look on holiness and see Him there? Perception tells you you are manifest in what you see. Behold the body, and you will believe that you are there. And every body that you look upon reminds you of yourself; your sinfulness, your evil and, above all, your death. And would you not despise the one who tells you this, and seek his death instead? The message and the messenger are one. And you must see your brother as yourself. Framed in his body you will see your sinfulness, wherein you stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ in him proclaims Himself as you.

And where is it that we see this holiness? Only in our brother. The Christ in me sees the Christ in you – Namaste! If you see a brother as a body, you will also see yourself as a body and immediately all that you believe goes with a body is also yours – age, illness, pain, suffering, etc. But see a brother as the Christ he is and you are, and you see before you the Oneness you have been seeking.

3. Perception is a choice of what you want yourself to be; the world you want to live in, and the state in which you think your mind will be content and satisfied. It chooses where you think your safety lies, at your decision. It reveals yourself to you as you would have you be. And always is it faithful to your purpose, from which it never separates, nor gives the slightest witness unto anything the purpose in your mind upholdeth not. Perception is a part of what it is your purpose to behold, for means and end are never separate. And thus you learn what seems to have a life apart has none.

Perhaps one could say that perception is our only choice in this dream – our choice to see either Love or fear – to experience that which is real and that which is false – to perceive Lightness or believe in darkness. Any thought we hold can be perceived many ways or so it seems, but the choice is ultimately ours alone to make.

4. You are the means for God; not separate, nor with a life apart from His. His life is manifest in you who are His Son. Each aspect of Himself is framed in holiness and perfect purity, in love celestial and so complete it wishes only that it may release all that it looks upon unto itself. Its radiance shines through each body that it looks upon, and brushes all its darkness into light merely by looking past it to the light. The veil is lifted through its gentleness, and nothing hides the face of Christ from its beholders. You and your brother stand before Him now, to let Him draw aside the veil that seems to keep you separate and apart.

This is where you and I are always at – before God waiting for the veil of darkness to be lifted from our view, the very veil that has appear as being separate from each other. Almost as if it were a mirror – if I believe I am a body, then I see my brother as a body. Once the veil is removed so also is the reflection for only the Oneness of It All is present.

5. Since you believe that you are separate, Heaven presents itself to you as separate, too. Not that it is in truth, but that the link that has been given you to join the truth may reach to you through what you understand. Father and Son and Holy Spirit are as One, as all your brothers join as one in truth. Christ and His Father never have been separate, and Christ abides within your understanding, in the part of you that shares His Father's Will. The Holy Spirit links the other part–the tiny, mad desire to be separate, different and special–to the Christ, to make the oneness clear to what is really one. In this world this is not understood, but can be taught.

A main thought for me here is that Oneness – not understandable, but can be experience is Truth. In Truth no separation exists nor could any ever be. In this dream we need words like 'Father', 'Son,' and 'Spirit' to help us grasp a meaning beyond us and yet one that we feel so comfortable with, from another time perhaps. Beyond all this dream, all these words, is All That Is – the Truth we are. With words we build links and question what we have been taught and begin the process of letting go of all that we believe is within our dream. A task that often looks impossible until we realize that it is only a thought away from being done.

6. The Holy Spirit serves Christ's purpose in your mind, so that the aim of specialness can be corrected where the error lies. Because His purpose still is one with both the Father and the Son, He knows the Will of God and what you really will. But this is understood by mind perceived as one, aware that it is one, and so experienced. It is the Holy Spirit's function to teach you how this oneness is experienced, what you must do that it can be experienced, and where you should go to do it.

Recall in the beginning of the Course, how we were told that the Holy Spirit is the Voice for God – a link to our Truth. Here we are reminded again of that. God does recognize this dream – an illusion – a falsehood – but we believe we recognize this dream as reality. So God placed the Holy Spirit as our beckoned call – as close as the next thought, or perhaps even closer. Within this dream we have the free will to make choices, and yet we have Spirit next to us to help us make those choices if we but ask.

7. All this takes note of time and place as if they were discrete, for while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a Oneness joined as One is meaningless. It is apparent that a mind so split could never be the Teacher of a Oneness which unites all things within Itself. And so What is within this mind, and does unite all things together, must be its Teacher. Yet must It use the language that this mind can understand, in the condition in which it thinks it is. And It must use all learning to transfer illusions to the truth, taking all false ideas of what you are, and leading you beyond them to the truth that is beyond them. All this can very simply be reduced to this:

What is the same can not be different, and what is one can not have separate parts.

As long as we believe in separation, that you are different from me, we shall not experience the Oneness before us, and it is before us always. Recall that a Teacher of God does not teach but demonstrates? How do you demonstrate Oneness? Certainly not in believing we are all separate bodies appearing to move through this illusion we call life? If we are to demonstrate Oneness we must see our brother as One with us – we must see our brother as we are. We are all as God is, and God is All That Is.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section II. - The Savior from the Dark

1. Is it not evident that what the body's eyes perceive fills you with fear? Perhaps you think you find a hope of satisfaction there. Perhaps you fancy to attain some peace and satisfaction in the world as you perceive it. Yet it must be evident the outcome does not change. Despite your hopes and fancies, always does despair result. And there is no exception, nor will there ever be. The only value that the past can hold is that you learn it gave you no rewards which you would want to keep. For only thus will you be willing to relinquish it, and have it gone forever.

Is there one of you who can honestly say that your world holds no fears for you? None? Our world of illusions – our world of fear holds nothing but fear for us. Each of us may see the world differently but still it is a world of illusion made by us as the egos we believe we are. Certainly there were moments in your world when you experienced happiness, but those times did not stay – they were not permanent, continuous. No matter how hard we tried to hang onto those moments there were like grains of sand falling through our fingers. We have chased after dreams only to get there and chase some more. Look at the past that we believe in and see it for what it was, remembering it never was. What from the past has you so hooked on it that you cannot let go of it? What from the past have you placed such value on that you fear letting go of the thought? And the past is but a thought.

2. Is it not strange that you should cherish still some hope of satisfaction from the world you see? In no respect, at any time or place, has anything but fear and guilt been your reward. How long is needed for you to realize the chance of change in this respect is hardly worth delaying change that might result in better outcome? For one thing is sure; the way you see, and long have seen, gives no support to base your future hopes, and no suggestions of success at all. To place your hopes where no hope lies must make you hopeless. Yet is this hopelessness your choice, while you would seek for hope where none is ever found.

This is a very powerful paragraph! Perhaps in the first person will shed some light. And always read the first person as being you.

3. Is it not strange that I should cherish still some hope of satisfaction from the world I see? In no respect, at any time or place, has anything but fear and guilt been my reward. How long is needed for me to realize the chance of change in this respect is hardly worth delaying change that might result in better outcome? For one thing is sure, the way I see, and long have seen, gives no support to base my future hopes, and no suggestions of success at all. To place my hopes where no hope lies must make me hopeless. Yet is this hopelessness my choice, while I would seek for hope where none is ever found.

I realize that each time I say the word 'hope' I am be hopeless – hope is a negative term indicating that I believe I need or lack something to feel complete. Hope assures me of nothing – knowing assures me of what I already am.

4. Is it not also true that you have found some hope apart from this; some glimmering,–inconstant, wavering, yet dimly seen,–that hopefulness is warranted on grounds that are not in this world? And yet your hope that they may still be here prevents you still from giving up the hopeless and unrewarding task you set yourself. Can it make sense to hold the fixed belief that there is reason to uphold pursuit of what has always failed, on grounds that it will suddenly succeed and bring what it has never brought before?

Is it a hope that I grasp or a knowing that I have, that I am not of this world, merely in it? It is the knowing that drives me along my path. It is my knowing that has been choosing the guidance of Spirit. It is my knowing that has me seeing my brother as one with me.

5. Its past has failed. Be glad that it is gone within your mind, to darken what is there. Take not the form for content, for the form is but a means for content. And the frame is but a means to hold the picture up, so that it can be seen. A frame that hides the picture has no purpose. It cannot be a frame if it is what you see. Without the picture is the frame without its meaning. Its purpose is to set the picture off, and not itself.

There is a saying about having our hopes dashed to pieces, and that is what happens to hope. They come apart for they are but nothing. Let go of the hopes you hold as thoughts in your mind. Think instead of the knowledge you have within you that tells you that what you see in not real – this life is not real – and this body you see is not real.

6. Who hangs an empty frame upon a wall and stands before it, deep in reverence, as if a masterpiece were there to see? Yet if you see your brother as a body, it is but this you do. The masterpiece that God has set within this frame is all there is to see. The body holds it for a while, without obscuring it in any way. Yet what God has created needs no frame, for what He has created He supports and frames within Himself. His masterpiece He offers you to see. And would you rather see the frame instead of this? And see the picture not at all?

My wife is an artist and so I am caught often in the world of 'frames'. I always thought a good frame made a picture better but now I see her work in process and completion, without frames, and the art is there for me to view just as the art it is. Once the frame is placed on the art, the art loses what it was and becomes a framed picture. My view of art is that I view it and then become aware of what happens next. Does the picture grab me, pull me into and has me wandering in its beauty? Or does it leave me cold and simply seeing a flat canvas? And so it is with a brother as well – when I look and see what he is in truth, I become one with him and lose myself in the Self we are. If I see a brother as a body, I see nothing but the illusion and judge it accordingly.

7. The Holy Spirit is the frame God set around the part of Him that you would see as separate. Yet its frame is joined to its Creator, One with Him and with His masterpiece. This is its purpose, and you do not make the frame into the picture when you choose to see it in its place. The frame that God has given it but serves His purpose, not yours apart from His. It is your separate purpose that obscures the picture, and cherishes the frame instead of it. Yet God has set His masterpiece within a frame that will endure forever, when yours has crumbled into dust. But think you not the picture is destroyed in any way. What God creates is safe from all corruption, unchanged and perfect in eternity.

Here is another concept of the Holy Spirit, instead of the link we already know – this time as a frame around a part of God that we believe we are separate from. God is not separated into parts, our belief of Him is. I like to think of Spirit as not simply being the Voice for God, but the Voice of God. If God speaks, it will be heard as Spirit. And all of this is given us because of what we have come to believe in this world we make – that we are separate from each other, and separate from God as well. But that knowing, that all-present knowing tells us that it just 'ain't so'. We may believe in the separation, but something within us knows it is not Truth.

8. Accept God's frame instead of yours, and you will see the masterpiece. Look at its loveliness, and understand the Mind that thought it, not in flesh and bones, but in a frame as lovely as itself. Its holiness lights up the sinlessness the frame of darkness hides, and casts a veil of light across the picture's face which but reflects the light that shines from it to its Creator. Think not this face was ever darkened because you saw it in a frame of death. God kept it safe that you might look on it, and see the holiness that He has given it.

Without the frame, the masterpiece is before us in its original state of being – you and I see the Self in each and experience the Oneness we have forever been. The frame – the body – does nothing but obscure the beauty within the frame. Allow your frame to drop and stand in the beauty of what you have always been. That is your Reality, not this world you thought you saw.

8. Within the darkness see the savior from the dark, and understand your brother as his Father's Mind shows him to you. He will step forth from darkness as you look on him, and you will see the dark no more. The darkness touched him not, nor you who brought him forth for you to look upon. His sinlessness but pictures yours. His gentleness becomes your strength, and both will gladly look within, and see the holiness that must be there because of what you looked upon in him. He is the frame in which your holiness is set, and what God gave him must be given you. However much he overlooks the masterpiece in him and sees only a frame of darkness, it is still your only function to behold in him what he sees not. And in this seeing is the vision shared that looks on Christ instead of seeing death.

Now look at your brother and allow the frame you see to disappear and what remains? What is left is what you have long sought – a reflection of that which is hidden within you. A reflection of the Christ Consciousness we are. You brother is here to show you the way back, as you are here to show him. But until the frames you both hold up are dropped, neither of you shall see the other as you are. What you believe God has given you, God has given your brother also, for you and your brother are but One and the same. God has but a Son and you are it.

9. How could the Lord of Heaven not be glad if you appreciate His masterpiece? What could He do but offer thanks to you who love His Son as He does? Would He not make known to you His Love, if you but share His praise of what He loves? God cherishes creation as the perfect Father that He is. And so His joy is made complete when any part of Him joins in His praise, to share His joy. This brother is His perfect gift to you. And He is glad and thankful when you thank His perfect Son for being what he is. And all His thanks and gladness shine on you who would complete His joy, along with Him. And thus is yours completed. Not one ray of darkness can be seen by those who will to make their Father's happiness complete, and theirs along with His. The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His purpose. It is not His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours.

Ever see God smile? Ever see a brother in the truth he is? In his truth, God is smiling back to you. And this masterpiece of beauty standing before you is a gift to you from God, and who are you to refuse a gift from God? And you are God's gift to your brother. And yet the gift is but One gift – the Oneness you have forever been. God could never be alone but you think you can. Does that make you different from God, or better than God? All that does is that you have forgotten who you are.

10. Forgive your brother, and you cannot separate yourself from him nor from his Father. You need no forgiveness, for the wholly pure have never sinned. Give, then, what He has given you, that you may see His Son as one, and thank his Father as He thanks you. Nor believe that all His praise is given not to you. For what you give is His, and giving it, you learn to understand His gift to you. And give the Holy Spirit what He offers unto the Father and the Son alike. Nothing has power over you except His Will and yours, which but extends His Will. It was for this you were created, and your brother with you and at one with you.

And for what were you created? For forgiveness, remember? Neither you nor your brother need forgiveness for neither of you can sin. Forgiveness is much like an eraser – it takes away what was a error in thought and replaces it with a thought of love.

11. You and your brother are the same, as God Himself is One and not divided in His Will. And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother. See not in him the sinfulness he sees, but give him honor that you may esteem yourself and him. To you and your brother is given the power of salvation, that escape from darkness into light be yours to share; that you may see as one what never has been separate, nor apart from all God's Love as given equally.

By now you must have the idea in your mind that you can not escape this darkness alone simply you are not alone, and neither is your brother, but you both think you are. So the escape is simply the realization that what you think is two of you is really One. In the Oneness is All That Is, that which you have never left.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section III. - Perception and Choice

1. To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with perception's fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this, to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception's form, adapted to this world, of God's more basic law; that love creates itself, and nothing but itself.

As long as I cherish guilt; as long as I believe I can attack you or that you can attack me, I am believing in guilt. What I perceive in this world is from the thoughts I hold in mind. If I believe it is there, it there because I want it to there. If I desire to see love, I shall see love, and it shall be real.

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

In truth, we extend that which we are, and that will never change. In this illusion of a world we make, we still extend because of who we are but now we extend into the illusion – we extend an illusion into an illusion, neither of which have meaning. It is not that God does not know of this dream, but God does not see it for the illusion it is – it is not real. What God does see is us – for we are real.

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

And here again is a message repeated for us again. Perception is of ego, knowledge is of Truth – of Spirit. What we believe we see is never Truth, but what we know within, is. If I see this world – my illusion – in Truth, is it a perception or is it knowledge? If I see this illusion as Love – in Truth – then it is no longer perception.

4. There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; not as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error is the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error.

And here is the good news – the Holy Spirit can change our illusion from fear to love. It is but a correction of our thought that is made, and the madness dissolves and only love remains to be seen. But is my world then still an illusion?

5. There is another purpose in the world that error made, because it has another Maker Who can reconcile its goal with His Creator's purpose. In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it must be, and light the body up instead of it. The lamps of Heaven are not for mind to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, then must the Maker of the world correct your error, lest you remain in darkness where the lamps are not.

In the world presented to us by Spirit, nothing but forgiveness and sinlessness is seen – nothing else exists for they are Love, right? Nothing in the world as shown us by Spirit is anything but Love, nor could it be. The Light within each of us cannot be put out – cannot be disguised or hidden – the Light within us is an eternal flame of Love. And where Love, darkness is not.

6. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven's Help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time. The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an event which justifies his love. He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and far more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy.

We have all entered the darkness of our illusion and yet, we all have not entered the darkness alone. In the darkness we failed to see Who was with us. Had we see Him, perhaps we would not have stayed as long as we have. Spirit is ever present for us to use as help to see Light. Whenever we are ready to stop the charade of being in darkness, we shall be shown where the Light is. And in the Light shall we see all that we have been seeking – all the sights of fear will then be sights of Love. So what is holding us in the darkness so long?

7. How can a misperception be a sin? Let all your brother's errors be to you nothing except a chance for you to see the workings of the Helper given you to see the world He made instead of yours. What, then, is justified? What do you want? For these two questions are the same. And when you see them as the same, your choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings release from the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to offer to your peace, and many chances to extend your own forgiveness. Such its purpose is, to those who want to see peace and forgiveness descend on them, and offer them the light.

So there is no sin, and yet we still judge each other. Errors are meant to be corrected, they are not sins. Again with the help of the One who is forever with us, we can see a world of love, if we but choose. What is we want? Is it not that the longing within us be realized for what it is? The world we make has much to offer us if we but offer our world the love we are.

8. The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and His gentleness. It is not there in His forgiving eyes. And therefore it need not be there in yours. Sin is the fixed belief perception cannot change. What has been damned is damned and damned forever, being forever unforgivable. If, then, it is forgiven, sin's perception must have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy Spirit, too, sees what He sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on His vision sin cannot encroach, for sin has been corrected by His sight. And thus it must have been an error, not a sin. For what it claimed could never be, has been. Sin is attacked by punishment, and so preserved. But to forgive it is to change its state from error into truth.

We, as the ego we believe we are, make a world of violence, while the Holy Spirit shows us one of perfection and gentleness. His world we see through His eyes, for our eyes are in darkness. Perception is not sin and can readily be changed. That change is as near as the next thought, closer than the next breath. All we need do is to look at something that was to have been damned forever, as the expression goes, to see that even the damned can be seen in the Light. We, as egos, believe in sin. Spirit sees no sin at anytime. Spirit sees only error and error is correctible. And if error is correctible, then it is also forgivable.

9. The Son of God could never sin, but he can wish for what would hurt him. And he has the power to think he can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of himself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation? Is it your purpose that he be saved or damned? Forgetting not that what he is to you will make this choice your future? For you make it now, the instant when all time becomes a means to reach a goal. Make, then, your choice. But recognize that in this choice the purpose of the world you see is chosen, and will be justified.

First person: I could not sin, but I can wish for what would hurt me. And I have the power to think I can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of myself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Do I need help or condemnation? Is it my purpose that I be saved or damned? If I do not forget what my brother is to me, will I make this choice my future? For me to make it now, the instant when all time becomes a means to reach a goal. I make it then my choice. But I recognize that in my choice the purpose of the world I see is chosen and will be justified to me.
Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section IV. - The Light You Bring

1. Minds that are joined and recognize they are, can feel no guilt. For they cannot attack, and they rejoice that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact. Their joy is in the innocence they see. And thus they seek for it, because it is their purpose to behold it and reijoice. Everyone seeks for what will bring him joy as he defines it. It is not the aim, as such, that varies. Yet it is the way in which the aim is seen that makes the choice of means inevitable, and beyond the hope of change unless the aim is changed. And then the means are chosen once again, as what will bring rejoicing is defined another way and sought for differently.

What a joy to be told that in the Oneness we seek, no guilt is ever experienced, no attack is ever felt, and only innocence is seen. And this is why then, that we seek the Oneness.

2. Perception's basic law could thus be said, "You will rejoice at what you see because you see it to rejoice." And while you think that suffering and sin will bring you joy, so long will they be there for you to see. Nothing is harmful or beneficent apart from what you wish. It is your wish that makes it what it is in its effects on you. Because you chose it as a means to gain these same effects, believing them to be the bringers of rejoicing and of joy. Even in Heaven does this law obtain. The Son of God creates to bring him joy, sharing his Father's purpose in his own creation, that his joy might be increased, and God's along with his.

This one has me thinking a bit – as long as I believe the world I make from thoughts of fear bring me joy and happiness, so long shall I see thoughts of fear before me. From the thought I hold within my mind, I project out into my world. Perhaps a more careful review of the thought I hold would bring me what it is I want in Truth. As the Son of God I create Love; as the ego I believe I am in this body, I make fear.

3. You maker of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another world where peace abides. This world you bring with you to all the weary eyes and tired hearts that look on sin and beat its sad refrain. From you can come their rest. From you can rise a world they will rejoice to look upon, and where their hearts are glad. In you there is a vision that extends to all of them, and covers them in gentleness and light. And in this widening world of light the darkness that they thought was there is pushed away, until it is but distant shadows, far away, not long to be remembered as the sun shines them to nothingness. And all their "evil" thoughts and "sinful" hopes, their dreams of guilt and merciless revenge, and every wish to hurt and kill and die, will disappear before the sun you bring.

We, the maker of a world that is not so, we can take rest and comfort in yet another world that is real. This world we bring so that all the weary eyes and tired hearts which have focused upon sin, can see it as well. From us come their rest. From us rises a world that they will rejoice in seeing, and where their hearts are at peace. In all of us is a vision that we all share; a vision that covers us in gentleness and light. And in this other world of light, darkness is pushed aside until it is beyond even a memory. And wherever we look, we see only sunshine. And with the darkness that has vanished into the nothingness from which it came, the dreams of fear are buried as well.

4. Would you not do this for the Love of God? And for yourself? For think what it would do for you. Your "evil" thoughts that haunt you now will seem increasingly remote and far away from you. And they go farther and farther off, because the sun in you has risen that they may be pushed away before the light. They linger for a while, a little while, in twisted forms too far away for recognition, and are gone forever. And in the sunlight you will stand in quiet, in innocence and wholly unafraid. And from you will the rest you found extend, so that your peace can never fall away and leave you homeless. Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world cannot destroy. For it is large enough to hold the world within its peace.

First person; Would I not do all of this for the Love of God, for myself? I think what it would do for me; those thoughts of darkness of fear that have seemingly been mine for what seems like forever, are now going beyond the edges of my view – they simply vanish beyond. And all where I look, I see nothing but Light – the Light of the Son of God. Some of the fears of darkness appear to linger a bit – to stay yet for another instant as if to entice me to grab them once more – but then they too vanish as if they never existed. And as I stand in the Light of my Truth, a peace comes over me that I had almost forgotten completely. A peace that once was mine for eternity. And that peace is extended to all I look upon, all I think about and all beyond my thoughts.

5. In you is all of Heaven. Every leaf that falls is given life in you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you. And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for you. What aim can supersede the Will of God and of His Son, that Heaven be restored to him for whom it was created as his only home? Nothing before and nothing after it. No other place; no other state nor time. Nothing beyond nor nearer. Nothing else. In any form. This can you bring to all the world, and all the thoughts that entered it and were mistaken for a little while. How better could your own mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk beyond the world of darkness into light?

In me is all of Heaven. Every leaf that falls is given life in me. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in me. And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for me. What aim can supersede the Will of God and of ourselves, that Heaven be restored to us for whom it was created as our only home? Nothing before and nothing after it. No other place; no other state nor time. Nothing beyond nor nearer. Nothing else. In any form. This can I bring to all the world, and all the thoughts that entered it and were mistaken for a little while. How better could your own mistakes be brought to truth than by my willingness to bring the light of Heaven with me, as I walk beyond the world of darkness into the world of light?

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section V.

The State of Sinlessness

1. The state of sinlessness is merely this: The whole desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than he is. The need for guilt is gone because it has no purpose, and is meaningless without the goal of sin. Attack and sin are bound as one illusion, each the cause and aim and justifier of the other. Each is meaningless alone, but seems to draw a meaning from the other. Each depends upon the other for whatever sense it seems to have. And no one could believe in one unless the other were the truth, for each attests the other must be true.

So we recognize that we are sinless when the desire to attack another is gone, and there is then no reason to see ourselves as less than the Truth we are. Guilt is thus gone as is the goal of sin. Sin and guilt, guilt and sin, always together, yet neither is real.

2. Attack makes Christ your enemy, and God along with Him. Must you not be afraid with "enemies" like these? And must you not be fearful of yourself? For you have hurt yourself, and made your Self your "enemy." And now you must believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved. Who would attack whatever he perceives as wholly innocent? And who, because he wishes to attack, can fail to think he must be guilty to maintain the wish, while wanting innocence? For who could see the Son of God as innocent and wish him dead? Christ stands before you, each time you look upon your brother. He has not gone because your eyes are closed. But what is there to see by searching for your Savior, seeing Him through sightless eyes?

If I attack, I attack myself as I am my own enemy, and therefore God is my enemy too. And how fearful are you of yourself and of God? And not knowing that you are your enemy, you think you are someone else, completely separate from you. How insane can we make our world? Look upon your brother and see within him not an enemy, but a reflection of the Christ Consciousness within you. And even though you may not see this reflection all the time, know that it is ever present. We search for what is always before us but we fail to see for we do not open our eyes of Truth.

3. It is not Christ you see by looking thus. It is the "enemy," confused with Christ, you look upon. And hate because there is no sin in him for you to see. Nor do you hear his plaintive call, unchanged in content in whatever form the call is made, that you unite with him, and join with him in innocence and peace. And yet, beneath the ego's senseless shrieks, such is the call that God has given him, that you might hear in him His Call to you, and answer by returning unto God what is His Own.

So you shall not see the reflection you seek with closed eyes. You believe you see before you an enemy, and you see that enemy with hate and fear, you see sin within them. And while you are seeing this way, your ears are closed as well as your eyes, so you do not hear his call for love that he sends to you. And still behind the noise of ego, the calls for love continue until you hear and respond in the only way you can – by sending love.

4. The Son of God asks only this of you; that you return to him what is his due, that you may share in it with him. Alone does neither have it. So must it remain useless to both. Together, it will give to each an equal strength to save the other, and save himself along with him. Forgiven by you, your savior offers you salvation. Condemned by you, he offers death to you. In everyone you see but the reflection of what you choose to have him be to you. If you decide against his proper function, the only one he has in truth, you are depriving him of all the joy he would have found if he fulfilled the role God gave to him. But think not Heaven is lost to him alone. Nor can it be regained unless the way is shown to him through you, that you may find it, walking by his side.

Your brother asks of you what you ask of your brother – give me what is mine to have so that I may share it with you as well. Alone and separated neither of us has it and so it remains useless to us both. But together it gives us both what we have been seeking so that we may share with others in response to their calls. In this receipt, your brother forgives you, do you forgive your brother? If you do not, you deprive each of what is yours to have. Neither of you have it. As long as you each walk separated, you shall have what you seek.

5. It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for by his freedom will you gain your own. To let his function be fulfilled is but the means to let yours be. And so you walk toward Heaven or toward hell, but not alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be when you perceive it! And how great will be your joy, when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you! He has no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him. Remembering but this; that what he does you do, along with him. And as you see him, so do you define the function he will have for you, until you see him differently and let him be what God appointed that he be to you.

Save your brother and you save yourself. Ignore your brother and you ignore yourself. Allow him to fulfill his function so that your function is also completed. The beauty that you behold in him is now seen in you as well. And remember that how you see your brother is how your brother sees you. What you see your brother do, you also do.

6. Against the hatred that the Son of God may cherish toward himself, is God believed to be without the power to save what He created from the pain of hell. But in the love he shows himself is God made free to let His Will be done. In your brother you see the picture of your own belief in what the Will of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you understand His Love for you; through your attack believe He hates you, thinking Heaven must be hell. Look once again upon your brother, not without the understanding that he is the way to Heaven or to hell, as you perceive him. But forget not this; the role you give to him is given you, and you will walk the way you pointed out to him because it is your judgment on yourself.

Plain and simple – if we do not love ourselves – our brother – we do not love God. And read carefully the last lines here; as you see your brother – in whatever role you see him in – know that you are also in that same role – as you see, so shall you be seen.
Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section VI. - The Special Function

1. The grace of God rests gently on forgiving eyes, and everything they look on speaks of Him to the beholder. He can see no evil; nothing in the world to fear, and no one who is different from himself. And as he loves them, so he looks upon himself with love and gentleness. He would no more condemn himself for his mistakes than damn another. He is not an arbiter of vengeance, nor a punisher of sin. The kindness of his sight rests on himself with all the tenderness it offers others. For he would only heal and only bless. And being in accord with what God wills, he has the power to heal and bless all those he looks on with the grace of God upon his sight.

First Person: The grace of God rests gently on my forgiving eyes, and everything I look upon speaks of God to me. I can see no evil, nothing in the world to fear, and no one who is different from me. And as I love them, so they look upon themselves with love and gentleness. I would no more condemn myself for my mistakes than damn another. I am not an arbiter of vengeance, nor a punisher of sin. The kindness of my sight rests on myself with all the tenderness it offers others. For I would only heal and only bless. And being in accord with what God wills, I have the power to heal and bless all those I look upon with the grace of God upon my sight.

2. Eyes become used to darkness, and the light of brilliant day seems painful to the eyes grown long accustomed to the dim effects perceived at twilight. And they turn away from sunlight and the clarity it brings to what they look upon. Dimness seems better; easier to see, and better recognized. Somehow the vague and more obscure seems easier to look upon; less painful to the eyes than what is wholly clear and unambiguous. Yet this is not what eyes are for, and who can say that he prefers the darkness and maintain he wants to see?

Ever been in a cave or a tunnel or other dark place where any light at all is but very dim? And when you did come into the light of day, you were as if blinded by that light? This is how it is in the world we make – we move in a darkness fearful of seeing the Light within us. We may see another in a brilliant beam and yet turn away from them in fear. And yet these are the eyes of the body we believe we are, but we have another vision to use when we so desire. We can see only Love for nothing else exists. We can see beyond darkness as if it were not present – and it is not. And we can see the Light within a brother reflecting back to us.

3. The wish to see calls down the grace of God upon your eyes, and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible. Would you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him. He does not will your savior be unrecognized by you. Nor does He will that he remain without the function that He gave to him. Let him no more be lonely, for the lonely ones are those who see no function in the world for them to fill; no place where they are needed, and no aim which only they can perfectly fulfill.

Our desire to see with the vision of the Christ Spirit within is a call to God to open our eyes and see what is before us. How else could we recognize a brother except through these eyes. Our physical eyes only see an image we project of a separate body. How else can we see our brother in the function he has for us, and we have for him? Seen in this light, we view the Oneness we are.

4. Such is the Holy Spirit's kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm. To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill; a part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function, and fulfills the part assigned to him, to make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules.

Simply put into words – specialness that we see is used to show us the Oneness in truth. Specialness is transformed into the function your brother has for you, and you for him. And we must both perform our function.

5. Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he yet do one perfect thing and make one perfect choice. And by this act of special faithfulness to one perceived as other than himself, he learns the gift was given to himself, and so they must be one. Forgiveness is the only function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to translate specialness from sin into salvation. Forgiveness is for all. But when it rests on all it is complete, and every function of this world completed with it. Then is time no more. Yet while in time, there is still much to do. And each must do what is allotted him, for on his part does all the plan depend. He has a special part in time for so he chose, and choosing it, he made it for himself. His wish was not denied but changed in form, to let it serve his brother and himself, and thus become a means to save instead of lose.

Recall how we learn that forgiveness was our only function? Here we are again told that 'forgiveness is the only function meaningful in time,' and 'forgiveness is for all.' Now the world we make includes the time we also made, so forgiveness has meaning in our world. But the biggy' to remember is 'forgiveness is for all.' We cannot exclude even one person – one body from our thought of forgiveness or forgiveness does not occur, and we are the only one that it affects. We are the only one to forgive ourselves for the thoughts we hold of another – for the judgment we placed on them – for even the condemnation we also placed on them. It is never about them forgiving us, it is always us forgiving them. This function is difficult for us because ego is so strong in its opinions and judgments of others. No one ever matches up the expectations of ego – including yourself.

6. Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home. Its laws are not imposed on you, its values are not yours. And nothing that you think you see in it is really there at all. This is seen and understood as each one takes his part in its undoing, as he did in making it. He has the means for either, as he always did. The specialness he chose to hurt himself did God appoint to be the means for his salvation, from the very instant that the choice was made. His special sin was made his special grace. His special hate became his special love.

First person: Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not my home. Its laws are not imposed on me, its values are not mine. And nothing that I think I see in it is really there at all. This is seen and understood as I take my part in its undoing, and I did in making it. I have the means for either, as I always had. The specialness I chose to hurt myself did God appoint to be the means for my salvation, for the very instant that choice was made by me. My special sin was made my special grace. My special hate became my special love.

7. The Holy Spirit needs your special function, that His may be fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here. You wanted it, and it is given you. All that you made can serve salvation easily and well. The Son of God can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and not against himself. Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In light, you see it as your special function in the plan to save the Son of God from all attack, and let him understand that he is safe, as he has always been, and will remain in time and in eternity alike. This is the function given you for your brother. Take it gently, then, from your brother's hand, and let salvation be perfectly fulfilled in you. Do this one thing, that everything be given you.

The Holy Spirit needs my special function, so that His function may be fulfilled. I do not think that I lack a special value here. I wanted it, and it is give to me. All that I made can serve salvation easily and well. I can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on my my behalf, and not against myself. Only in darkness does my specialness appear to attack. In light, I see it as my special function in the plan to my brother from all attack and let him understand that he is safe, as he has always been, and will remain in time and eternity alike. This is the function given me for my brother. This is the function given to my brother for me. I take it gently from my brother's hand, and let salvation be perfectly fulfilled in me. I do but this one thing, that everything be given to me.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section VII. - The Rock of Salvation

1. Yet if the Holy Spirit can commute each sentence that you laid upon yourself into a blessing, then it cannot be a sin. Sin is the only thing in all the world that cannot change. It is immutable. And on its changelessness the world depends. The magic of the world can seem to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it is. For sin is a request for death, a wish to make this world's foundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself. The world is safe from love to everyone who thinks sin possible. Nor will it change. Yet is it possible what God created not should share the attributes of His creation, when it opposes it in every way?

If sin can be changed – can be corrected – sin is not real. And if sin is not real then is our world not real as well? Is not our world made on the cornerstone of sin? Do we not give so much importance to sin that we believe that sin is actually a path to death? And those of us who still believe sin is a possibility, love is not option for us. Most of us were taught from a very early age that not only are we able to sin, but that we were born with sin! This certainly shows that the body is not something God created. God creates only as God, and God is Love, and Love is All That Is.

2. It cannot be the "sinner's" wish for death is just as strong as is God's Will for life. Nor can the basis of a world He did not make be firm and sure as Heaven. How could it be that hell and Heaven are the same? And is it possible that what He did not will cannot be changed? What is immutable besides His Will? And what can share its attributes except itself? What wish can rise against His Will, and be immutable? If you could realize nothing is changeless but the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you. For it is this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing else you could believe, if you but looked at what it really is.

Remember this line, 'If you could realize nothing is changeless but the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you.' Everything in the world we make changes; nothing stays the same, including this body you believe you are. A mountain may appear to stay the same, yet it is eroding constantly. Nothing in a world of illusion is changeless – nothing. Only the Will of God is changeless – only God is changeless – only Love is changeless. And remember that changeless means not able to change. You can never change from the Truth you are – from the knowing within you that constantly is there reminding you. Nothing can change that.

3. Let us go back to what we said before, and think of it more carefully. It must be so that either God is mad, or is this world a place of madness. Not one Thought of His makes any sense at all within this world. And nothing that the world believes as true has any meaning in His Mind at all. What makes no sense and has no meaning is insanity. And what is madness cannot be the truth. If one belief so deeply valued here were true, then every Thought God ever had is an illusion. And if but one Thought of His is true, then all beliefs the world gives any meaning to are false, and make no sense at all. This is the choice you make. Do not attempt to see it differently, nor twist it into something it is not. For only this decision can you make. The rest is up to God, and not to you.

We have come to believe so in this world we make, that we fail all too often to see the madness and insanity therein. But it is there, right before the eyes we believe in as well. We believe so strongly in insanity that we do not recognize sanity if we were to see it. And yet this madness does give us contentment – happiness – joy – peace. So this madness cannot be real. We believe we can attack another, or be attacked by another, and yet we do not believe we can love all brothers. We believe in our convictions, our judgments, our assessment of everything, and yet we have difficulty believing in our Truth. Is this not madness/

4. To justify one value that the world upholds is to deny your Father's sanity and yours. For God and His beloved Son do not think differently. And it is the agreement of their thought that makes the Son a co-creator with the Mind Whose Thought created him. So if he chooses to believe one thought opposed to truth, he has decided he is not his Father's Son because the Son is mad, and sanity must lie apart from both the Father and the Son. This you believe. Think not that this belief depends upon the form it takes. Who thinks the world is sane in any way, is justified in anything it thinks, or is maintained by any form of reason, believes this to be true. Sin is not real because the Father and the Son are not insane. This world is meaningless because it rests on sin. Who could create the changeless if it does not rest on truth?

Many of us affirm daily that we are the Son of God – that we are the Oneness of All That Is. Yet we still hold onto some values of the world we have come to believe in, or else we would not believe in the world we think we see. We will not disappear if we let go of the values of the world – we will not vanish from the sight of others – we will simply see the world as that of illusion, of falsehood, of lies. We will discover that we can continue to be in the world but not believe we are of it. Give up all the values you have on what you think you see for the riches of who you have forever been. You cannot be like God if you do not think as God, and any other thought is not real.

5. The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which nothing is contradicted that would lead the Son of God to sanity and joy. Nothing attests to death and cruelty; to separation and to differences. For here is everything perceived as one, and no one loses that each one may gain.

Here is an offer hard to turn down – Spirit will present to us a world of sanity and love – one of Oneness and no death. A world of Oneness. Do you accept this offer? Are you willing to see what is to be shown you? Are you ready for your Truth?

6. Test everything that you believe against this one requirement, and understand that everything that meets this one demand is worthy of your faith. But nothing else. What is not love is sin, and either one perceives the other as insane and meaningless. Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to sanity. But sin is equally insane within the sight of love, whose gentle eyes would look beyond the madness and rest peacefully on truth. Each sees a world immutable, as each defines the changeless and eternal truth of what you are. And each reflects a view of what the Father and the Son must be, to make that viewpoint meaningful and sane.

So test your world as it is presented to you. Which do you see, sanity or insanity, love or sin? And you know within you that only one is real, only one is Truth. Which response do you take from within you? And this is the struggle that we choose each and every day – which view will we choose today? What shall we believe in today? And we know that it is not possible to believe in both, not even in a world of madness.

7. Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and all that you believe must limit you. The Son of God cannot be bound by time nor place nor anything God did not will. Yet if His Will is seen as madness, then the form of sanity which makes it most acceptable to those who are insane requires special choice. Nor can this choice be made by the insane, whose problem is their choices are not free, and made with reason in the light of sense.

Forgive yourself from the thought of sin; from the thought of separation; from the thought of form and limitation; from specialness and time. This is what it takes to correct the world you see – your forgiveness of yourself for thoughts not of love that you had come to believe were love. You are the Son of God. You are the image and likeness of God. Sin does not exist for you; separation is not a thought; form and limitation are not known; and specialness and time are not part of who you are. And this is but a choice you can make in this present moment.

8. It would be madness to entrust salvation to the insane. Because He is not mad has God appointed One as sane as He to raise a saner world to meet the sight of everyone who chose insanity as his salvation. To this One is given the choice of form most suitable to him; one which will not attack the world he sees, but enter into it in quietness and show him he is mad. This One but points to an alternative, another way of looking at what he has seen before, and recognizes as the world in which he lives, and thought he understood before.

You have to see the humor in the fact that we trust ego for our salvation, while ego hasn't a clue what it might be trying to save us from. One which is beyond simple madness is not to be chosen as a leader, for we will be lead nowhere and to nothing. The Holy Spirit is given to us from God as an eternal link to our Truth. Even though we dream this dream, Spirit is forever with us in this dream, not seeing the illusion, but showing us beyond the illusion. In the world of ego, we forever chase ourselves and find that we are but always where we began the chase. Even the thought of reincarnation can be seen as a return to where we are.

9. Now must he question this, because the form of the alternative is one which he cannot deny, nor overlook, nor fail completely to perceive at all. To each his special function is designed to be perceived as possible, and more and more desired, as it proves to him that it is an alternative he really wants. From this position does his sinfulness, and all the sin he sees within the world, offer him less and less. Until he comes to understand it cost him his sanity, and stands between him and whatever hope he has of being sane. Nor is he left without escape from madness, for he has a special part in everyone's escape. He can no more be left outside, without a special function in the hope of peace, than could the Father overlook His Son, and pass him by in careless thoughtlessness.

First person: Now I must question this, because the form of the alternative is one which I cannot deny, nor overlook, nor fail completely to perceive at all. To me my special function is designed to be seen as possible, and more and more desired by me, as it proves to me that is is an alternative I really want. From this position does my sinfulness, and all the sin I see within my world, offer me less and less. Until I come to understand that it cost me my sanity, and it stands before me and whatever hope I have of being sane. Nor am I left without escape from madness, for I have a special part in everyone's escape. I can no more be left outside, without a special function in the hope of peace, than God could overlook me, and pass me by in careless thoughtlessness.

10. What is dependable except God's Love? And where does sanity abide except in Him? The One Who speaks for Him can show you this, in the alternative He chose especially for you. It is God's Will that you remember this, and so emerge from deepest mourning into perfect joy. Accept the function that has been assigned to you in God's Own plan to show His Son that hell and Heaven are different, not the same. And that in Heaven They are all the same, without the differences which would have made a hell of Heaven and a heaven of hell, had such insanity been possible.

Can anything in the world we make be seen as more dependable than the Love of God? Is there anything else you can think of that you can always count on as being there for you? God's Love for you is not just always present for you, it is who you are. How is that for being always present? There is nothing in your world that comes remotely close to being there for you at all times and in all places – nothing, including ego.

11. The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the underlying tenet God must be insane. For in this world it seems that one must gain because another lost. If this were true, then God is mad indeed! But what is this belief except a form of the more basic tenet, "Sin is real, and rules the world"? For every little gain must someone lose, and pay exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil triumph, and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all. You who believe that God is mad, look carefully at this, and understand that it must be either God or this must be insane, but hardly both.

When the moment is present that you recognize your Truth, you realize that nothing more exist than that which you are. There is nothing more to seek to have, or nothing more to achieve, to be, to accomplish. You are All That Is. In your world, you are constantly seeking more and more of what is nothing more than illusion. Do more illusion really interest you?

12. Salvation is rebirth of the idea no one can lose for anyone to gain. And everyone must gain, if anyone would be a gainer. Here is sanity restored. And on this single rock of truth can faith in God's eternal saneness rest in perfect confidence and perfect peace. Reason is satisfied, for all insane beliefs can be corrected here. And sin must be impossible, if this is true. This is the rock on which salvation rests, the vantage point from which the Holy Spirit gives meaning and direction to the plan in which your special function has a part. For here your special function is made whole, because it shares the function of the whole.

Fulfill your special function and you shall experience an act of 'rebirth.' And you shall discover to have love, you shall give love, but still have love. You shall discover that each is not only equal to each other, but that we are but One. And in One, nothing but Love exists. This is not just your foundation, it is your Truth.

13. Remember all temptation is but this; a mad belief that God's insanity would make you sane and give you what you want; that either God or you must lose to madness because your aims can not be reconciled. Death demands life, but life is not maintained at any cost. No one can suffer for the Will of God to be fulfilled. Salvation is His Will because you share it. Not for you alone, but for the Self that is the Son of God. He cannot lose, for if he could the loss would be his Father's, and in Him no loss is possible. And this is sane because it is the truth.

This is reminding us of how we started this dream – by just one mad idea, and from there we stayed with the insanity that we made. But we know that death is not an ending for us, for we are as God is. Death is but the last illusion in a long trail of illusions. And illusions are not real, so death is not real. So what is real? You, as the Son of God!

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section VIII. - Justice Returned to Love

1. The Holy Spirit can use all that you give to Him for your salvation. But He cannot use what you withhold, for He cannot take it from you without your willingness. For if He did, you would believe He wrested it from you against your will. And so you would not learn it is your will to be without it. You need not give it to Him wholly willingly, for if you could you had no need of Him. But this He needs; that you prefer He take it than that you keep it for yourself alone, and recognize that what brings loss to no one you would not know. This much is necessary to add to the idea no one can lose for you to gain. And nothing more.

Whatever you want to get rid of, to let go of, to have removed from you, the Holy Spirit will gladly use what you offer, but first you must offer, you must be willing to release it all. Spirit will not take anything from us because that is against our free will, and it is this free will by which we make our choices – to hold onto or to let go. And what you offer Spirit to take from you is nothing that you really have; you only think you do. In offering it to Spirit, you lose nothing but gain so much.

2. Here is the only principle salvation needs. Nor is it necessary that your faith in it be strong, unswerving, and without attack from all beliefs opposed to it. You have no fixed allegiance. But remember salvation is not needed by the saved. You are not called upon to do what one divided still against himself would find impossible. Have little faith that wisdom could be found in such a state of mind. But be you thankful that only little faith is asked of you. What but a little faith remains to those who still believe in sin? What could they know of Heaven and the justice of the saved?

In order for you to offer anything to Spirit, you must first have forgiven yourself for that thought. Forgiveness is the first step in the release process. Actually, once you do forgive yourself, you no longer are giving value to that thought. And what is being asked of you is not impossible, for you are never asked to do the impossible. And in this paragraph we note that are we reminded yet again that all that is necessary ever is but a 'little willingness.' We all too often think this is some monumental task that is before us – to let go of values we have placed on illusion – when all that is necessary is that we simply show a little willingness. How hard is it for us to display a little willingness?

3. There is a kind of justice in salvation of which the world knows nothing. To the world, justice and vengeance are the same, for sinners see justice only as their punishment, perhaps sustained by someone else, but not escaped. The laws of sin demand a victim. Who it may be makes little difference. But death must be the cost and must be paid. This is not justice, but insanity. Yet how could justice be defined without insanity where love means hate, and death is seen as victory and triumph over eternity and timelessness and life?

There is some satisfaction in knowing we can escape this madness – this insanity we see before us. This world is mad indeed that it demands always a sinner for a sin; always an eye for an eye; always someone to pay for a mistake of another. Look around you and see if this is not the case in your world. Death always seems to be the greatest price one pays for a sin one cannot commit, but death is something that each body will experience at some point in their dream. Is death then a punishment to us all? And for what? Justice would not be known if it were not for injustice. We have made a world of duality, where for every action, there is an opposite; for every word, an opposite; for every meaning, another in opposition. But one word – on action – one experience – has no opposite.

4. You who know not of justice still can ask, and learn the answer. Justice looks on all in the same way. It is not just that one should lack for what another has. For that is vengeance in whatever form it takes. Justice demands no sacrifice, for any sacrifice is made that sin may be preserved and kept. It is a payment offered for the cost of sin, but not the total cost. The rest is taken from another, to be laid beside your little payment, to "atone" for all that you would keep, and not give up. So is the victim seen as partly you, with someone else by far the greater part. And in the total cost, the greater his the less is yours. And justice, being blind, is satisfied by being paid, it matters not by whom.

After reading this several times, one can only see that the world we believe we live in, is truly mad and insane. Throughout our history, we have seen countless killings and then revenge following, followed by more killings, with more revenge right after that. This we call war and even do this insane actions in the name of God. That is how insane this world is. Those who have tried peace have been put to death by those that feared peace. Those who feared peace see a value in the 'wars' – perhaps even a profit they believe they make on it.

5. Can this be justice? God knows not of this. But justice does He know, and knows it well. For He is wholly fair to everyone. Vengeance is alien to God's Mind because He knows of justice. To be just is to be fair, and not be vengeful. Fairness and vengeance are impossible, for each one contradicts the other and denies that it is real. It is impossible for you to share the Holy Spirit's justice with a mind that can conceive of specialness at all. Yet how could He be just if He condemns a sinner for the crimes he did not do, but thinks he did? And where would justice be if He demanded of the ones obsessed with the idea of punishment that they lay it aside, unaided, and perceive it is not true?

But that craziness is not the doing of God, it is our own. Remember and remember often – God did and does not make the world we believe we are in. That is all our own doing – our responsibility alone. God is Love, not war. God is Love, not vengeance. God is Life, not death. So all the injustice you think you see in your world, is your own thoughts projected. All the fear you believe you see in your world, is a thought you hold in your mind. And punishment is for sin, and you believe you can sin, so you punish yourself for what you think you are capable of doing. Are you getting the madness of our world?

6. It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's justice. They must believe He shares their own confusion, and cannot avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice must entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the "wrath" of God in Him. Nor can they trust Him not to strike them dead with lightning bolts torn from the "fires" of Heaven by God's Own angry Hand. They do believe that Heaven is hell, and are afraid of love. And deep suspicion and the chill of fear comes over them when they are told that they have never sinned. Their world depends on sin's stability. And they perceive the "threat" of what God knows as justice to be more destructive to themselves and to their world than vengeance, which they understand and love.

Can you really believe in sin and believe in the justice the Holy Spirit has for us? Or is it that if we believe in sin, we fear the Holy Spirit, so we try hard to avoid Him? Is there room in Love for 'wrath'? Do you realize that the 'wrath of God' is only a thought you might hold in your mind? And what are thoughts that you hold in your mind but illusions that you believe you project. There are those brothers who do indeed fear God – they do indeed believe they have sinned and can sin – and that they will be punished for their sins by burning in hell upon their death. First accept them where they are on their path, and then be an example to them of what Love is. Send them Love from mind to mind. They may not acknowledge what you send, but you know it was received. And finally, be grateful that you are where you are on your path.

7. So do they think the loss of sin a curse. And flee the Holy Spirit as if He were a messenger from hell, sent from above, in treachery and guile, to work God's vengeance on them in the guise of a deliverer and friend. What could He be to them except a devil, dressed to deceive within an angel's cloak. And what escape has He for them except a door to hell that seems to look like Heaven's gate?

Much has been said about Heaven and hell, both to be experienced in this dream, a choice of ours as to which one we want. Those who believe in a hell are probably living in it but they don't see it that way. Perhaps they see the misery and fear as a normal way of living. Perhaps this is what they expect from life based on what they have seen or what they were taught. And remember misery and fear do not mean poor and poverty stricken. One can live in Heaven while residing in a cardboard box.

8. Yet justice cannot punish those who ask for punishment, but have a Judge Who knows that they are wholly innocent in truth. In justice He is bound to set them free, and give them all the honor they deserve and have denied themselves because they are not fair, and cannot understand that they are innocent. Love is not understandable to sinners because they think that justice is split off from love, and stands for something else. And thus is love perceived as weak, and vengeance strong. For love has lost when judgment left its side, and is too weak to save from punishment. But vengeance without love has gained in strength by being separate and apart from love. And what but vengeance now can help and save, while love stands feebly by with helpless hands, bereft of justice and vitality, and powerless to save?

Although we believe we are sinners, that we deserve some form of punishment for those sins, God will not punish us. God sees us as we are – innocent, unable to sin. And if God can see us as the innocence we are, why do we go out of our way to see ourselves differently from God? We may not understand Love, but it is not because we are sinners – it is because the meaning of Love is beyond what we can comprehend in this dream. We acknowledge Love and know Love, but never question what Love is – what God is.

9. What can Love ask of you who think that all of this is true? Could He, injustice and in love, believe in your confusion you have much to give? You are not asked to trust Him far. No more than what you see He offers you, and what you recognize you could not give yourself. In God's Own justice does He recognize all you deserve, but understands as well that you cannot accept it for yourself. It is His special function to hold out to you the gifts the innocent deserve. And every one that you accept brings joy to Him as well as you. He knows that Heaven is richer made by each one you accept. And God rejoices as His Son receives what loving justice knows to be his due. For love and justice are not different. Because they are the same does mercy stand at God's right Hand, and gives the Son of God the power to forgive himself of sin.

Does God truly ask anything of us? Is it not enough – is it not All That Is – so that nothing more could be possible? When we are told that we do not have to trust in God too far, the point is that we are simply to trust in God – to trust in the Truth of who we are. Just as a little willingness is all that is required of us, so is simply trust all that is required. Each time you see a brother reflect back to you that which is Truth, is not your Heaven a bit brighter at the moment?

10. To him who merits everything, how can it be that anything be kept from him? For that would be injustice, and unfair indeed to all the holiness that is in him, however much he recognize it not. God knows of no injustice. He would not allow His Son be judged by those who seek his death, and could not see his worth at all. What honest witnesses could they call forth to speak on his behalf? And who would come to plead for him, and not against his life? No justice would be given him by you. Yet God ensured that justice would be done unto the Son He loves, and would protect from all unfairness you might seek to offer, believing vengeance is his proper due.

For us, the Son of God, who merit All That Is, how could it be possible that anything be kept from us? Would that seem unfair? God sees no injustice, only we do. God sees no sin, only we do. God sees no suffering, only we do. Notice how we continue to try to be different from God, when in Truth, we cannot? Would God allow a world of chaos, pain, suffering and insanity to be the Home of His Son? God would not, but we do, so what is wrong with this picture? It is truly insane that we continue to try to be different from God, that we refuse what God has given us.

11. As specialness cares not who pays the cost of sin, so it be paid, the Holy Spirit heeds not who looks on innocence at last, provided it is seen and recognized. For just one witness is enough, if he sees truly. Simple justice asks no more. Of each one does the Holy Spirit ask if he will be that one, so justice may return to love and there be satisfied. Each special function He allots is but for this; that each one learn that love and justice are not separate. And both are strengthened by their union with each other. Without love is justice prejudiced and weak. And love without justice is impossible. For love is fair, and cannot chasten without cause. What cause can be to warrant an attack upon the innocent? In justice, then, does love correct mistakes, but not in vengeance. For that would be unjust to innocence.

So we see that in special relationships, someone will always have to pay for the cost of some sin somewhere along the way – it is just the way of ego. Now Spirit takes that specialness and asks of us that we but see an innocence in our brother and ourselves as well. And as we go from specialness to special function, we go from fear to love. We go where we see results in both ourselves and our brother. Love is given and received, without a loss to either.

12. You can be perfect witness to the power of love and justice, if you understand it is impossible the Son of God could merit vengeance. You need not perceive, in every circumstance, that this is true. Nor need you look to your experience within the world, which is but shadows of all that is really happening within yourself. The understanding that you need comes not of you, but from a larger Self, so great and holy that He could not doubt His innocence. Your special function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose sinlessness He shares. His understanding will be yours. And so the Holy Spirit's special function has been fulfilled. God's Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness and not his sins. How little need you give the Holy Spirit that simple justice may be given you.

Look at the good news, as they say: we can be a perfect witness to the power of love and justice. All that we must do is to know that it is impossible for us to ever merit vengeance. We may not see this, but we know it. And we do not have to locate some experience we believe we have had to justify it. Once again, we only have to offer a little willingness.

13. Without impartiality there is no justice. How can specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, not because you are a miserable sinner too. How can the special really understand that justice is the same for everyone? To take from one to give another must be an injustice to them both, since they are equal in the Holy Spirit's sight. Their Father gave the same inheritance to both. Who would have more or less is not aware that he has everything. He is no judge of what must be another's due, because he thinks he is deprived. And so must he be envious, and try to take away from whom he judges. He is not impartial, and cannot fairly see another's rights because his own have been obscured to him.

How long do you believe you can remain in your world being neutral, being impartial? How long can you be here without having a judgment, an opinion, even an observation? How long can you not special, but simply the same as all others? What do you believe you can take from me, that I will then have less of? God has created us all equal – we are all the Son of God – we are the Oneness we have forever been. Nothing will ever change that.

14. You have the right to all the universe; to perfect peace, complete deliverance from all effects of sin, and to the life eternal, joyous and complete in every way, as God appointed for His holy Son. This is the only justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. Your special function shows you nothing else but perfect justice can prevail for you. And you are safe from vengeance in all forms. The world deceives, but it cannot replace God's justice with a version of its own. For only love is just, and can perceive what justice must accord the Son of God. Let love decide, and never fear that you, in your unfairness, will deprive yourself of what God's justice has allotted you.

Affirm this; I have to right to all the universe, to perfect peace, complete deliverance from all effects of sin, and to the life eternal, joyous and complete in every way, just as God has created me.

This is my Truth, this is my Heaven and it can be here and now, if but choose. My own forgiveness shows me nothing less. And in my Truth I am safe and secure.

Chapter 25

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

Section IX. - The Justice of Heaven

1. What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors cannot be undone by Heaven's justice? And what could this mean except that they are sins and not mistakes, forever uncorrectable, and to be met with vengeance, not with justice? Are you willing to be released from all effects of sin? You cannot answer this until you see all that the answer must entail. For if you answer "yes" it means you will forego all values of this world in favor of the peace of Heaven. Not one sin would you retain. And not one doubt that this is possible will you hold dear that sin be kept in place. You mean that truth has greater value now than all illusions. And you recognize that truth must be revealed to you, because you know not what it is.

" **Are you willing to be released from all effects of sin?" What is your first response, and then what is you second response? If we answer 'yes' it means that we are willing to let go of all values of our world – ALL values. You cannot hide even a bit of one that would go unnoticed. All or nothing. But to respond 'no' means that you prefer to hold onto the effects of sin – that you believe in sin and all that it entails.**

2. To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift, because you are reluctant to accept it. It is saved for you until reluctance to receive it disappears, and you are willing it be given you. God's justice warrants gratitude, not fear. Nothing you give is lost to you or anyone, but cherished and preserved in Heaven, where all of the treasures given to God's Son are kept for him, and offered anyone who but holds out his hand in willingness they be received. Nor is the treasure less as it is given out. Each gift but adds to the supply. For God is fair. He does not fight against His Son's reluctance to perceive salvation as a gift from Him. Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone.

If we reluctantly give, we shall reluctantly get, but not until we are willing to receive. It is amazing how often a phrase about our willingness comes up, isn't it? What God gives is not to be feared, but accepted in gratitude. Each gift we give, each gift we received is held for us in the abundance of all Love.

3. Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves will always be one in which no one loses. And this must be true, because He asks no sacrifice of anyone. An answer which demands the slightest loss to anyone has not resolved the problem, but has added to it and made it greater, harder to resolve and more unfair. It is impossible the Holy Spirit could see unfairness as a resolution. To Him, what is unfair must be corrected because it is unfair. And every error is a perception in which one, at least, is seen unfairly. Thus is justice not accorded to the Son of God. When anyone is seen as losing, he has been condemned. And punishment becomes his due instead of justice.

When Spirit is involved, no one can lose for Spirit sees us as the equality we are. Not one of us is asked for more than another – just a little willingness. What Spirit sees as unfair is sin and that is corrected by Him. If we see another as losing anything, we see them in error – in fear – in judgment.

4. The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure. The Holy Spirit's perception leaves no ground for an attack. Only a loss could justify attack, and loss of any kind He cannot see. The world solves problems in another way. It sees a resolution as a state in which it is decided who shall win and who shall lose; how much the one shall take, and how much can the loser still defend. Yet does the problem still remain unsolved, for only justice can set up a state in which there is no loser; no one left unfairly treated and deprived, and thus with grounds for vengeance. Problem solving cannot be vengeance, which at best can bring another problem added to the first, in which the murder is not obvious.

No punishment is seen possible in Truth. What the Holy Spirit corrects needs no further correction. Solving problems in our world assures that someone will lose and someone will win; it can be no other way in a world gone mad. And yet with a winner and loser, the problem is still apparent. Not until equality is seen, will the problem vanish.

5. The Holy Spirit's problem solving is the way in which the problem ends. It has been solved because it has been met with justice. Until it has it will recur, because it has not yet been solved. The principle that justice means no one can lose is crucial to this course. For miracles depend on justice. Not as it is seen through this world's eyes, but as God knows it and as knowledge is reflected in the sight the Holy Spirit gives.

When Spirit solves our problem, the problem is no longer seen, no longer present. But as long as we believe that someone can win, so long shall the problem remain. When we understand that no one can lose, we shall begin to grasp the meaning of this course. Miracles have nothing to do with winning or losing. They are but a change of thought from fear to love – where everyone is a winner.

6. No one deserves to lose. And what would be unjust to him cannot occur. Healing must be for everyone, because he does not merit an attack of any kind. What order can there be in miracles, unless someone deserves to suffer more and others less? And is this justice to the wholly innocent? A miracle is justice. It is not a special gift to some, to be withheld from others as less worthy, more condemned, and thus apart from healing. Who is there who can be separate from salvation, if its purpose is the end of specialness? Where is salvation's justice if some errors are unforgivable, and warrant vengeance in place of healing and return of peace?

We do not deserve to lose, and we cannot lose unless we believe we can gain. Healing is not just for a few, but all of us, for we are One in Truth. There can be no order in miracles unless we have winners and losers. But there is no order in miracles. No one is more deserving of a miracle than another, and miracles are granted to all, not just some. Who are we who may think that only certain thoughts we hold are to be forgiven, while others will remain cherished by us?

7. Salvation cannot seek to help God's Son be more unfair than he has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy Spirit's gift, were given specially to an elect and special group, and kept apart from others as less deserving, then is He ally to specialness. What He cannot perceive He bears no witness to. And everyone is equally entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace. To give a problem to the Holy Spirit to solve for you means that you want it solved. To keep it for yourself to solve without His help is to decide it should remain unsettled, unresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack. No one can be unjust to you, unless you have decided first to be unjust. And then must problems rise to block your way, and peace be scattered by the winds of hate.

For us to give a problem to Spirit means that we want it solved. It also means that we finally let go of it. However, if we keep a problem to solve alone means that the problem will not be solved, it shall remain as a sign of injustice and attack. And then we read that no one can be unjust to us unless we have decided ourselves to be unjust. A repeat of a very important part of the Course. No one does anything to us unless we allow it.

8. Unless you think that all your brothers have an equal right to miracles with you, you will not claim your right to them because you were unjust to one with equal rights. Seek to deny and you will feel denied. Seek to deprive, and you have been deprived. A miracle can never be received because another could receive it not. Only forgiveness offers miracles. And pardon must be just to everyone.

Until such time as we feel equal to all brothers – ALL – then we shall continue to deny to ourselves our own claim to miracles. Such is justice. Only forgiveness offers miracles, and forgiveness is for all or none.

9. The little problems that you keep and hide become your secret sins, because you did not choose to let them be removed for you. And so they gather dust and grow, until they cover everything that you perceive and leave you fair to no one. Not one right do you believe you have. And bitterness, with vengeance justified and mercy lost, condemns you as unworthy of forgiveness. The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take forgiveness for yourself.

Perhaps we have all held back some little secret at one time or another, or perhaps even are still trying to hide them. These little secrets of ours prevent us from seeing anything in our world in the Light we are. The secrets appear to veil our Light so that we do not see. And those dark little secrets eat away at us, causing us to be bitter towards life, and hateful of many. Forgiveness begin with us. Forgive yourself for you are deserving.

10. The miracle that you receive, you give. Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which salvation rests; that justice must be done to all, if anyone is to be healed. No one can lose, and everyone must benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and given equally. It is awareness that giving and receiving are the same. Because it does not make the same unlike, it sees no differences where none exists. And thus it is the same for everyone, because it sees no differences in them. Its offering is universal, and it teaches but one message:

What is God's belongs to everyone, and is his due.

Each miracle I receive, each change of thought I have, I give to another, I extend to them that which is given me. But it giving do I still have it. I did not win something by accepting a miracle, actually I let go of something to accept it. What is God's is ours, with no exception.
Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section I. - The "Sacrifice" of Oneness

1. In the "dynamics" of attack is sacrifice a key idea. It is the pivot upon which all compromise, all desperate attempts to strike a bargain, and all conflicts achieve a seeming balance. It is the symbol of the central theme that somebody must lose. Its focus on the body is apparent, for it is always an attempt to limit loss. The body is itself a sacrifice; a giving up of power in the name of saving just a little for yourself. To see a brother in another body, separate from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little part of him and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world, and you will see nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming entities can come a little nearer, or go a little farther off, but cannot join.

As we come closer to finishing the Text, we are being told to be aware of the world we believe in; to see it as it appears; to see the bodies separate from each other. This is the world we make as the ego we think we are. This is the world of attack because we believe in fear; in separation, in losing what we believe we have and possibly gaining what someone else has. Look closely at your world for you have made it as it appears to you. Did you ever stop and think that sacrifice is only in the world you make?

2. The world you see is based on "sacrifice" of oneness. It is a picture of complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must sacrifice the other part, to keep itself complete. For if they joined each one would lose its own identity, and by their separation are their selves maintained.

And the sacrifice we make in our world is one of oneness – one of separation, of being apart from God – and in this we believe. We believe that each of us is an individual of itself and the fear of losing one's oneness is frightening, even terrifying. But we have come this far in the Course to know now that we are not these separate entities moving about in this world we make – we are indeed One with All That Is. There is no separation for none could ever be. But yet we continue to hold onto those beliefs, although the knowing within us is becoming larger each moment.

3. The little that the body fences off becomes the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must lose this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact. In this perception of yourself the body's loss would be a sacrifice indeed. For sight of bodies becomes the sign that sacrifice is limited, and something still remains for you alone. And for this little to belong to you are limits placed on everything outside, just as they are on everything you think is yours. For giving and receiving are the same. And to accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on each brother whom you see. For you must see him as you see yourself.

Look once again at your brother and see now beyond the fence he thinks he built – beyond the form you both have believed in – beyond the labels you have given him – your brother is none of that and neither are you. Your brother is your reflection in a spiritual mirror. Do you like the image you see? If not look again and again if needed, until you see in him what you have within yourself as well.

4. The body is a loss, and can be made to sacrifice. And while you see your brother as a body, apart from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him and you. What greater sacrifice could be demanded than that God's Son perceive himself without his Father? And his Father be without His Son? Yet every sacrifice demands that they be separate and without the other. The memory of God must be denied if any sacrifice is asked of anyone. What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is invisible in such a world. Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes.

Did you ever think of your body as your loss? But it shall be, right? You shall one day lose what you so believed to be real. And then what? You do not have to wait for the 'then what' for you can accept that your body is but an illusion and you cannot lose what is not real. In fact, being who you are in Truth, you can never lose, period. And who is it that demands of you that you are to sacrifice yourself by denying the existence of God? Think a moment about the answer. Who is it that has you believing you are this body, separate from all others and separate from God as well? Ever notice how the world you so believe in vanishes when you close your eyes? You hear sounds but see nothing. You have pictures in your mind but you do not project them. Does not this show you something of the world you believe to be real?

5. Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of to illusion merely ask that they might see a purpose in the world that gives it sense and makes it meaningful. Without your special function has this world no meaning for you. Yet it can become a treasure house as rich and limitless as Heaven itself. No instant passes here in which your brother's holiness cannot be seen, to add a limitless supply to every meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot yourself.

From within you is the knowledge of why you are here in this dream – this world – this illusion. You have a function to perform and that alone is your purpose, your meaning of this world you make. Can you not for a moment of the time you make, see a brother as a reflection of the Christ Spirit within you instead of the limiting body of an illusion? Think of what just might happen if you begin seeing all others as One with you. Who be left to look upon? Those you excluded perhaps? Then look again and include them as well, for Oneness is never complete unless it includes all.

6. You can lose sight of oneness, but can not make sacrifice of its reality. Nor can you lose what you would sacrifice, nor keep the Holy Spirit from His task of showing you that it has not been lost. Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. But judge him not, for you will hear no song of liberation for yourself, nor see what it is given him to witness to, that you may see it and rejoice with him. Make not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice your innocence with his, and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death.

Remember that sacrifice is only possible in this illusion we call life. You cannot sacrifice Truth; you cannot lose Truth; but you can deny Truth, but that doesn't make it any less. So look again at your brother seeing him as what you are, and listen to him as he sings your song to you. And if you hear no song, you have not seen him as Truth, and yourself as well. Doesn't it appear ridiculous to try to sacrifice nothing for All That Is?

7. Yet every instant can you be reborn, and given life again. His holiness gives life to you, who cannot die because his sinlessness is known to God; and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not. You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of Them what God willed not They be. In Heaven, God's Son is not imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so must he be eternally and everywhere. He is the same forever. Born again each instant, untouched by time, and far beyond the reach of any sacrifice of life or death. For neither did he make, and only one was given him by One Who knows His gifts can never suffer sacrifice and loss.

Each 'holy instant' – each 'present moment' – each 'now' we are born again and taste our Truth. Think about this: the holiness (wholeness) of your brother gives life to you – in that instant of recognition on your part – and that in that rebirth is the knowledge that you cannot die – cannot suffer – cannot sin. God's view of you never changes – God never changes. You are as God sees you and will forever be. You are not this body you think you see – you are not this label given to you nor the story that accompanies the label. You are what you shall always be – you are All That Is.

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

So we are reminded once again of our function and that of the Holy Spirit. Isn't time we stopped pretending God does not exist and start accepting our Truth? The world we make as ego is opposite of the world of Truth – our reality. There we are sinless – innocent – having All That Is. In our world we think we are separate, special, sinful, fearful, damned for all eternity. Even the word 'eternity' can be used as a 'trip-up' for us. It is difficult for us to comprehend what being eternal means, for it is the state of God Which is beyond definition.

Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section II. - Many Forms; One Correction

1. It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve all problems for you. He has not greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the same to Him, because each one is solved in just the same respect and through the same approach. The aspects that need solving do not change, whatever form the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in many forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a special form. It will recur and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for all time and will not rise again in any form. And only then are you released from it.

We believe we have many problems in many forms, but we are told that we have but one correction to any problem. So it sort of makes you think that perhaps we have also only one problem. If the solution for any problem is the same for all problems, then there must be but one problem. And when we come to see this one problem, it too, shall be taken from us.

2. The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you think you have. They are the same to Him because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And when the situation is worked out so no one loses is the problem gone, because it was an error in perception that now has been corrected. One mistake is not more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there is but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and could result in gain for anyone. If this were true, then God would be unfair; sin would be possible, attack be justified and vengeance fair.

Read the first line once again – you are released from every problem you THINK you have. Here is a very big word for all of us to pay attention to. Any problem we believe we have is but a thought we are holding in our mind. Now from that statement comes also the solution to the problem – think again. And that is what Spirit has us do – think again and see differently. Mistakes are correctible, sin is not. Sin is seen by ego, mistakes viewed by Spirit. Is God unfair to you? Is it possible for you to sin? Is attack ever justified? Is vengeance ever fair? How many of you has a different response to some of these questions?

3. This one mistake, in any form, has one correction. There is no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. You have no problems, though you think you have. And yet you could not think so if you saw them vanish one by one, without regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or any attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God in any way.

Perhaps the only mistake we ever made was thinking we could do better than God? We could improve upon what already was. And so what could the correction be here? Nothing more than a change of that thought, and yet we hold onto it believing still we might be able to do it. Now do you see the foolishness of the world you make? Now do you begin to grasp why you are so frustrated at times when you try to correct a problem and forget Who is ever present to help you. And all we have to do for the help is to let go of what we think is a problem.

4. The miracle of justice can correct all errors. Every problem is an error. It does injustice to the Son of God, and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small, or more or less. They have no properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God is suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be large or little. He makes but one judgment; that to hurt God's Son must be unfair and therefore is not so.

Here is an area of the Course that some have difficulty with – the acceptance of all problems as simply being errors. But what about those major problems we believe we have? Yes, we have some little problems, but the major ones are what are most frightening to us. But we are told repeatedly that all problems are but an error and an error is correctible. So what about the 'large' or 'major' crisis in our life? The adjectives are from ego, the crisis just another description of error. The solution is still the same.

5. You who believe it safe to give but some mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total. There is no such thing as partial justice. If the Son of God is guilty then is he condemned, and he deserves no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God to punish him because you find him guilty and would have him die. God offers you the means to see his innocence. Would it be fair to punish him because you will not look at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for yourself to solve, or judge that it is one that has no resolution, you have made it great, and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of justice can be fair.

Here too, is another key for us to add to our ring of keys – if we keep back but one problem from Spirit, all problems continue to be seen as unresolved. Justice is total – all problems are error and errors are correctible. And yet how often do we hold back one slice of an error with the thought that we perhaps can fix it? Is this not playing God again? Why play when we are. This is difficult for many of us to admit or even acknowledge. But if we have looked for healing of problems, and none has appeared in our view, then perhaps we must once again look with and see it there might just be one that we didn't want to look at or one we were too ashamed to offer to Spirit, or even one we thought we could fix ourselves.

6. If God is just, then can there be no problems that justice cannot solve. But you believe that some injustices are fair and good, and necessary to preserve yourself. It is these problems that you think are great and cannot be resolved. For there are those you want to suffer loss, and no one whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once again your special function. One is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness. And you will ask no sacrifice of him because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him. Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what you give to Him is everyone's, and by your giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.

So the first question is "Is God just?" If you reply yes and still believe you have a problem, then ask yourself once more. Is there some problem you are holding back from giving to God, that you believe you can solve? And remember your function with the Holy Spirit, and to your brother as well. Are you perhaps playing a role of victimhood and feel that you must hold that dark secret within your mind? Have you forgotten completely who you are in Truth – that will never change, you know? As ego we often hide under many labels, but when the labels are removed, what we have forever been is still present.

7. Think, then, how great your own release will be when you are willing to receive correction for all your problems. You will not keep one, for pain in any form you will not want. And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them are little in His sight, and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be a special problem, a mistake without a remedy, or an affliction without a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.

The greatest release I have witnessed is that of a dying person who was told it was okay to let go now – God would take from here – and with that the last breath was noticed. We can all experience a similar release when we at last let go of all that we have been holding in storage all this time. The moment when we give to Spirit all of our problems, and know that they are indeed all of our problems. One can actually feel a 'weight' lifted from them at such a time. It does require honesty with oneself and honesty with oneSelf. There is nothing that have done in this dream that is real, and yet we believe that it is. Spirit sees beyond all illusions, God doesn't even see the illusion. So what might you be hiding from God?

8. God cannot be remembered until justice is loved instead of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything, because He knows that everything that is belongs to Him, and will forever be as He created it. Nothing He loves but must be sinless and beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked will merely fall away and disappear. For it is not your Father's Will that you should offer or receive less than He gave, when He created you in perfect love.

There is indeed a lot to grasp in this last paragraph: we cannot remember our Truth until we are able to see ALL brothers as One. ALL brothers are equal to all brothers. All brothers are One with All That Is. And you are one of the those brothers. In Oneness we see no sin, no attack and no fear. We see no specialness, no better or worse, no more or less. And in this view we see no hell but only heaven. We see no barriers, no bars, no jails or jailers. What we see is as God created – Love.

Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section III. - The Borderland

1. Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is One? He knows of one creation, one reality, one truth and but one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple presence, and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. And only if there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward oneness. What is everything leaves room for nothing else. Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is it necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped.

If complexity is not of God, then who else is there? Only the body we so believe in, the personality we think we are, the label we wear and respond to. We make ourselves so complex so that we have little thought left to possibly think this is not who and what I am. And it isn't that God is simple – God simply is! And as we are as God is, then we are not the complex forms we have long thought we were – we are as God is. And the last line here got my attention – so often we feel pressured by other students of the Course to 'get it', never really knowing what it is. I have known students who have stayed on a Lesson for several days because they didn't 'get it.' Here we are told that if we do not grasp what is being told to us, to simply move on. When you are to 'get it' you will.

2. There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought together; where conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that is received instead.

What picture do you see when you see the word 'borderland'? A topic currently popular in the political scene. An area that stands between two other areas, where some fear to pass, while others welcome the chance. This borderland here is but a thought (and what isn't) that we hold while we choose between Heaven and hell, Truth or fiction. Take the thought of Heaven and pass through to where you have always been.

3. This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the real world. And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only one continues past the gate where oneness is. Salvation is a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made.

And this is where our journey ends – exactly where it started. The journey was but a dream for we have never left. There is no where else. This our Reality – our Home – our Source – our Oneness. Here is where we know all and perceive nothing. Here is where Oneness is natural and separation but a dream.

4. Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception: "It has no meaning, and does not exist." This is not your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world there are no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference between the worlds. In this one, choice is made impossible. In the real world is choosing simplified.

Imagine a place where nothing can be destroyed; where what is seen is forever seen. And a place where choice is not even an option for knowledge has been given you. A place where a 'still small voice' whispers in your ear that nothing has any meaning, and nothing simply does not exist. And imagine that you comprehend that statement.

5. Salvation stops just short of Heaven, for only perception needs salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so cannot be saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for Heaven and the wish for hell unless he recognizes they are not the same? This difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice that can be made.

All that we have been told in the Course, all that has been discussed, all of that is necessary only in this illusion. All of it will be not required as we step back into where we have never left. All that we have learned so far, all that we shall learn yet – all that we shall remember – has been for us to prepare for making the choice we have been seeking. We have been shown repeatedly that all that we see is but illusion – a nothing – a thought we hold and project out in the nothing we call our world.

6. There is no basis for a choice in this complex and overcomplicated world. For no one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in the perception of alternatives for choice. That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this.

So read this again carefully. There is but only one choice that holds meaning for us in this world. Choice is not real as it is in the illusion only. Yet to end this illusion we are to make the choice of choices – the one by which all that we believe we see will be shown as nothing and all that we know will again be present.

7. Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was specialness, and now is union? All illusions are but one. And in the recognition this is so lies the ability to give up all attempts to choose between them, and to make them different. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly unalike. There is no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the relinquishment of an illusion recognized as such. Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up, and choose what must be true?

Have you been aware of how the Course is now asking questions of you instead of telling you what to do? By now this far into the Course, we have a remembrance of some knowledge we have within us to make choices – to see love instead of fear. As we stand in that borderland between Heaven and hell, and we hesitate in making a choice, we are shown that all that we thought to be true is not, and it is no longer visible. With that view given us, the choice we must make is quite clear, right?

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Section IV. - Where Sin Has Left

1. 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.

Here is the theme of the Course once again offered us – forgiveness. Want a piece of Heaven in your world? Then forgive. What to see justice in your world? Then forgive. And who is it that we forgive, but ourselves. And who is it that is in need of forgiveness but ourselves. If we say another, we are judging another. If we say 'them' then we have placed ourselves as being 'special.' And as we continue practicing forgiveness of ourselves, we slowly begin to realize that there is nothing we must truly forgive for we have done nothing but hold a thought of other than love. I offer myself forgiveness for those thoughts I held about others, and myself. I have taken all those thoughts and changed them – I have accepted the miracle, I have accepted Atonement.

2. Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see. Each flower shines in light, and every bird sings of the joy of Heaven. There is no sadness and there is no parting here, for everything is totally forgiven. And what has been forgiven must join, for nothing stands between to keep them separate and apart. The sinless must perceive that they are one, for nothing stands between to push the other off. And in the space that sin left vacant do they join as one, in gladness recognizing what is part of them has not been kept apart and separate.

Look at what a simple act of forgiveness does; changes my perception of my world from fear to love; I am aware of each aspect of nature, hearing the birds sing as if they were but angels. Forgiveness shows me no separation as I look upon others, only a Oneness is to be seen and experienced. This is what forgiveness can do. What are you waiting for? An invitation perhaps? Your brother has already offered you one.

3. The holy place on which you stand is but the space that sin has left. And here you see the face of Christ, arising in its place. 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 sin was believed to be. And here does every light of Heaven come, to be rekindled and increased in joy. For here is what was lost restored to them, and all their radiance made whole again.

And look once more where sin had been but is now erased by an act of forgiveness. Now wherever you are in holy ground. Now wherever you look you see the reflection of the Christ within. And in that reflection you also know who you are in Truth – that Which has forever been.

4. 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 feared 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?

Forgiveness brings me before the gate of Heaven where I receive and remember the gifts of God, the memory of my Truth. And now I am shown that what I thought I feared I love, and what I thought I loved is nothing. And my thoughts have changed so that I can grasp that love can never be feared.

5. Where sin once was perceived will rise a world that will become an altar to the truth, and you will join the lights of Heaven there, and sing their song of gratitude and praise. And as they come to you to be complete, so will you go with them. For no one hears the song of 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 that 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 one brings tears of joy into my eyes. Just picture yourself with all others as One and then joining once again to become the Lights of Heaven, from whom you hear a sound long forgotten and yet so instantly remembered. And you join others in the jubilation at the altar of your truth – of all truth and soon you all forget what you all thought once stood on this very spot. And from you voice and the voice of the One you have become, you united once more with the universe to be heard as but one Voice.

6. This tiny spot of sin that stands between you and your brother still is holding back the happy opening of Heaven's gate. How little is the hindrance that 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!

So here we still are – holding this tiny spot of sin as if a sacred relic – holding us back from entering where we have never left – holding us back from the Oneness we know exist but yet experience. How little the sin and how mighty the forgiveness. Into your hands has been committed the decision.

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Section V. - The Little Hindrance

1. A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do not understand that miracles are all the same. Yet teaching that is what this course is for. This is its only purpose, for only that is all there is to learn. And you can learn it in many different ways. All learning is a help or hindrance to the gate of Heaven. Nothing in between is possible. There are two teachers only, who point in different ways. And you will go along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two directions you can take, while time remains and choice is meaningful. For never will another road be made except the way to Heaven. You but choose whether to go toward Heaven, or away to nowhere. There is nothing else to choose.

Recall in the very beginning of the Course how we were told there is no difficulties in miracles and that they were but all the same, none bigger than others? Here we are once again taught – reminded – the purpose of the Course – all miracles – all change of thoughts are but the same – none harder to do than others. And we also learned early in the Course of the 'two masters' we have – one of God and the other of nothing. And which teacher – which master – which voice we listened to would guide us in this dream. And only two directions are possible, and yet only one is leading to Heaven – the other leading us into the darkness of nothingness. And the final line says it all – which path we are one – which voice we listen to – determines which choice we make alone.

2. Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real Teacher of the world. Yet since you do believe in it, why should you waste it going nowhere, when it can be used to reach a goal as high as learning can achieve? Think not the way to Heaven's gate is difficult at all. Nothing you undertake with certain purpose and high resolve and happy confidence, holding your brother's hand and keeping step to Heaven's song, is difficult to do. But it is hard indeed to wander off, alone and miserable, down a road that leads to nothing and that has no purpose.

If we could but do ourselves one big favor, it would be to let time go. Time is a making of our own so that it is an illusion within an illusion and holds no meaning for us. And yet it is part of this dream we believe we are in. And by now in the Course we also know that Heaven is not an unreachable goal – it is as close to us as the next thought. Any difficulty we have in reaching Heaven is but our own making – our own resistance to our own truth. But the path back is to be accomplished only as we hold the hand of another – we do not enter alone. Our brother needs you as much as you need him.

3. God gave His Teacher to replace the one you made, not to conflict with it. And what He would replace has been replaced. Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity. And so is all time past, and everything exactly as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time in which the first mistake was made, and all of them within that one mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and all of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone.

God gave us the Holy Spirit as a substitute for the substitute for God we chose. And because God has so presented Spirit for us, Spirit is with us until we cross through the gate. And here we see that time we made was actually within the second of our error, where all that we think we are doing and seeing now has already happened. We have taken time and dragged out this dream, when it was actually over the instant it was.

4. To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were before you still.

Did you ever contemplate that without time, the dream would have ended when it began? But we believe the dream is stilling progressing so we need guidance through it and the time it appears to take. Asking Spirit for that guidance we will be shown that the past we thought was never happened. And that without a past, no future is to be had. Some of us has a difficult time with this concept – if there was no past then no future is possible because it is based on the past – then what are we left with – where do we go from here, as it expression goes? There is nowhere to go and only the present to be experienced. And what does the present hold for us many inquire. They fear being lost without a past or a future for guidance.

5. The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher. Only in the past,–an ancient past, too short to make a world in answer to creation,–did this world appear to rise. So very long ago, for such a tiny interval of time, that not one note in Heaven's song was missed. Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment and in all belief in sin, is that one instant still called back, as if it could be made again in time. You keep an ancient memory before your eyes. And he who lives in memories alone is unaware of where he is.

And here is the reason we need nothing of a past – if we live in the memories of what we thought once was, we cannot the now of Truth. We are blinded by memories of a past that never happened so that that which we are in cover from our sight. Each time we have an unforgiving thought; each time we judge; each time we believe in sin, we live in a past that shrouds our truth. Each time we do any or all of those, we fail to be present in the holy instant of now.

6. Forgiveness is the great release from time. It is the key to learning that the past is over. Madness speaks no more. There is no other teacher and no other way. For what has been undone no longer is. And who can stand upon a distant shore, and dream himself across an ocean, to a place and time that have long since gone by? How real a hindrance can this dream be to where he really is? For this is fact, and does not change whatever dreams he has. Yet can he still imagine he is elsewhere, and in another time. In the extreme, he can delude himself that this is true, and pass from mere imagining into belief and into madness, quite convinced that where he would prefer to be, he is.

Forgiveness is our release from time. And who is it that we must forgive? And if we release ourselves from time, where shall we then be? With time we have madness. With time, we have aging, illness and death. With time we have fears and thoughts of separation. Grasp the context that this life you live is but a dream long over. Only you hang on to it as if it were happening now. You are nowhere else but in this moment – nothing else exists and your belief in it does not make it real. Let go of those beliefs but for one holy instant and notice that you have not vanished, but you do experience peace.

7. Is this a hindrance to the place whereon he stands? Is any echo from the past that he may hear a fact in what is there to hear where he is now? And how much can his own illusions about time and place effect a change in where he really is?

And what can this dream but do except prevent us from seeing truth? Where we are in Truth we shall forever be, and no dream of any magnitude will ever change that. Time and the dream are but illusion, truth is the essence of All That Is.

8. The unforgiven is a voice that calls from out a past forevermore gone by. And everything that points to it as real is but a wish that what is gone could be made real again and seen as here and now, in place of what is really now and here. Is this a hindrance to the truth the past is gone, and cannot be returned to you? And do you want that fearful instant kept, when Heaven seemed to disappear and God was feared and made a symbol of your hate?

And how do you respond to the last question above? A thought of fear will forever remain until we change that thought to one of love. It is but the same thought but seen differently. The past will always be believed in as long as forgiveness is required of us. Once we forgive, that is gone and the present is once again experienced. If thoughts from a past that never was continue to surface in your mind, look at them and see if might see them differently; they have come to back to you for that reason alone.

9. Forget the time of terror that has been so long ago corrected and undone. Can sin withstand the Will of God? Can it be up to you to see the past and put it in the present? You can not go back. And everything that points the way in the direction of the past but sets you on a mission whose accomplishment can only be unreal. Such is the justice your All-Loving Father has ensured must come to you. And from your own unfairness to yourself has He protected you. You cannot lose your way because there is no way but His, and nowhere can you go except to Him.

We have all tried to go back to a past where we so strongly desired to do something different then, only to discover again and again, that we cannot go back simply because it no longer exists. All that exists is the now – this present moment of a holy instant – a time out from the illusion of time we make. Many times ego softly whispers 'if only you did such and such' or 'if only so and so would have treated you better.' But what you believed happened then was what was to happen then – learn from it and move on. The only change you can make in a past that never was is your vision of it. You can see it differently.

10. Would God allow His Son to lose his way along a road long since a memory of time gone by? This course will teach you only what is now. A dreadful instant in a distant past, now perfectly corrected, is of no concern nor value. Let the dead and gone be peacefully forgotten. Resurrection has come to take its place. And now you are a part of resurrection, not of death. No past illusions have the power to keep you in a place of death, a vault God's Son entered an instant, to be instantly restored unto his Father's perfect Love. And how can he be kept in chains long since removed and gone forever from his mind?

Would a God of unconditional Love all us to lose our way along a road that is but a memory of another time? The Course teaches us only what is now – what is in this holy instant. What we thought once was horrible is now seen for the lesson it was, and we learn and let the lesson go. We no longer must believe in the past nor believe in death – neither of which are real. We come now from the tomb we made to the moment of truth – the now. And we discover that we are indeed alive in the Truth of who we are. Without a past there is nothing that binds us, nothing that keeps us prisoner in an illusion.

11. The Son whom God created is as free as God created him. He was reborn the instant that he chose to die instead of live. And will you not forgive him now, because he made an error in the past that God remembers not, and is not there? Now you are shifting back and forth between the past and present. Sometimes the past seems real, as if it were the present. Voices from the past are heard and then are doubted. You are like to one who still hallucinates, but lacks conviction in what he perceives. This is the borderland between the worlds, the bridge between the past and present. Here the shadow of the past remains, but still a present light is dimly recognized. Once it is seen, this light can never be forgotten. It must draw you from the past into the present, where you really are.

We are as free as God created us to be – nothing can change what God has created. We forgive ourselves for thoughts we held of believing in death and the past. Here we are told we are in a 'borderland' – an area of teetering between the illusion and our truth. We still believe at times of a past we think was true, and then again we let go of such thoughts to be present in the moment – that of no time, no past, and no future. It is indeed at times, a dim view, but still a light shines that we may see the darkness of the past as but an illusion. How is it that we can believe in an illusion? But focus more on the light present for you. Follow that light within itself and draw farther away from the darkness – move away from a past that is long since over – and never was. Move into the light and behold what is present for you.

12. The shadow voices do not change the laws of time nor of eternity. They come from what is past and gone, and hinder not the true existence of the here and now. The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence that can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion for all time and every circumstance. And then it was no more to be experienced as there.

Once again we are being told that all that we believe in was over in an instant. Ego pleads with us to hold time as precious for that is all you have here. Eternity is but a dream, never to be reach by the likeness of any body. But we know this far into the Course that time and death are the illusion, eternity is real. We are as God is and shall forever be.

13. Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love. And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which is not a gap at all. Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relived. And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now.

And if we believe in this 'mad belief' we must be truly mad as well. Do you see what time is meant for – to keep us reliving a dream that started with but a single thought of perhaps we could do better than God, and failed to laugh immediately at the madness of that thought. And so look how we live in this dream - to live and die each day, only to do it all over again the next day. And the gap mentioned is not a gap – not a void somewhere between something – it is but the next thought we could hold if we so chose it. Our Truth is not a repetition of what was, it a being of what is. Why devote this life to what never was, when we could focus on only what is?

14. Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. You stand no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven's gate. There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love.

How often we hear the Voice telling us to forgive; telling us to let go, and yet each time we hear It we know that is precisely what we are to do. We would not be told if we had already done it. We have moved from the illusionary world to one of our reality. Whether you are aware of it or not, you have accomplished that. The Gate of Heaven is before you. Now look upon your brother and see in him the reflection of you – see in him the Love he us and you are.

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Section VI. - The Appointed Friend

1. Anything in this world that you believe is good and valuable and worth striving for can hurt you, and will do so. Not because it has the power to hurt, but just because you have denied it is but an illusion, and made it real. And it is real to you. It is not nothing. And through its perceived reality has entered all the world of sick illusions. All belief in sin, in power of attack, in hurt and harm, in sacrifice and death, has come to you. For no one can make one illusion real, and still escape the rest. For who can choose to keep the ones that he prefers, and find the safety that the truth alone can give? Who can believe illusions are the same, and still maintain that even one is best?

Look carefully at the first line here. Do you grasp its meaning? To understand is of the ego – to literally 'stand under' the meaning of a word and believe it to be true. The meaning of words we use in this illusion are nothing more than a part of the illusion. Now do you 'understand' the first line? Nothing within an illusion can be less or more than an illusion. Nothing real can be in an illusion. All that we believe we have in this world we make is but an illusion – something we believe we see and have given some value to. Everything we believe we see is an illusion – everything – illness, sickness, death – all illusions. As are wealth, prestige, labels, stories, and the person we think we are. We are told repeatedly in the Course this very same topic, and yet not enough times for we still read it knowing we are still doing it. Those things in your dream that you have chosen to be the best, as simply the same as all the rest – an illusion.

2. Lead not your little life in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. Yet God has given him a better Friend, in Whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you think is friend obscures His grace and majesty from you, and keeps His friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without Him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take His place. There is no other friend. What God appointed has no substitute, for what illusion can replace the truth?

Are you living this dream with the thought of having no other one but ego to rely on, to be called your friend? This is not your friend, but a nothing. This friend can offer you more illusions and yet never come through for you. Disappointment is its gift to you. But you have a Friend closer to you than your next thought. This Friend can give you what you are seeking. This Friend can guide to where you wish to return. The time has come for us to accept this Friend instead of the illusion we have believe too long in. This Friend is given us by God, and what God gives in real. Can we say that about the ego friend/

3. Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is not the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized its emptiness has left yours empty and unoccupied? Make no illusion friend, for if you do, it can but take the place of Him Whom God has called your Friend. And it is He Who is your only Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only He to Whom they have been given can make sure that you receive them. He will place them on your throne, when you make room for Him on His.

If we continue to dwell in the shadows of the darkness; if we continue to befriend the ego as it is real; if we continue to substitute the illusion for truth; then the gifts offered to us by the Friend of God will simply be held until we open our mind to thoughts of Love. Once we let go of the thought of darkness – the thought of an illusion, we shall be given all that is ours to have. No illusions these gifts, but only truth from God. Are you so fearful of truth as to accept the illusion as real?
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Section VII. - The Laws of Healing

1. This is a course in miracles. 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.

It would appear as if we are to review what we have already covered. Such is the beauty of the Course, to state and restate what we are to remember until such time as we do. This is a Course in mind training and there is still more we must do. So let us pay attention.

2. All sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it is gone as soon as the idea that 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.

As long as we continue to believe we are this body, that is how long we shall experience sickness. When we accept our Truth – that we are not this body, that this body is not real – sickness is no longer an issue. Sickness is an issue of insanity; healing is one of sanity. This world we believe in has been explained to us several times as being insane – when we believe in it, we also are the insane.

3. 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 perceived 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.

When we hold thoughts of guilt, we ask for punishment. As long as we consider ourselves to be separated from God, so long shall we believe in guilt and our need to be punished for it. Perception is a wish of ours fulfilled – a thought we hold we wish to see and then believe. Perception hangs before the knowledge we are, it hides our Truth. Although Truth is hidden, it shall never change. It will always be there behind perception. And notice that our perception takes on many forms, and yet knowledge is without form. And are we not also without form in Truth?

4. 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 works in time, where it is needed. Yet because it is of God, the laws of time do not affect its workings. It is in this world, but not a part of it. For it is real, and dwells where all reality must be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.

There are times when we have believed that perception is knowledge and therefore truth. There have been times but they did not last long until we saw our error in thinking and corrected it. An answer to sickness within our world has been given, but do we accept that answer as truth? And the answer is of God and therefore must be real. It, like us, is in the world, but not a part of it. Are we not the answer we have been seeking? In our acceptance of our Truth, we acknowledge that we have never been separated from God, but just as we have been for eternity. The Course tells us that ideas are of the mind, there we – this body – are but of the mind as well.

5. 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.

Recall how we have remembered that within any problem also is the solution? This is what is being told to us here again. Where we have our belief in separation is where we have the solution to that illusion. Everything in this illusion, this dream, is upside down – the reverse of what it appears. We have believed fear to be love and love to be fear. The illusion is but only a thought we hold; its reversal is within that thought as well.

6. 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.

This is one of the obstacles on our path that we often find too difficult to deal with, too large to remove, too much to ask of us. Any value that any illusion holds for us is only the value we have given it – nothing more than that. Can one nothing be more valuable than another nothing? We have come to believe it can. All illusions are the same – illusions. Not one illusion is true. We may say that this one is true and that one is false, but the fact remains they are all false.

7. 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's heels. For such an insane picture an insane defense can be expected, but can not establish that the picture must be true.

Some of us grew up believing in sin and its ramifications. We were told that a baby was born with sin, and yet once baptized, no longer had sin. Some of us were taught the hierarchies of sin – some being worse than others – some even being unforgivable by God. And as we move along on our journey back to where we never left, we have changed those thoughts and have seen them as only beliefs that we no longer held true. The God we have remembered is one of unconditional Love; One of not seeing us as the bodies within an illusion, for an illusion is not real. Sin is but a thought we once held in our mind of a deed that we had to seek forgiveness for. Sin, we now know, is nothing more than a thought – only a thought – one of no value, no meaning and easily corrected by changing our thought.

8. 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 that 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.

Truth is truth and needs no meaning, no definition of a multitude of words. Truth is what is known within. Illusion have only the meaning we give them, but that does not change what they are – illusions – nothing. How insane is our world when we go about attaching meaning and value to nothing, and then believing in the nothing as if it was real? Not one other being you see is a sinner – not one. Not one other being you see is a separate body as you perceive them to be – not one. Not one other being is limited by thing, other than the body they believe they – not one. And all of this includes you as well.

9. Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart. We call it "wish" because it still conceives of other choices, and has not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. 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 that you have placed between the Heaven where you are, and recognition of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known before they were denied.

Forgiveness of yourself removes what you believed stood between you and your brother – the difference you imagine there was between the two of you. And forgiveness is but your choice alone to make. This simple act you perform – the mere change of but one thought – opens you to the Truth you are and he is as well. And what you both are never can change.

10. 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 that 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.

Recall how many times we have read of our 'little willingness' and yet once more we are reminded that it is all that is necessary – a 'little' on our part and the rest is done within an instant. The world we believe we see can change within that instant to one of Love. The simple, little act of forgiveness is but a pointing out that our Truth is forever Truth; what we have forever been, we shall forever be. And we know within that our will is that of God, we are truly One.

11. 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?

Is fear a treasure to us? Often we have acted as if that were true. And all the uncertainty that we experience in this dream, is that truly what we desire? Have we lost what certainty is? Or is what we believe we see nothing more than an error we think and is easily corrected with but another thought? What God wills is what shall be for God is all things. And we, created in the image and likeness of God, are we not then the Will of God as well? Nothing exists that we do not already possess – nothing. Nothing exists that God has not provided us with, for nothing exists without the Will of God. Why do you suppose we resist this and choose to deny our Truth?

12. 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 seen as separate from their source, and seem to be beyond you to control or to prevent. What is thus kept apart can never join.

Early on in the Course we learned that a thought could not leave its source, such as us leaving God. We learned that we believe we can take any thought and project it out there and believe that it is real. Believing it is real does not make it real. And because we believe so strongly here, we believe that attack of another is possible. How many times have you been told of your innocence and yet have experienced guilt? You cannot be innocent and guilty at the same time. We believe we are separate from each other and from God as well. And we feel lost and yet we do not know from what or Who. As long as we believe in separation, we can never experience the Oneness of our Truth.

13. 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. For never will success be possible in trying to deceive the Son of God.

God is our Cause, and we His Effect, and yet we are One. In such a way does God prove to us our Truth. Regardless of how hard we try, how many times and ways we believe we can project our thoughts – we shall never accomplish it. An idea cannot leave a mind – any mind. We have been deceived long enough on this issue. This is the obstacles of obstacles to remove on our path. This is the one preventing from moving on. Let go of the notion that the thought you hold is projected in form before you – it is not true – and neither is the body you also project and call yourself.

14. 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 forsworn his Father and himself, and made Them both his enemies in hate.

So long as we continue to believe we can lose anything, so long shall we believe in this world of illusion. We have nothing in this world we make and therefore we cannot lose what we never had. And what we have in Truth can never be lost for Truth is eternal as is the Source of Truth. One of these days we shall discover that sacrifice is of this illusion, and the results are the same – nothing. Look upon your brother – any and all of them – and choose to see them in the Truth they are – not in the judged illusion you have portrayed them as. But be sure to include ALL brothers for if you leave just one out, you have left them all out, including yourself. This is what Oneness is all about.

15. 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.

Knowing that God sees all as One, why do you suppose that we think we see differently from God? Only because we continue to believe in the illusion of separation. What are the purpose behind all the illusions we believe we see? Could it be as simple as they are there for us to acknowledge what they are in Truth, and then watch as they disappear into the nothingness from which they came?

16. 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. Each instant is the Son of God reborn until he chooses not to die again. In every wish to hurt he chooses death instead of what his Father wills for him. Yet every instant offers life to him because his Father wills that he should live.

Remember that a miracle is simply a change of thought you hold. And as you change your thought of separation from God to your Truth, you shall once again recall with vivid clarity who and what you are, and where you are and have forever been. And here is no death to be experienced for it is not included in the Will of God.

17. In crucifixion is redemption laid, for healing is not needed where there is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the answer to attack of any kind. So is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the name of love. To you to whom it has been given to save the Son of God from crucifixion and from hell and death, all glory be forever. For you have power to save the Son of God because his Father willed that it be so. And in your hands does all salvation lie, to be both offered and received as one.

Do you accept the task you have been given? To save your brother – the Son of God – from his self-inflicted crucifixion, death and from his own hell. This is not a task they you can refuse. You can postpone completing your task, you can deny it exists, but still it remains before you just as sure as your brother is before you. Such is the Will of God, your will as well. And in the saving of your brother is your salvation as well.

18. 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, nor 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.

Some people have a difficult time admitting who they are in Truth. They can admit that they are the Son of God, but stop quick in stating that as God, they are as well. They believe it highly arrogant to even think that we are as God is, and yet, God created just like that – in the image and likeness of God – as the Oneness God is, we also are. Any arrogance comes in when we attempt to deny our Truth. How can we say we are not as God created us?

19. 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.

For me this is saying that I must stop my battle with myself, stop believing in what is not Truth, and live a life of peace that God wills for me. And in this life of peace shall I see my brother in a life of peace as well. And in this life of peace we shall no longer believe in death, suffering, pain, and sickness. And we shall view all that we look upon as One with us – that we shall see no difference in anyone – that we are all One and the same Son of God.

20. 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.

And what do you supposed your ancient Name could be? And can you call your brother by that name that you call yourself as well? And in the call is the truth seen once more in each other. We are but One, all of us, and we answer but to one name.

Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section VIII. - The Immediacy of Salvation

1. The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the time when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trusting in your brother. This but reflects the little you would keep between you and your brother, that you and he might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space.

Isn't it great to read that only one remaining problems exists? When you have judged a brother, realize it, and then choose to change that thought, is not the change immediate or do you experience an interval of time? Time and space are illusions of our making, neither is real. The change of thought you have for your brother is not to be projected which requires time, but simply held in your mind – you see your brother as the reflection within you.

2. There is a distance you would keep apart from your brother, and this space you perceive as time because you still believe you are external to him. This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation, not immediate results.

Remember that giving and receiving are but the same – not two different actions, but just one. If you give love to your brother – if you change your thought about your brother – it is to be done now and now means that you drop other fears as well. Holding fears of any kind toward your brother prevents him from receiving what you say you are offering him, and if he doesn't receive, you don't receive. There is no space between the two of you. There is no chasm that must be crossed, there is but illusion of separation between you. If you do not receive and give immediately, are you in the present, or are you hiding out in that past you have cherished?

3. Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the source of fear. Salvation would wipe out the space you see between you still, and let you instantly become as one. And it is here you fear the loss would lie. Do not project this fear to time, for time is not the enemy that you perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is, except in terms of what you see it for. If you would keep a little space between you and your brother still, you then would want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. And this but makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld from you and given seem dangerous, with terror justified.

If you fail to recognize salvation as immediate, salvation is not what you choose to give and receive. Salvation is not for later – a span of time – a span of an illusion. It is here and now, and the results are immediate because of it. Giving to a brother is not losing anything, but gaining so much more. This is why the act of giving is also the act of receiving – they are one and the same. Ego sees them much differently.

4. Yet space between you and your brother is apparent only in the present, now, and cannot be perceived in future time. No more can it be overlooked except within the present. Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects. And therefore must it be that if you fear, there is a present cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state.

Could it be that the future, like the past, doesn't exist? What we are to focus on is the now – the present. How do you see your brother now, not later for later does not exist, only the present? And if you can not see your brother in Truth now, you cannot see your brother at all, nor can you be seen as well. Fear prevents you from this view. Lift up its veil and look beyond.

5. The plans you make for safety all are laid within the future, where you cannot plan. No purpose has been given it as yet, and what will happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects unless he thought they had been caused, and judged disastrous now? Belief in sin arouses fear, and like its cause, is looking forward, looking back, but overlooking what is here and now. Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking this, is it protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is now. It stands already here, in present grace, within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there is to time.

The one place ego does not want us to be is in the present. It would prefer that we stretch out into a future that does not exist, or into a past that is long over and never was. The here and now is fearful to ego, for in the here and now are no thoughts of past or future present. The miracle is now, not then or later yet. Now is all that is. There is no sin or fear in the now, only Truth. Notice how ego has us worrying about a future that isn't here; how it constantly bombards us with guilt and fear over 'saving' for the future, when the now is all that is. Ego enjoys keeping us busy with illusions of a past or a future, so that we will not pause and notice the now.

6. The working out of all correction takes no time at all. Yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has in it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at now. Why wait till they unfold in time and fear they may not come, although already there? You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it seems as if this is not so. Good in disaster's form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in this idea.

Is there work to correction and does it really take time? The work is but what we make of changing a thought in our mind. How hard can that be and yet how difficult have we found such a change? The correction is now, this instant. Why we choose to wait to see what is before us is baffling at best. We are indeed an illusion that enjoys looking silly. If you believe that what God gives is only good, why do you suppose we question the gifts of God so much?

7. Why should the good appear in evil's form? And is it not deception if it does? Its cause is here, if it appears at all. Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with sighing, and with "reasoning" you do not understand it now, but will some day. And then its meaning will be clear. This is not reason, for it is unjust, and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is at hand. Given a change of purpose for the good, there is no reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as "good" some day but now in form of pain. This is a sacrifice of now, which could not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what He gave without a cost at all.

Why do you suppose we so often choose to put off what we could experience now? Why do you suppose we believe we are not worthy of what we ask for, and yet continue to ask for, and not seeing that it is already in front of us. We have but only to accept the gift, and yet we put it off because we have not suffered enough or made sufficient sacrifice to deserve it now. Have you ever realized that we believe so much more in a future that is not here than we do in the here and now which is?

8. Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be already in your mind. And this illusion is but one effect that it engenders, and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is perceived to be the form in which the "good" appears, is but one aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven still.

And here we are being told that all the fears we hold, all the delays we interject in our lives, are but our own thoughts we hold as true. We would rather hold an illusion of fear as truth, then hold the truth of Truth as true.

9. Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning, and is not your just reward. For you have cause for freedom now. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form? Why should deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the "reasoning" that would maintain effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time, is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause must come as one. Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered from. And do not let it be disguised as time, and so preserved because its form is changed and what it is cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit's purpose now is yours. Should not His happiness be yours as well?

Why do choose to wait for a future to experience happiness when happiness is present before us now? Why would we believe we must first die to have happiness? Death is but an experience of ego, happiness is of God. Death does not exist, happiness does. The future does not exist, but the present is here and now. Time is just an illusion, but now is All That Is. Why would we choose not to have what God wills for us now?

Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section IX. - For They Have Come

1. Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation, with his freedom joined! However much you wish he be condemned, God is in him. And never will you know He is in you as well while you attack His chosen home, and battle with His host. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within him, that you may behold his glory and rejoice that Heaven is not separate from you.

Have you looked at your brother is this way before? Have you seen in him that which is in you? Have you thought how he is your salvation just as you are his? Have you thought that if you condemn him, you also condemn God? Look again at your brother and see therein a reflection of the Truth in you both. See in him that which binds you together as the One you are.

2. 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.

So, is it too much to ask of you to show trust in your brother if you believe he carries to you that which you have within you; that this brother shall be your salvation as you shall be his? Yes, you believe yet that a veil of darkness separates you from your brother, but know that the veil is but an illusion, a fear, that is to be seen through. And think about the ground where you both stand as holy ground, for beyond the appearance of you both is that which is holy indeed.

3. 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 that 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.

And from where did the 'blood of hate' appear, but a thought we held of our brother? And as our brother is seen in Truth, what we also see before us changes with each change of thought. Death is no longer seen, but life is. Where hatred once grew, love is blossoming. And the reason for this change is simply that you have accepted the truth of your brother, and he has accepted yours.

4. 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.

Once we have seen our brother as the truth we are, time cease to be, the illusion is ended. And the past we thought so important fades to the nothingness it always was. Where once hatred was, love is now. What was seen as incomplete now is complete and whole. And we all shed our garments of insanity – we all let go of the bodies we thought we were – to become part of and the whole of the Oneness.

5. 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 locked is opened; what was held apart from light is given up, that light may shine on it and leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world.

No view of darkness is to be seen, no cries of helplessness are heard nor is separation a thought. Heaven is experienced in our presence.

6. 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.

No spot is left that is not viewed as holy, no stone left that is not sacred. What was stored in hatred is now gone and in its place, only love. Nothing could be holier, nothing more sacred then where we gather as the One we are.

7. Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in. Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. No one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his 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?

God has provided us with angels that shall watch over us as we release all thoughts of fear, and where fear was, light and love is now present. Where we walk, forgiveness is given. And everyone rejoices at the restoration of what many thought but a memory and now reality.

8. 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!

And now is God once more seen by us as complete, and we see ourselves as complete as well. Now we see that we were separated from God, nor could we ever. And the ancient thoughts of fears have long ago vanished and only Love is present before us. In gentle gratitude does God and the Oneness of us all return to that which was never left. And so the purpose of the Holy Spirit is over. And so it is and shall forever be.

Chapter 26

THE TRANSITION

Section X. - The End of Injustice

1. What, then, remains to be undone for you to realize Their Presence? Only this; you have a differential view of when attack is justified, and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused perception will block knowledge. It is not a question of the size of the confusion, or how much it interferes. Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs, and keeps Them there unknown.

Note the words used here in the beginning: view – think – perceive. Those things we do unconsciously at times, and yet we must become so aware of them. It is our view, our thought, our picture that we become to believe in. And unless Love is notice, we have but to change our thought and our view and scene will change accordingly. God is not seen through illusions, but can be viewed through Love.

2. What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair to you? It means that there must be some forms in which you think it fair. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some, then, are given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless. And this denies the fact that all are senseless, equally without a cause or consequence, and cannot have effects of any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil that stands between Their shining innocence, and your awareness that it is your own and equally belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited cannot be Heaven. So it must be hell.

Here is a question that is asked often of us in the Course: is attack in any form ever justified? There is only one answer to this. No. Fear is fear. Would you say some fears are okay while others are not? Heaven can be experience here and now, not then or there. Heaven in now. We can see God before us in any brother we lay eyes on, or we can see fear reflected back to us. What choice do you make?

3. Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived the other must be seen. You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not your just deserts. Yet it is you who ask this of yourself, in deep injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him as yourself. What could be more unjust than that he be deprived of what he is, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father's Love and yours as not his due?

Unfairness and attack do come before you as a hand-in-hand combination, sort of joined-at-the-hip type. How do you see others determines how they shall see you. If you believe in unfairness – how often do we say the world is unfair to me – then you shall also feel the illusionary effects of attack. You will invite others to think for you, to control you feelings and your life. They will limit you while God has created you as being beyond all limitations. This is always the choice before us – do we believe in the Truth of who we are, or do we believe in the illusion we have come to believe as true?

4. Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else? And is it innocence that your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own.

Recall those times when you have at least thought that it was unfair how one was treated and how you were treated – how one got the privileges and you were restricted – how one got to have ice cream and you went to bed without? Unfairness is one of the many traps ego places before us, places where we continue to fall into and have a difficult time climbing back out. Why is that marriage so great while mine appears to be falling apart? Why is she or he in a better looking body than the one I have? It is unfair that that person got in line a head of me. Now think of those times and also recall what the unfairness got you. Was it worth it?

5. You think your brother is unfair to you because you think that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose nothing can be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this one goal is but to take away all purpose from the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth.

Most of my childhood life I learned that people were in many classes – some richer, some poorer, some sickly and some healthy, some good and some bad, even that some had a different color on their skin than I. And there were times when I thought how unfair life was that I was as I was when I could just as well be in another class. But I learned also early on that when playing with other children, none of us saw in others the classes we were told about – we were all kids and enjoy each other. And that is the lesson from childhood that sticks with me today – we are not different regardless of who tells us we are. We are the Children of God and we see the child in each of us – a child of innocence. It is not that we have so much to learn, but so much to forget.

6. What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly, and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brings can you perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futile world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say:

By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son.

And I would rather know of Them than see injustice,

which Their Presence shines away.

Perhaps the next time you think you see injustice in your world, you will pause and simply reflect on your other choice: you could just as well see the Presence of God within your brother, and then see the Oneness of all of you. It is always about a choice.

Chapter 27

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM

Section I. - The Picture of Crucifixion

1. The wish to be unfairly treated is a compromise attempt that would combine attack and innocence. Who can combine the wholly incompatible, and make a unity of what can never join? Walk you the gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no shadows in the night. But place no terror symbols on your path, or you will weave a crown of thorns from which your brother and yourself will not escape. You cannot crucify yourself alone. And if you are unfairly treated, he must suffer the unfairness that you see. You cannot sacrifice yourself alone. For sacrifice is total. If it could occur at all it would entail the whole of God's creation, and the Father with the sacrifice of His beloved Son.

If you walk the 'gentle way' with your brother, for you cannot walk it without, you and your brother will fear no evils nor shadows of the night. But look what can happen if you or he place symbols of fear before you. You will both suffer the consequences, you will both feel the thorns in your skin, and pain shall be experience by both. You need your brother as he needs you. You may travel a separate path, but once salvation is requested of either of you, you become as one on the path back to where you have never left. If you see yourself as being treated unfairly, then you see your brother as unfairly treated also. What one of you experience, the other shall also.

2. In your release from sacrifice is his made manifest, and shown to be his own. But every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he is guilty of attack. Thus would you make yourself to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and need but look on you to realize that he has been condemned. And what to you has been unfair will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him are you set free. Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for you will not escape the death you made for him. But in his innocence you find your own.

First person: In my release from sacrifice is also my brother's made manifest, and seen as his own. But every pain I suffer I see proof that my brother is guilty of attack. And so I will make myself as a sign that my brother has lost his innocence, and I need not look at myself to realize that my brother has been condemned. And what I saw as unfair to me will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that I suffer now is my brother's, and when it rests on him, I am set free. I wish not to make myself a living symbol of his guilt, for I will not escape the death I made for him. But in my brother's innocence I find my own.

3. Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated or in need of anything, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and not in Heaven, where you are beyond attack and prove his innocence. The picture of yourself you offer him you show yourself, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is no pain and no reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

More: Whenever I consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, to be unfairly treated or in need of anything, I am accusing my brother of attack on me. I hold a picture of my crucifixion before my brother's eyes so that he may see that his sins are written in Heaven in my blood and death. And that I go before him closing the gate and damning him to hell. But this is not written in Heaven, but instead hell. In Heaven I am beyond attack and prove the innocence of my brother. The picture of myself I show to my brother, I show to myself as well, and give it all my faith. The Holy Spirit offers me, to give to my brother, a picture of myself in which there is no pain and no reproach at all. And what I thought was martyred to the guilt of my brother becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

4. The power of witness is beyond belief because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed because he points beyond himself to what he represents. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness that you send lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture you accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins. Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother you have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, because it witnessed to the guilt in him which you perceived and loved.

You believe you can point to your brother, and see in him what you have not, but that is not the case. What you see in him, you see in you. What you accuse him, you are also guilty of. If you believe your brother can attack you, that he can cause you pain and suffering, that he can control your every movement, then it is you who are sick, not your brother. Your brother is not what you see him as in guilt, and you are not what he sees you as in guilt.

5. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a different you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you really are cannot be seen nor pictured. Yet this one has not been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. It witnesses to the eternal truth that you cannot be hurt, and points beyond itself to both your innocence and his. Show this unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look beyond it to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has never sinned; that nothing which his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That no reproach he laid upon his heart was ever justified, and no attack can ever touch him with the poisoned and relentless sting of fear.

Enough of the fear picture you make within your mind. The Holy Spirit takes your view and presents to you the same view through the eyes of Love. Yes, you still see a body but not as a weapon of attack. You see a body healed of all the scars you believed were there. You see a body healed of all the illness you claimed was seen. And now show this picture to your brother as he will see there what he has also sought. He will see in you what he knows is within him as well. As he forgives himself of sins he never committed, he will see that only Love is before him. All the thoughts of attack, of fear and anger, never happened.

6. Attest his innocence and not his guilt. Your healing is his comfort and his health because it proves illusions are not true. It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world. Its only purpose is to prove guilt real. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death, and vanity of real concern with anything at all.

It is amusing that we focus so much on death, when living is what we really want to experience. We fear death and yet it appears that we also fear living. But it does not have to be like that. The motivation of this world can just as easily be to live, not death. With death as our focus, we also praise guilt and fear. With death as our focus, we see others as separate bodies and judge those bodies instead of seeing beyond them. Those bodies are our brothers. See them as brothers and listen to their call for love. See them as brothers and receive from them the truth they give. Forget what they look like, or the labels they wear. See them as you are in truth, and death is no longer a topic for discussion.

7. The strongest witness to futility, that bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short and not esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures could there be that will endure? Are not the frail entitled to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.

So how is that you live your life? Do you live it as if each moment might be the last in this dream? Do you live life to the fullest or do you allow fear to shroud life for you with illness and disease? We are a spiritual being using an illusory body passing through this dream. Why not pass through in joyous way? Why would you choose sickness when you are whole and healed? Why choose sadness when joy is given to you? Why be depressed with your life, when you could just as easily be impressed with it?

8. These are not sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there would be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys and cherish little pleasures where you can. Yet in this picture is the body not perceived as neutral and without a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can never be denied.

The body, of itself, is nothing but a means of communication, a vehicle we have to move through this dream. The body is a symbol of who we think we are, not who we are. Believe in the body and you shall believe in death. Believe in the body, and wear the cloak of guilt. There is an alternative to this.

9. Your function is to show your brother sin can have no cause. How futile must it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function is can never be! The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it all signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured without a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in any way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from all experience of love or fear. For now it witnesses to nothing yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is for. Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be given, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.

And once again we are reminded of our function: to show our brother sin has no cause – no cause then no effect. How you see yourself is the picture you present to your brother. The picture given you be the Holy Spirit shows you as a body, but not a body of attack and guilt. The picture you present to your brother is of a neutral body, one that can have no purpose, one that can neither be sick or well, good or bad. The body has no life of its own, but neither is dead. When that picture is shown to your brother, he will see a body simply waiting to fulfill its function.

10. Into this empty space, from which the goal of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its purpose. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

In this empty space, this holy instant of no-time, where no past is seen nor a future pictured, is all that you forgot remembered. In here is the peace you sought, and the perfect healing. As you drop the thoughts of fear you have towards a brother, you replaced those thoughts with love. As you replace fear with love, your body heals before your brother's eyes. And your brother shall see in you what you have seen in him – the salvation you have both sought.

11. The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a different view, another purpose, can be given it. You do not know its purpose. You but gave illusions of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing without a purpose cannot hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, its purpose and your function both be reconciled at last and seen as one.

And so this is how simple it all becomes: the body has no purpose from a past that never was. What you believe in as a past, was just boiling pot of guilt from which you continuously dipped. The past held no purpose for the body, but the Holy Spirit has made known to you the purpose it is meant to be. What the Holy Spirit has revealed is Truth to you.

Chapter 27

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM

Section II. - The Fear of Healing

1. Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies are accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can have no trust and that the damaged have no grounds for peace. Who has been injured by his brother, and could love and trust him still? He has attacked and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected from him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but not his due. He may be pitied for his guilt, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but add to all the guilt that he has really earned.

Do you fear healing? What exactly is healing to you? Does it mean that your body will no longer be seen as it is, or that how you see your brother will change? Do you believe in what you think your brother has done to you? Can you forgive your brother in your heart but not in your mind? If you pity him, you pity yourself as well. And if you forgive him for what you believe he has done to you, you have but given him more guilt. Has he really done anything to you?

2. The unhealed cannot pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the consequences of the guilt they overlook. Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real. And what has consequences must be real, because what it has done is there to see. Forgiveness is not pity, which but seeks to pardon what it thinks to be the truth. Good cannot be returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first establish sin and then forgive it. Who can say and mean, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt." His pardon and your hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other and must make it false.

If you are not healed, you cannot pardon yourself or another. If you are not healed, you still believe in sin and all its power. You cannot forgive a sin while you believe it to be real. Forgiveness is an act on you by you for the thought you hold in your mind which is not love. You must change the thought you hold of sin so that it may be seen for what it is – an illusion you have given meaning to. As you take away the meaning, you change your thought and you see before you a brother who is seen by you as you see yourself.

3. To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you deserves no pardon. And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers and themselves as well. For no one in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes. And thus he must have overlooked it and removed it from his own. Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who forgives is healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.

You cannot see sin as real and yet forgive it. What you think has been done to you deserves no pardon from you to another. And if you pardon another you are in effect saying that they did actually do something to you. If you pardon another, you are still accusing them. If you accuse, you are sick, and if you are sick, you will experience suffering. If you suffer you stating the validity of sin – it is real you are saying to all. So back to a basic again: who is that forgives and who does one forgive? You can forgive only you, and once you have forgiven you, you have in effect forgiven all. Once you forgive, you are healed. In that healing lies the peace sought by all of us.

4. Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless? And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just because they would entail effects that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that they are merely errors. Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself.

Should you choose forgiveness for yourself, should you choose to be healed, your brother is also forgiven and healed. What one does all receive. In healing you will see your brother as innocent of all sin and free of all guilt. Sins are but errors, and errors are correctable.

5. A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him.

Ever had the experience of knowing a person approaching death, where you saw them as being in great pain? Ever seen them tell you that the pain is nothing, but the peace they are beginning to experience is everything? Ever looked at them in a different way after that? David Hawkins speaks of having a finger amputated and never experiencing pain, remarkable because he declined anything for pain. I knew a student of the Course who fell and shattered her leg, not simply broke it, but shattered in several places. She underwent surgery but never once took any medication for pain. I visited her often and was truly blessed to have been in the presence of such a teacher.

6. A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto His Own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

A miracle remember is but a change of your thought – from fear to love. In that change you shall see your brother as if for the first time, and he shall see as never before also. The healing of the mind – the miracle – the change of thought – is all that is required for both of you to see life in a different light. Where once you heard the call of death, you now hear an ancient calling to return from where you never left. And you become aware that death is not even an option anymore, death is not real. And the call you hear from within is also heard from within by your brother. And you both see that guilt is but one of the many veils hanging before you and the truth.

7. How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself. Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished him . This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. It does not come from pity but from love. And love would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with no effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is given you to see.

And look what a change of thought – a miracle – can do for you and your brother. Guilt is release from both of you. Healing is experienced by both of you. And all because you 'wished him well' – all because you saw him in the same truth you are. In love no suffering is possible. What you wish to see in your brother is what you see within yourself. It is a gift you offer to him and take for yourself as well.

8. The "cost" of your serenity is his. This is the "price" the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives it as a statement of the "fact" that your salvation sacrifices his. The Holy Spirit knows your healing is the witness unto his, and cannot be apart from his at all. As long as he consents to suffer, you will be unhealed. Yet you can show him that his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him your healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence has been established in your sight and his. And laughter will replace your sighs, because God's Son remembered that he is God's Son.

Hopefully, we have all experienced serenity. What price would you put on it? To the ego, everything has a price, a value. To the Holy Spirit, everything is the same, no specialness. My healing depends on how I show my brother what healing is. This illness, disease, sickness...is of the mind, not the body. The body of itself can do nothing. There is no purpose in my suffering; there is no pay-off for it. I am as healed and whole as I have forever been. This is what I present to my brother to see, not a body of nothing.

9. Who, then, fears healing? Only those to whom their brother's sacrifice and pain are seen to represent their own serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represent the grounds on which they justify his pain. The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, but they are free. The constant pain they suffer demonstrates that they are free because they hold him bound. And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with an argument for sickness such as this? And need your healing be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?

I think it is safe to say that we have all come upon the victim – the martyr – who insists on his being sick, suffering and/or being in pain. They choose that role and attempt to justify their life from it. And they may even go so far as to say that they deserve the pain, etc., because they have sinned against God, and God is punishing them accordingly. How then do you see these brothers? You see them as they really are, not as they want to be seen. You send them the love you are and see them as becoming healed from their thoughts.

10. Correction is not your function. It belongs to One Who knows of fairness, not of guilt. If you assume correction's role, you lose the function of forgiveness. No one can forgive until he learns correction is but to forgive, and never to accuse. Alone, you cannot see they are the same, and therefore is correction not of you. Identity and function are the same, and by your function do you know yourself. And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you must be confused about yourself and who you are. What is the separation but a wish to take God's function from Him and deny that it is His? Yet if it is not His it is not yours, for you must lose what you would take away.

This has been brought before: correction is not our function, it is the function of the Holy Spirit. Our function is forgiveness – of ourselves. Many of us would prefer to point out errors to others and tell them how to correct them. But judgment is not our function, forgiveness is. And we are further reminded that identity is the same as our function. Forgiveness is the subject of this life for us. If we are confused about our function and our identity, we are confused about who we are in Truth as well. Confusion of who we are has in a state of separation, of believing we are apart from God.

11. In a split mind, identity must seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, must be a way to punish sins you think are yours in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, not your brother, different from you in that he is more guilty, thus in need of your correction, as the one more innocent than he. This splits his function off from yours, and gives you both a different role. And so you cannot be perceived as one, and with a single function that would mean a shared identity with but one end.

Can a mind of One be split? Can you see your function as being in conflict with anything? If you note conflict in your mind, and who of us does not, be aware that you still believing in your body. You can 'serve two masters" regardless of how hard you try. In the split mind mode, you see your brother as your victim, you judge him and you sentence him, all in one thought. Now you and your brother no longer appear to have the same purpose and function, but in truth you will forever be One. Being of split mind, you cannot see your brother as one with you, but only as separated and different.

12. Correction you would do must separate, because that is the function given it by you. When you perceive correction is the same as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit's Mind and yours are One. And so your own Identity is found. Yet must He work with what is given Him, and you allow Him only half your mind. And thus He represents the other half, and seems to have a different purpose from the one you cherish, and you think is yours. Thus does your function seem divided, with a half in opposition to a half. And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two.

Being in a world of duality, if one part of your two-part mind is the Holy Spirit, what is the other part? If one part of your two-part mind is Truth, what must the other part be? And which one do you prefer? Are you not exhausted from being the part of an illusion that forever chases its own tail? Are you not ready to accept unconditionally your Truth – the truth of who you are and forever have been? Is it truly so difficult for you to reject the notion of being this body, this form of limitation? Instead of seeing a world of duality, would you not prefer to see one of Wholeness?

13. Consider how this self-perception must extend, and do not overlook the fact that every thought extends because that is its purpose, being what it really is. From an idea of self as two, there comes a necessary view of function split between the two. And what you would correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. Your brother's sins become the central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. Yours are mistakes, but his are sins and not the same as yours. His merit punishment, while yours, in fairness, should be overlooked.

Have any of you been here: where what you have done is nothing in comparison to what he or she has done? Be it good or bad means very little. What you did, you say you had to do. What they did, you say was a sin. As long as we continue to see a difference in another, we shall continue in our divided mind. And this divided mind is not real.

14. In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even see. The focus of correction has been placed outside yourself, on one who cannot be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is condemned can never be returned to its accuser, who had hated it, and hates it still as symbol of his fear. This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you and thus outside yourself; the other half, which is denied. And only what is left without his presence is perceived as all of you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the other half until you recognize it is the other half. And this He does by giving you and him a function that is one, not different.

One of the more difficult things for a student of the Course to accept is that as they see others, they see themselves as well. So if we sit on a throne of judgment and indicate how wrong another is, then we are seeing ourselves that way as well. It is much easier to judge another than to forgive ourselves, or so we have been told. But is it still not just a thought of judgment versus a thought of forgiveness? We appear to have little if any resistance when we judge, and yet, when we forgive ourselves, we often going through major conflict.

15. Correction is the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as shared, it must correct mistakes in you and him. It cannot leave mistakes in one unhealed and set the other free. That is divided purpose, which can not be shared, and so it cannot be the goal in which the Holy Spirit sees His Own. And you can rest assured that He will not fulfill a function that He does not see and recognize as His. For only thus can He keep yours preserved intact, despite your separate views of what your function is. If He upheld divided function, you were lost indeed. His inability to see His goal divided and distinct for you and him, preserves yourself from the awareness of a function not your own. And thus is healing given you and him.

Correction is not just given to me for you, but to you for me. When we come to seeing that it is but one function we share, we both are healed and free. A divided purpose cannot exist in a Wholeness of One. So whatever my function is, it is also the function of my brother. Whatever purpose my brother has, I also have. If we see any division, any conflict, any differences, then we are not yet the One we are in Truth.

16. Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness are the same. With half a mind this is not understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind that is united, functioning as one because it is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as its only one. Here is the function given it conceived to be its Own, and not apart from that its Giver keeps because it has been shared. In His acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. His single purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he may accept his other half as part of him.

We forgive, the Holy Spirit corrects. We do not correct and the Holy Spirit does not forgive. Once again, our function is forgiveness. As we do our part, the part of correction is accomplished by Spirit. We forgive ourselves of our daily thoughts, and we forgive ourselves for the thoughts we have held as being of value to us. The Holy Spirit delivers to us the correction necessary for us to see the Oneness we are. And so we are delivered from the thought of sin and we are lead into Oneness.

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Section III. - Beyond All Symbols

1. Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as "weakened power" or "hateful love"?

Remember "Power vs. Force", where Power is God and force is ego? There is no opposite to God, for God is All That Is. Have you ever thought of God as anything less than All That Is?

2. You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a "hateful love," a "weakened power," and above all, a "living death." And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.

Read this again and note that YOU are the one who decides what your brother is to you, what appearance he might have to you. If you as this body are nothing, then what is your brother? And yet do we not give that nothingness power? We are in effect saying that nothingness is hiding truth from us, and yet that is not even to be comprehended by us.

3. The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.

Whatever you believe your brother to be, is what you have given the image to represent. But the bottom line is as you are, so is your brother. If your body is not real, why then would you think the body of your brother is? But if the body is nothing, what then can we see in a brother?

4. An empty space that is not seen as filled, an unused interval of time not seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make itself at home. No preparation can be made that would enhance the invitation's real appeal. For what you leave as vacant God will fill, and where He is there must the truth abide. Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation is. For this there are no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand for more than everything? Yet true undoing must be kind. And so the first replacement for your picture is another picture of another kind.

What could possibly filled a void of nothingness but that which is forever present? What else could we possibly see which is true? So what picture do you see where once you thought you saw a brother?

5. As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality. Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen. Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits. Yet it sets no limits you have chosen to impose. Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is represented temporarily. It lets the Holy Spirit make exchange of pictures possible, until the time when aids are meaningless and learning done. No learning aid has use that can extend beyond the goal of learning. When its aim has been accomplished it is functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use that now you fear, but yet will love.

Nothingness cannot be pictured – no symbol for totality – no form. This is what we have to remember – to learn – and yet we fear knowing this. What happens to the world we believe in when we adopt these beliefs?

6. The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space so lately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. For you will give it overwhelming preference. Nor delay an instant in deciding that it is the only one you want. It does not stand for double concepts. Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within itself it is the same. The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is not cancelled out. And thus is God left free to take the final step Himself. For this you need no pictures and no learning aids. And what will ultimately take the place of every learning aid will merely be.

With the aid of Spirit we shall see a brother as he is – the void will be shown to us for what it is, and what it is, is without opposites. That which you are also has no opposite.

7. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing that the eyes have ever seen or ears have heard remains to be perceived. A power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive its own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The choice you fear to lose you never had. Yet only this appears to interfere with power unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. You do not know the peace of power that opposes nothing. Yet no other kind can be at all. Give welcome to the power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. He would merely be, and so He merely is.

Recall your function is one of forgiveness? As you perform your function, the need for it becomes less and less. What you thought was real and fear is no longer in your view. What you feared is now seen as the nothingness it always was. As we practice forgiveness we begin to notice that all we thought was 'there' is not. And What is 'there' has forever been.

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Section IV. - The Quiet Answer

1. In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done.

One thing the ego fears most is silence – silence of the mind. Ego loves to have the chatter going on – the chasing of a goal never to be found – the busyness of a life of nothingness – the hurrying to go nowhere. But in the silence, all of this slows down or stops, and we are in a place of stillness and peace – not a place for the presence of ego. It is this silence of our soul that we 'hear' answers to what we have questioned – shown what we could not see.

2. Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind, solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there. Such is the holy instant. It is here that all your problems should be brought and left. Here they belong, for here their answer is. And where its answer is, a problem must be simple and be easily resolved. It must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be resolved, if it is brought to where the answer is.

Again a repeat of previous knowledge – time is not real – no problems exist, only solutions. And what we seek is within us, not to be found out there. And the holy instant – that moment ego fears – that stop of our dream to realize our truth – the holy instant given to us to be in whenever we become aware we are not in peace. As for problems, never see one – perhaps see a challenge with a knowledge that you will get beyond.

3. Attempt to solve no problems but within the holy instant's surety. For there the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside there will be no solution, for there is no answer there that could be found. Nowhere outside a single, simple question is ever asked. The world can only ask a double question. One with many answers can have no answers. None of them will do. It does not ask a question to be answered, but only to restate its point of view.

Have you ever noticed that when you thought you had a problem 'out there' you never did find a solution which proved satisfactory and lasting to you? Have you ever noticed that 'problems' only appear when you are thinking as ego? And have you also noticed that when you offer the illusion of a problem to Spirit, the problem is seen in a different view, and the solution is shown as well? Ego will present us with question after question, but never will offer us an answer. The answers to any illusions are given us by Spirit. There is no question that ego can present that Spirit cannot show us another view and a solution.

4. All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing in different form. The world asks but one question. It is this: "Of these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?" Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. "Which sin do you prefer? That is the one that you should choose. The others are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your servant and also your friend. But tell it what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well." And this is not a question, for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs, except that what it states takes question's form.

Can you look at your world and state: "Of these illusions, which of them is true?" Is there one illusion in your world which is true? Is an illusion ever true?

5. A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. Just as the body's witnesses are but the senses from within itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions that are asked. Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new and nothing has been learned. An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but merely asks what the response should be. But no one in a conflict state is free to ask this question, for he does not want an honest answer where the conflict ends.

And again we are told that any question asked by ego is without an answer. Perhaps a response will be given but it will only be the start of another question. The world we 'live' as egos is liken to a 'merry-go-round' – we simply continue to chase after ourselves but never catching up. Perhaps the world of truth is likened to a stream of running water – constantly flowing – constantly changing and never being stagnant and stale.

6. Only within the holy instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the question does the meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to separate your wishes from the answer, so it can be given you and also be received. The answer is provided everywhere. Yet it is only here it can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers questions truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded, asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so, unless the answer tells "of whom," it will remain unrecognized, unheard, and thus the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself. The holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an answer that is not entailed within the question asked. It offers something new and different from the question. How could it be answered if it but repeats itself?

And how long is the holy instant to you? This is not a quick question, although your mind will present you with a response. Can we 'measure' a holy instant, as ego would have us believe? Those times when we have simply paused for a breath, and asked a question of our Higher Power is such an instant. Those times when a response appeared to us in which we knew that it is was not ego based is such a holy instant. It is that moment when a whisper is perhaps not even heard but felt, that we know we have what is required to gone on with life. What we ask as ego is 'answered' as ego. What we ask of God is given to us from God. Quite a difference.

7. Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems because they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what the question is. Within the world the answers merely raise another question, though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy instant, you can bring the question to the answer, and receive the answer that was made for you.

Here is one of those beliefs that we constantly work at to change – we believe we see a problem in the world we make, and we further believe we can solve the problem in the world we make. The solution is not in the world we make, but in the view we choose to see – whose guidance have we sought. Take that breath with a question and exhale the response. It is that holy instant for you.

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Section V. - The Healing Example

1. The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not have? And who can share what he denies himself? The Holy Spirit speaks to you. He does not speak to someone else. Yet by your listening His Voice extends, because you have accepted what He says.

Reread this paragraph again, slowly and allow all of the teaching to reach deep within you. Do you get the feeling that healing is Love? The only way to love is to be loved. Accept Love and it will go forth because of what it is. It is born the instant it is offered and received. Can you offer another more than Love, or a substitute for Love. If you deny yourself Love, you cannot give Love to another. And the part about "the Holy Spirit speaks to you" is important enough for you to copy it out and paste it where you can see it often. The Course is written to YOU not to someone else. You may study it as a group, discuss it as a group, but it is just for you. And you shall take from the Course what is intended for you, and others will takes what they require.

2. Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when it has been demonstrated is it proved, and must provide a witness that compels belief. No one is healed through double messages. If you wish only to be healed, you heal. Your single purpose makes this possible. But if you are afraid of healing, then it cannot come through you. The only thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are not healed, and cannot heal. This does not mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind to heal. For if it were, there were no need for healing then. But it does mean, if only for an instant, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient. Miracles wait not on time.

" **If you wish only to be healed, you heal." Truly profound. Once again we are being told it is all about us, and is all up to us. Healing will not come from another, or from some illusionary tool. Healing occurs exactly where it should – in your mind. But look at why you did not heal when often you wish for it: you held onto some fear of this world you still believe in – you did not come with empty hands, but had one still holding onto a fear you have place a value greater than healing on. But it does not mean that healing for you will never come – it shall be within a holy instant – a pause in the time you believe in. And that is all healing requires from you – an holy instant of your time.**

3. The holy instant is the miracle's abiding place. From there, each one is born into this world as witness to a state of mind that has transcended conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battleground, and demonstrates that war has no effects. For all the hurt that war has sought to bring, the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted.

The healing we seek is not hiding from us, not held back from us, but simply waiting for us in a holy instant. How do we access it? Simply by going within – by seeking the silence within us – by quieting the mind – by letting go of a past we believe in and a future we also believe in – and then where we are is the present moment – the holy instant of healing.

4. There is no sadness where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just one instant of your love without attack is necessary that all this occur. In that one instant you are healed, and in that single instant is all healing done. What stands apart from you, when you accept the blessing that the holy instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing, for the One Who blesses you loves all the world, and leaves nothing within the world that could be feared. But if you shrink from blessing, will the world indeed seem fearful, for you have withheld its peace and comfort, leaving it to die.

Why would you be sad when Love comes to heal you? And again, it requires no more from you than to believe in who you are in truth, not in the body you come to call you. And that's it! Just that instant of frozen time, and you have received the gift of gifts. Why would you fear a gift when the Giver is who you are in Truth. Why would you refuse a gift when the Giver is where you shall forever be no matter how many dreams you think you have. What can you fear of Love?

5. Would not a world so bitterly bereft be looked on as a condemnation by the one who could have saved it, but stepped back because he was afraid of being healed? The eyes of all the dying bring reproach, and suffering whispers, "What is there to fear?" Consider well its question. It is asked of you on your behalf. A dying world asks only that you rest an instant from attack upon yourself, that it be healed.

A common question and one that is asked again and again: "What is there to fear?" And what is your usual response? If you say nothing, think again. If you had nothing to fear, then the question would not be asked.

6. Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is there received is left behind on your returning to the world. And being blessed you will bring blessing. Life is given you to give the dying world. And suffering eyes no longer will accuse, but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave. The holy instant's radiance will light your eyes, and give them sight to see beyond all suffering and see Christ's face instead. Healing replaces suffering. Who looks on one cannot perceive the other, for they cannot both be there. And what you see the world will witness, and will witness to.

And here is a response for you for one of the fears you are holding: what you receive in the holy instant will remain with you when you return to your world of illusions. Once you are blessed, you are forever blessed. Once you are healed, you are healed. And once you are healed others will see in you something never before seen there – a radiance that only Love could bring out in you.

7. Thus is your healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs one lesson that has perfectly been learned. And then, when you forget it, will the world remind you gently of what you have taught. No reinforcement will its thanks withhold from you who let yourself be healed that it might live. It will call forth its witnesses to show the face of Christ to you who brought the sight to them, by which they witnessed it. The world of accusation is replaced by one in which all eyes look lovingly upon the Friend who brought them their release. And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies.

From your healed mind, your world will appear as you project thoughts of Love. Where once you saw chaos and fear, peace and joy will be seen. And within this world shall you see your brother as never before – a reflection of the glow within you. Those once viewed as enemies and feared are now seen as One with you.

8. Problems are not specific but they take specific forms, and these specific shapes make up the world. And no one understands the nature of his problem. If he did, it would be there no more for him to see. Its very nature is that it is not. And thus, while he perceives it he can not perceive it as it is. But healing is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all. This is because they really are the same, despite their different forms. All learning aims at transfer, which becomes complete within two situations that are seen as one, for only common elements are there. Yet this can only be attained by One Who does not see the differences you see. The total transfer of your learning is not made by you. But that it has been made in spite of all the differences you see, convinces you that they could not be real.

We believe that problems take many forms and many shapes in the world we make, but problems – I like 'challenges' – are not many but only one. Be in the holy instant and receive what is yours to receive, and see your world as you never thought possible. What you shall see is that there never was many problems, but only one. And continue to ask of Spirit for the guidance you need to make it to that holy instant. All that you are seeking is so close to you now. In spite of what you believe you see, you can see it differently. Remember that phrase from early in the Course?

9. Your healing will extend, and will be brought to problems that you thought were not your own. And it will also be apparent that your many different problems will be solved as any one of them has been escaped. It cannot be their differences which made this possible, for learning does not jump from situations to their opposites and bring the same results. All healing must proceed in lawful manner, in accord with laws that have been properly perceived but never violated. Fear you not the way that you perceive them. You are wrong, but there is One within you Who is right.

Your Love – you – will be extended and given to problems – challenges – that you thought were not your own, but then who could they be for? And the myriad of problems – challenges – that you once saw will be seen as one to which Love is given. What you think you see in the world you make is not real – you are wrong to believe otherwise. But do not let that bother you because Spirit is as close to you as your next breath and will show you what a world of Love is like – and those projections are to come from thoughts you hold in your mind.

10. Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who really understands its laws, and Who will guarantee that they remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what He has taught you to yourself, and He will do the rest. And it is thus the power of your learning will be proved to you by all the many different witnesses it finds. Your brother first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may seem to have a problem that is different from the rest. Yet they are solved together. And their common answer shows the questions could not have been separate.

Just allow Spirit to do what Spirit does best for you. Our part is simply apply what we have each been taught in the Course. And Who might be teaching what we are to learn? The same Christ Consciousness that taught Jesus – Buddha – John the Baptist, and many others. What many saw as many problems were solved by one solution. Doesn't that alone answer your doubts? There are not many of us out there – there is but One within.

11. Peace be to you to whom is healing offered. And you will learn that peace is given you when you accept the healing for yourself. Its total value need not be appraised by you to let you understand that you have benefited from it. What occurred within the instant that love entered in without attack will stay with you forever. Your healing will be one of its effects, as will your brother's. Everywhere you go, will you behold its multiplied effects. Yet all the witnesses that you behold will be far less than all there really are. Infinity cannot be understood by merely counting up its separate parts. God thanks you for your healing, for He knows it is a gift of love unto His Son, and therefore is it given unto Him.

Not only is peace offered to you, but peace as well. And peace shall be yours as you accept the healing offered you. What happens in that holy instant is forever – you can never be without it. It is then a part of you. And that part of you will be seen by others, and others shall heal as well, and soon you shall seen only a glow of light as you all become the One you already are.

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Section VI. - The Witnesses to Sin

1. Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has.

They are several demonstrations that we believe make the body real, one of which is pain, another is sickness. Have you not heard stories of people who, while they should have been experiencing great pain, were able to continue on with life. Often times others come to confirm that we are in pain, and we take their offerings and reinforce the illusion of pain. And how often have you questioned pain – "If you think is not real, you should try it"?

2. Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For either witness is the same, and carries but one message: "You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain." These witnesses are joined by many more. Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike. Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back. Yet which is foremost makes no difference. Sin's witnesses hear but the call of death.

How amusing is the mind – how tricky is ego – to have us believe pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain. And yet we know that we live in an upside-down world – what is presented as real is but an illusion. What is truth shall be truth forever. If we believe we can sin, then we believe in our body. If we believe we are indeed as created by God, then sin does not exist in our vocabulary.

3. This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell you what it is it feels. It does not know. It tells you but the names you gave to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality. You cannot choose among them which are real, for any one you choose is like the rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. You do not make a witness true because you called him by truth's name. The truth is found in him if it is truth he represents. And otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the holy Name of God Himself.

Remember in the very beginning of the lessons how we saw that nothing 'in this room' is real – nothing has meaning other than what we have given it? What we believe we see we call by names we have given it. Giving a name does not make it real. Giving your body a name does not make it real. Some of us may find difficulty in stating that we know nothing, but within that phrase is truth. What we believe we know in this world we make is nothing. But we know within us is everything.

5. God's Witness sees no witnesses against the body. Neither does He harken to the witnesses by other names that speak in other ways for its reality. He knows it is not real. For nothing could contain what you believe it holds within. Nor could it tell a part of God Himself what it should feel and what its function is. Yet must He love whatever you hold dear. And for each witness to the body's death He sends a witness to your life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is not real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for all sin's witnesses do His replace.

All that is believed by us in our world can be changed by one single thought – our next thought perhaps – if we but let go of all the nothingness we so believe in. Change your mind and your world changes in that holy instant. Change your mind and you will still see the body but you will know that the body is not you.

6. The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin's witnesses are called. It merely proves that what they represent has no effects. And this it proves because its own effects have come to take their place. It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. It is no longer there. The One Who brings the miracle perceives them all as one, and called by name of fear. As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto life. It is a witness no one can deny, for it is the effects of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it represents.

Regardless of the names we use, the meanings we have given, or how firmly we believe in their reality, a change of thought can change it all for us, and in one instant of time. And the change of thought shall show us life in truth and not in illusion. The change of thought shall show us that death is an illusion within the illusion.

7. Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. And they attest to different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. It is their sameness that the miracle attests. It is their sameness that it proves. The laws that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness to.

If a miracle forgives then it a miracle cannot be bound by any laws, for it would then be limited. The miracle – the change of thought – is truth in action. And if we or a brother call out in the pain of a body, the call is not of pain but is one for healing, and it is heard by others. We hear no pain but a call for love. And a call for love is answered with love.

8. Be you then witness to the miracle, and not the laws of sin. There is no need to suffer any more. But there is need that you be healed, because the suffering and sorrow of the world have made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance.

Are you ready now to be a witness to the miracle? Are you ready to see truth in place of the illusion you so strongly believe in? Suffering is not of your world, but of the world you make from illusion. Healing is need in your world of illusion, but is not even a thought in your world of truth. Heal now so that others will see you in a different light – so that you may go among them and heal with them. If you can believe that one tiny pill will take away the pain in your illusionary body, then why can you not believe that one thought will erase your pain? Is it not all a matter of belief?

9. The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness, that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. The holy instant will replace all sin if you but carry its effects with you. And no one will elect to suffer more. What better function could you serve than this? Be healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to you. And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love's symbols take the place of sin

Could there be anything you could accomplish in your world other than showing others the effects of healing the mind? Is any gift you might give greater than this? In one holy instant of the precious time you make, you can throw away pain and suffering and be in the wholeness you were created as. God wants for you only happiness; why is it that you object what God wants of you?

Chapter 27

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM

Section VII. - The Dreamer of the Dream

1. Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done to injure you. Here is the world's demented version of salvation clearly shown. Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly and by something not himself. He is the victim of this "something else," a thing outside himself, for which he has no reason to be held responsible. He must be innocent because he knows not what he does, but what is done to him. Yet is his own attack upon himself apparent still, for it is he who bears the suffering. And he cannot escape because its source is seen outside himself.

The dreamer of the dream is but you! This phrase puts all the responsibility for your dream simply on you. It is you who dream of suffering and pain, of attack, of hatred, of guilt and all the fears. You are the victim of you. And yet this all appears as madness because within you is the knowledge that you are innocent of all.

2. Now you are being shown you can escape. All that is needed is you look upon the problem as it is, and not the way that you have set it up. How could there be another way to solve a problem that is very simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were made to keep the problem unresolved? Without the clouds the problem will emerge in all its primitive simplicity. The choice will not be difficult, because the problem is absurd when clearly seen. No one has difficulty making up his mind to let a simple problem be resolved if it is seen as hurting him, and also very easily removed.

How often have we heard that within every problem is all the solution? And so it is with what we believe in. All we need to do is to look at the chaos of our world and know there must be another way. Does not it seem that if we focus on the clouds that they hang around longer? But if we focus on the blue sky behind them, that is what is shown to us. If you are offered another way of being in this dream, a way of happiness and joy, would you not gladly take it?

3. The "reasoning" by which the world is made, on which it rests, by which it is maintained, is simply this: "You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. And what I suffer from is your attack." No one who looks upon this "reasoning" exactly as it is could fail to see it does not follow and it makes no sense. Yet it seems sensible, because it looks as if the world were hurting you. And so it seems as if there is no need to go beyond the obvious in terms of cause.

Look closely at the 'reasoning' above and allow yourself to grasp that it is you talking to you: "I am the cause of what I do. My presence justifies my wrath, and I exist and think apart from me. While I attack myself, I must also be innocent. And what I suffer is but my attack." There is no sane reasoning in this. But it is part of the insanity of the world I make.

4. There is indeed a need. The world's escape from condemnation is a need which those within the world are joined in sharing. Yet they do not recognize their common need. For each one thinks that if he does his part, the condemnation of the world will rest on him. And it is this that he perceives to be his part in its deliverance. Vengeance must have a focus. Otherwise is the avenger's knife in his own hand, and pointed to himself. And he must see it in another's hand, if he would be a victim of attack he did not choose. And thus he suffers from the wounds a knife he does not hold has made upon himself.

If we could be grasp that we are One – that we all have the same goal of awakening from this sleep we chose – that we cannot do it alone as the single body we think we are – but we must do it as the One we all are – then we would be so close to achieving it. But instead we choose to live this dream in fear and insanity; believing another can do harm to us, when we are but the attacker of ourselves as well as the one being attacked.

5. This is the purpose of the world he sees. And looked at thus, the world provides the means by which this purpose seems to be fulfilled. The means attest the purpose, but are not themselves a cause. Nor will the cause be changed by seeing it apart from its effects. The cause produces the effects, which then bear witness to the cause, and not themselves. Look, then, beyond effects. It is not here the cause of suffering and sin must lie. And dwell not on the suffering and sin, for they are but reflections of their cause.

And so until we desire to see differently; until we are ready to humbly acknowledge that we do not know what nothing means, we shall continue to experience the world of insanity. But we know deep within us that it is a choice we make to experience insanity. And this being a world of duality, what might the other choice be? We have seen others who see a different world than that which we see. It is possible. What might such a world offer us when it is not filled with illusion of fear, sickness and pain? When no attack is possible, and no harm could be committed?

6. The part you play in salvaging the world from condemnation is your own escape. Forget not that the witness to the world of evil cannot speak except for what has seen a need for evil in the world. And this is where your guilt was first beheld. In separation from your brother was the first attack upon yourself begun. And it is this the world bears witness to. Seek not another cause, nor look among the mighty legions of its witnesses for its undoing. They support its claim on your allegiance. What conceals the truth is not where you should look to find the truth.

And so the 'first attack' was where guilt began. So if we no longer desire to attack our brother, but instead embrace him for being as we are, then guilt will no longer be an issue. And separation will be but a word without meaning. And it is indeed this simplicity of living that we fail to see because of the obstacles we have placed on our path. It is not in the obstacle, but that which is behind it, which is what we seek.

7. The witnesses to sin all stand within one little space. And it is here you find the cause of your perspective on the world. Once you were unaware of what the cause of everything the world appeared to thrust upon you, uninvited and unasked, must really be. Of one thing you were sure: Of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was not among them. Nor did you in any way request them for yourself. This is how all illusions came about. The one who makes them does not see himself as making them, and their reality does not depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite apart from him, and what he sees is separate from his mind. He cannot doubt his dreams' reality, because he does not see the part he plays in making them and making them seem real.

Keep in mind that the title of this section is "The Dreamer of the Dream" – you. All that we experience within this dream in fear is because we have placed it there. We want to deny any responsibility for all that is not good in this dream, while taking credit for all that is right, but such is not the case. No one makes your dream but you. Here is the struggle of struggles for us. We so want to blame others for our life, but there are not any other – only you. What do you suppose would occur in your dream if you suddenly accepted full responsibility for all that you believe in this dream? What would happen if suddenly you admitted to yourself that no one cause you pain and suffering but you? No one attacked you and caused you harm, but you? For many this is that holy instant when you find yourself on your knees or in the bottom of some pit – finally coming to terms with yourself that indeed there must be a Higher Power and you so need that Power now.

8. No one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming for him. He becomes a part of someone else's dream. He cannot choose to waken from a dream he did not make. Helpless he stands, a victim to a dream conceived and cherished by a separate mind. Careless indeed of him this mind must be, as thoughtless of his peace and happiness as is the weather or the time of day. It loves him not, but casts him as it will in any role that satisfies its dream. So little is his worth that he is but a dancing shadow, leaping up and down according to a senseless plot conceived within the idle dreaming of the world.

If you believe that others create your world for you, that others cause you pain and suffering, you will also believe that it is impossible to wake from what others have made for you. But such is not the case – you make your dream so therefore you can wake from your dream. You need no permission from anyone other than you. No longer a victim to thoughts of insanity, you realize that this is your making, and therefore you have the power to change it.

9. This is the only picture you can see; the one alternative that you can choose, the other possibility of cause, if you be not the dreamer of your dreams. And this is what you choose if you deny the cause of suffering is in your mind. Be glad indeed it is, for thus are you the one decider of your destiny in time. The choice is yours to make between a sleeping death and dreams of evil or a happy wakening and joy of life.

So what choice do you make between a 'sleeping death and dreams of evil or a happy wakening and joy of life'? Which shall be your pleasure? It really does not appear to be a difficult decision and yet what is holding us back? This is but a choice of the simplest of words and meaning. We know that we are to choose between love and fear for they are all that exist in our world, but even though that was in the beginning of this Course, we still have to be shown another example of it. We still have not made the choice.

10. What could you choose between but life or death, waking or sleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality? There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created. Yet a thing can never be its opposite. And death is opposite to peace, because it is the opposite of life. And life is peace. Awaken and forget all thoughts of death, and you will find you have the peace of God. Yet if the choice is really given you, then you must see the causes of the things you choose between exactly as they are and where they are.

Within this paragraph may be the one belief we are holding onto so dearly – that death offers us peace. But death offers us nothing, for death is an illusion. Why would we continue to choose death over life, sleep over being awake, war over peace, this dream over our reality? Do we believe that to awaken means that we no longer have a body? We never had a body in the first place! We can continue to be in this dream, but not of this dream. We can awaken and continue to live this dream, but the dream will be seen very differently. What truly prevents us from making the choice of life over death?

11. What choices can be made between two states, but one of which is clearly recognized? Who could be free to choose between effects, when only one is seen as up to him? An honest choice could never be perceived as one in which the choice is split between a tiny you and an enormous world, with different dreams about the truth in you. The gap between reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. They are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. Yet was it started by your secret dream, which you do not perceive although it caused the part you see and do not doubt is real. How could you doubt it while you lie asleep, and dream in secret that its cause is real?

Early in the Course we were told how this all began for us – from a tiny made idea that we failed to find humorous. And we believe that dream to be real and so here we are – within a dream – within a myriad of illusions and believing in them. We sleep but believe we are awake. We are awake and yet we believe we sleep and dream.

12. A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream. Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in which you become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of your brother and the world alike. Here is the cause of suffering, the space between your little dreams and your reality. The little gap you do not even see, the birthplace of illusions and of fear, the time of terror and of ancient hate, the instant of disaster, all are here. Here is the cause of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone.

I truly enjoy the simplicity of the Course – 'here is the cause of unreality' – 'here it will be undone'. In one instant it 'began' and in one holy instant it can be seen differently. But remember and remember well – you are the dreamer of this dream and you therefore are in command of your dream. You can undo what you believe you have done.

13. You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear.

And so you dreamer of this dream, is it not time now for you to laugh at what you failed to laugh at once before? Do you not see that this dream is just an illusion and everything within just an illusion as well? All the illusions you have give meaning to, given value to, and yet not one of them means anything or has any value. Begin to drop your beliefs of illusion and watch as the beliefs of truth are shown behind them. Slowly awaken to where you never left. Awaken to that which you have forever been.

14. Accept the dream He gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized. Rest in the Holy Spirit, and allow His gentle dreams to take the place of those you dreamed in terror and in fear of death. He brings forgiving dreams, in which the choice is not who is the murderer and who shall be the victim. In the dreams He brings there is no murder and there is no death. The dream of guilt is fading from your sight, although your eyes are closed. A smile has come to lighten up your sleeping face. The sleep is peaceful now, for these are happy dreams.

Accept gladly the dream offered you by Spirit. It is truly easy to change a dream once the dreamer has taken responsibility for it. Relax and rest in the thoughts of Spirit where your world is now seen in the eyes of love. And feel the smile beginning as you awaken from what never was. And experience the peace you have long forgotten.

15. Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son. Dream of your brother's kindnesses instead of dwelling in your dreams on his mistakes. Select his thoughtfulness to dream about instead of counting up the hurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and give thanks to him for all the helpfulness he gave. And do not brush aside his many gifts because he is not perfect in your dreams. He represents his Father, Whom you see as offering both life and death to you.

And now in your dream, see your brother as never before – as One with you, no longer separated. In the Oneness you shall forgive him his illusions as you forgive yourself yours.

16. Brother, He gives but life. Yet what you see as gifts your brother offers represent the gifts you dream your Father gives to you. Let all your brother's gifts be seen in light of charity and kindness offered you. And let no pain disturb your dream of deep appreciation for his gifts to you.

What a brother offers you is but what God has given him for you. See his offerings as gifts from God and not attacks toward you. Accept that which is yours so that what is offered you can be accepted as well by your brother.

Chapter 27

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM

Section VIII. - The "Hero" of the Dream

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

So if you are the "Dreamer of the Dream", who might be the 'Hero"? Without a body to believe in, would there be a dream? Without a dream, would there be a 'body'? The body is the main theme in the dream. It tells a story that it believes to be true, how it was made of other bodies, born into this world where it will live and die and the span in between is called time. It seeks other bodies and separates them into friends and enemies. It will experience pain and pleasure, and will be confused as to which is which.

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

Until we become the observer of this dream, we cannot see the various forms this dream does take. Read this carefully and visualize yourself as doing what it is saying. Can you see yourself doing this? Can you believe that it is still a dream?

3. The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying are the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause.

And then the story unfolds and we begin to believe we are truly the 'hero' of the dream. The story may contain many circumstances, all of which are attributed to someone else or some other cause. Surely we cannot be the cause of this dream? But then again, who else is there?

4. Thus are you not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real.

So how do you go thru this life – as if in a dream, but certainly not the dreamer? Is someone else – is God – making this dream for you to walk through? Are you seeing this life as a dream or do you believe it to be true? If you do see it as a dream, then who besides you, are the dreamer?

5. How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do? Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first. No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. We can remember this, if we but look directly at their cause. And we will see the grounds for laughter, not a cause for fear.

Ready yourself for the journey back to the beginning of the dream – to that moment when we failed to laugh and instead took it as real...

6. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time.

And no time means no dream! Look at time as you know it and see it for what you created it to be. What is time to you but a thought to place pressure on you in this illusion, to hurry you about or to place guilt on you for not being on time, and so many more examples. Just think for a moment what life would be if time were not believed? Would the dream even be a dream?

7. A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you. It brings its vengeance, not your own. It keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the sinful things the body does within its dream. You have no power to make the body stop its evil deeds because you did not make it, and cannot control its actions nor its purpose nor its fate.

If you have no power to make the body stop its 'evil deeds' because you did not make it, then who did? Remember that the body of itself does nothing.

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

Recall the saying "Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone"? Does it fit here? If we would only laugh at this dream, we would see a world of laughter. But if we fear this world, if we cry in its terror, we cry alone for no one else is doing this to us but us. Even in this world we believe in, is it not funny to see how a belief in an illusion is hilarious?

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

Seek the Holy Spirit and laugh with him as those problems you believe in are shown for what they are. Laugh with Him as you look upon your world and do not see its cause. Think of this life as an 'idle dream' and you must laugh at such a thought. Laugh at yourself because you are indeed funny, as we all are. Listen to the laughter ringing out in your world as others find this as well.

10. The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream.

See this life as a dream, then all fears will be seen as the nothing they are; what is real in a dream? Read this paragraph a few times so that once again, the thought that you are responsible for your world and everything in it comes to you. This point is repeated often. Could it be that we do not want to accept responsibility for what we believe we see? There is another way.

11. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, whatever form it takes. The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive lesson of deliverance until it has been learned, regardless of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer takes away the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the single cause of all of them, no matter what their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Here we are even told that we shall learn this lesson many times. Each time we come to Spirit, we will repeat to ourselves 'I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo'.

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

The salvation we continue to seek is as close to us as our acceptance of responsibility for the life we see. All forms of suffering we can imagine are seen as one by Spirit and this should be a clue for us as well. There is no secret out there being hidden from us, but it is we who are hiding from ourselves.

13. How differently will you perceive the world when this is recognized! When you forgive the world your guilt, you will be free of it. Its innocence does not demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness rest on its sins. This is the obvious; a secret kept from no one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you separate from the world, and kept your brother separate from you. Now need you but to learn that both of you are innocent or guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be unlike each other; that they both be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be no secret you are healed.

When you forgive your world, you forgive yourself. The innocence of the world is your innocence as well. No one but you kept from you the secret of this dream. You are the Dream of the Dream. And so what is true for you is equally true for your brother, for you are One with him. And suddenly you are both healed.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section I. - The Present Memory

1. The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.

And now we come to one of those topics that many a student has a problem with. If we let go of 'problems' – if we turn them over to Spirit – why do we continue to be haunted by them. If they are gone, why do they exist in memory, and is memory the same as mind? If the past is truly gone, what is it that brings back those memories, and the power that they appear to have over us? Look at the last line – remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence – we but produce illusions that the thought is present and all the effects are the same – illusions.

2. All the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why would you cling to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. It is perception of the past as if it were occurring now, and still were there to see. Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. And like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the means for something else. It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be.

If you accept that this dream is nothing but a replay of a thought we once had, then you can accept that it is long over. Only we, with our making of time, appear to be stretching it out. What we believe in happening is over. No past ever was nor future will be, but we have a difficultly with that concept. And like everything in this dream, we made it – it is all of our doing. We believe we have replaced what God has given us, and that alone should bring a chuckle from you. Everything we have made has an opposite –everything we have made can be used in a positive way – if we so choose that way.

3. Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something must be done. It is an unselective memory, that is not used to interfere with truth. All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him, without the content and the purposes for which they have been made. They are but skills without an application. They await their use. They have no dedication and no aim.

There is a part of us that is now screaming at this thought – healing is really not doing anything at all. Healing means that we have a need to be healed – to be whole, but we are forever that way. But we live in an illusion and the Holy Spirit is here for us to see beyond the illusion. The Holy Spirit can offer healing for our illusions, should we ask of him.

4. The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is there. Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember now. The limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as those you let the world impose on you. There is no link of memory to the past. If you would have it there, then there it is. But only your desire made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.

In Truth, memory is only for the present – this moment of moments. It is not a mechanism where we store past thoughts and bring them up again and again. It is not for the purpose of stretching out this illusion – to extend time even further. Within memory is All That Is and ever shall be. It is our Truth and shall never change. We may think there exists a link to the past, but that too, is an illusion. The past simply never was.

5. The Holy Spirit's use of memory is quite apart from time. He does not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do. It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient hate, and gives you pictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving, this is what you asked its message be and that it is. Committed to its vaults, the history of all the body's past is hidden there. All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive, the present dead, are stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to you, and lived again. And thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away their cause.

Some of us believe that certain illnesses can be caused by thoughts we hold onto such as those mentioned above. Thoughts of a past that never was are kept alive so we can relive them at command. You know how it is when you meet someone who you had a bad experience with in the past, only to feel all the emotions again. The easiest example is our association with family members at the holidays. We are truly comical in the meaning we give to illusions. If you believe you had a bad experience, why would you prefer to relive it again and again. This is what 'letting go' is all about.

6. Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself. Time neither takes away nor can restore. And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but a consequence in which no change can be made possible because its cause has gone. Yet change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last. No change can be made in the present if its cause is past. Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now.

It is amazing to see the lengths we have gone to just to keep what we seek hidden from us. Once again, laugh at yourself at this one as well. So what exactly does time do, if it does not take away or restore anything? We hold onto a thought and never move ahead of it. We never move into the now with a thought of the past. We never move beyond the past as long as we hold one thought. And if that were not bad enough, we project a future based on past thoughts, and look forward to it.

7. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one? When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot understand what they are for. Let not the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be. Be glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted now, with consequences here. They will surprise you with their loveliness. The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so ancient that It far exceeds the span of memory which your perception sees.

Again we are reminded that this is a Course in which we shall unlearn all that we have taught ourselves. And that's about letting go – letting go of all that we think we know for all that we do know. And what we actually will let go of is nothing more than past memories – memories of beliefs we acquired and believe to be truth. The very word 'past' signifies to us that it is over, and yet look at hard we try to remain there. And what do you suppose will replace the beliefs you let go of? Do you think you will wander about with no thoughts in your mind. If the past thoughts but hid the truth, then the truth will be seen by you.

8. This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would forget. It is not past because He let It not be unremembered. It has never changed, because there never was a time in which He did not keep It safely in your mind. Its consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that you remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent from your mind, for it was not your Father's Will that He be unremembered by His Son.

The past you believe in nothing but an illusion in which we believe we can live. As we give these thoughts to Spirit, we see not a past but a present where we are and have forever been, and will forever be. This is no past, but simply the present. And it has always been a part of you but you were too busy believing in illusions instead of miracles. But once you have let go of the illusions, the miracles remain.

9. What you remember never was. It came from causelessness which you confused with cause. It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequences that were causeless and could never be effects. The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. Never changed from what It is. And you are Its Effect, as changeless and as perfect as Itself. Its memory does not lie in the past, nor waits the future. It is not revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not gone. When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied.

If you get nothing more from this section, get this: what you think you remember never was. It is only you who believe it so. And a change of your thought will show you the truth. Who you are, where you are, is the present. The present has no past nor future, it simply is. Remind you of anything? In the present there is no need for miracles for there is nothing to correct. Everything is as it has and will forever be.

10. You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot understand it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son. You would deny Him His Effects, yet have They never been denied. There was no time in which His Son could be condemned for what was causeless and against His Will. What your remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. He has not done the thing you fear. No more have you. And so your innocence has not been lost. You need no healing to be healed. In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.

I have judged God and cannot understand that God did not judge me. Only in my illusion could such a thought occur. Only in my illusion do I think I can pretend to be God, instead of accepting my Truth of being God. If I am judged, I have judged me. If I think God has denied me anything, it is I who have denied me. If I fear God, it is I who I fear, the truth of me. If I am in need of healing, I have forgotten that I do not require healing.

11. The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. And they will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind which caused all minds to be. Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant's stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards.

Can you not quiet your mind for but an instant and be still? Has this not been asked of you before? Allow the miracle to come gently into your mind to be shared with other minds. You will experience the Oneness you have sought. In just one holy instant you shall remember all that you are. Is not just one moment to be shared with all?

12. He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him. For in that instant is God's memory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. How gladly does He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! And His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not be deprived of His Effects. The instant's silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide. For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid.

Each moment we give to Spirit to have that holy instant, is a moment of pure joy. In that instant of eternity we once know deep within All That Is. And that knowledge is extended to others so that they too, may experience the joy of it all. And all it requires from us is the one instant of silence – the one instant where we no longer think of a past nor look forward to a future, but allow only the instant of eternity to return to us.

13. How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the memory away! Its own remembering has gone. There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace. The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to shut them out.

And look how quickly the memory of God – the memory of your Truth – returns to you – instantly. Without thoughts of past there are no thoughts of fear. Nothing stand before you and the Memory of Love. Nothing remains but the holy instant of eternity. And what we remember from that Memory is beyond what words we know, beyond all concepts we are aware of. Nothing can describe the knowledge contained there. And in the stillness we hear the familiar sounds that we remember from a moment we had forgotten.

13. Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign Effects. Now does he understand what he has made is causeless, having no effects at all. He has done nothing. And in seeing this, he understands he never had a need for doing anything, and never did. His Cause is Its Effects. There never was a cause beside It that could generate a different past or future. Its Effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and past the world of sin entirely.

Now I am aware at last of God – of the Cause and Effect. Now do I understand that what I made is without cause and has no effects at all. I have done nothing. I also understand that I never had a need for doing anything, and never did do anything. God is His Effect. God is my Cause and I am His effect. No other Cause ever existed or will. The Effects, me – you – us – are eternally changeless – beyond a thought of fear, and beyond a world in which sin is seen.

14. What has been lost, to see the causeless not? And where is sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place of loss? What better way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to reach beyond? For God has closed it with Himself. His memory has not gone by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he can glimpse another shore that he can never reach. His Father wills that he be lifted up and gently carried over. He has built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport His Son across it. Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills. Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.

This is one of those paragraphs that is so comforting to read. It is but the Memory of God which is our bridge over the gap we made between illusions and truth. And it is this bridge, built by God, that we shall cross over when God so wills we do. He will carry us beyond as He wills. It is not our will, but Thy Will.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section II. - Reversing Effect and Cause

1. Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he has given Him. It is because he is God's Son that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same. But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end.

Without God there is no us; without us, there is no God. And such is creation – without a beginning or ending – an eternal circle of Love. Think of your own life – without a child you would not be a parent. And all of this is stated so that we may comprehend better who we are in truth. It is all beyond our understanding in this world, but it is simply who we are in truth.

2. Fatherhood is creation. Love must be extended. Purity is not confined. It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. Thus is purity not of the body. Nor can it be found where limitation is. The body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself. Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and where all healing is. Where, then, is healing? Only where its cause is given its effects. For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and make it be a cause.

God is creation, Love is creation. God and Love are extended for they are but One. We are as God created us, in the image and likeness of Love, pure beyond words. But we are not these illusions of bodies. We are not limited as the body appears to us. The body also appears to require healing, but we are whole and complete. What requires healing is the mind which thinks the body is sick.

3. Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause, and not allow himself to be his Father's Son. For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he is Love's Effect, and must be cause because of what he is. The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. It has but one Effect. And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen. A mind within a body and a world of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your "creations," you the "other" mind, creating with effects unlike yourself. And as their "father," you must be like them.

As long as we continue to forget we are the Son of God, we will continue to experience sickness. Sickness is not a gift given us by God, but one we give to ourselves believing we are our own cause and effect. We have made a mind within a body and have given it power to create effects in us. As long as we continue to believe in this, we shall see ourselves as those bodies.

4. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone else's dream. The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you.

Again we are reminded we are the dreamer of a dream in which we do not know who we are and surely this must all be one big mistake. And we wonder how to wake up from this dream. Once we accept that we are the dreamer, other avenues open to us, a choice of dreams is offered and we must only choose the one we prefer. What dreams do you wish to experience?

5. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least: that you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect that you have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.

So the only thing we are to do is this: admit that we are the dreamer and we prefer not the dream of death but the one of healing. That is all that is asked of us. Is it really too much to ask of us?

6. This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found and understood. What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real effects. For that would change its cause, and it is this you cannot do. The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not know he sleeps. He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.

Read this one carefully again: my world is without a cause, as is any dream I have ever had. No plans are possible in my dream and yet I continue to plan and be disappointed. No design is available for my dream, it simply appears randomly. I cannot and do not understand my world, but I believe I am in it. But if my world has no cause, then it must also have no purpose. The one thing I can never do to my dream is to have it be real, not just appear real, but be real. And why? Because I am the dreamer which means I am asleep.

7. The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up. The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their cause. He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused. The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. And so it never was.

Will you accept that you are dreaming a dream, but that all within the dream is not real, all of it is an illusion? Accept this fact and fear will be unknown to you. Fear is present when we believe in what we think we see. You are the dreamer not just a participant in the dream. Remember early on in the Course where we learned that no one could harm us, that only a mind attacks another mind? Here again that lesson is restated so that we can grasp it deeper. What you think you did, never happened. What you think happened to you, never happened. What you see in this dream is not real.

8. The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His Effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator. In the dream, the dreamer made himself. But what he made has turned against him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. And as he hated his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. His body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives he has given it have they adopted as their own. And hate it for the vengeance it would offer them. It is their vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream. Effect and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect.

So it appears that the dream began when we thought we could separate from God and make it on our own. Now we see how foolish that appears. And as if that were not enough, we became so arrogant that we made ourselves. And in the dream, in our arrogance, we began to hate God, or perhaps fear God, and then we projected to others in our dream and hated them as well. We set ourselves separate from all others. We did the exact opposite of what God had created. And further we believed in the body we made and soon began to abuse it as well. The world we made is a reversal of Truth, but we failed to see that until now. We are not creatures who can hate – we are only capable of love – it is how God created us. To hate, we must truly be in a dream for no where else is it possible.

9. This is the separation's final step, with which salvation, which proceeds to go the other way, begins. This final step is an effect of what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. For this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared. Nor will the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call to fear.

This is the final step in separation – that's good news! Now we can begin to retrace our steps and undo what we believe we have done – or do we simply wake from the dream to see it never was? We must learn and learn well that we are the dreamer of the dream; that we are responsible for the contents of the dream; that we alone have brought us to the place we are. And we must forgive ourselves for believing in illusions – we must change our thoughts about what we believe we see, including the body we call "I".

10. Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is clear. It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its effects are what you want. In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. And you can accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be feared. And so they are not sick.

Can you think of one lesson given you by Spirit where the miracle was not perfectly clear? Are not our lessons simply dropping the beliefs we held to be true to be replaced by those which are true? We have brought this world to Spirit and Spirit will show it to us in the light of Love. Where once we saw enemies, we see brothers. Where once we saw fear, we see love. Where once we saw hatred, we now see forgiveness. What appeared as sickness and illness is now see healed and whole.

11. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.

What happens when we see the cause of fear as being ours? We accept it and change our thought. Fear has no effects other than the thoughts we hold of it. And a change of thought is all that is required anytime we believe we see fear – illness in the body is but a form of fear change with the change of thought. This is still a dream and we are still the dreamer, but now we realize that we have the guidance of Spirit at any moment we call.

12. This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind acknowledges "this is not done to me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone.

For every dream of pain and suffering, and sin or guilt, a miracle stands next to that dream showing an alternative for you to choose. How difficult can it be to choose one dream over another? And yet what has us holding onto those dreams of fear? It must be but one more fear we have not faced yet. It all began in the mind and it shall all end in the mind. Change your thoughts to love and see the body healed and whole. Change your thoughts to love and watch as you retrace your steps back to the moment of the original thought of separation. And then what? Is your dream over and do you see it simply differently?

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section III. - The Agreement to Join

1. What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led you down. The miracle alone is your concern at present. Here is where we must begin. And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it.

What waits for us beyond salvation is not our concern, but how we get there is. We have hit the end of separation and now retrace those steps that brought us here. Slowly and surely we shall climb from the abyss we see ourselves in to the 'perfect certainty' above. Accept the miracle, accept the change of thought and begin anew, this time seeing no fear. Seeing no fear will allow your dream to vanish before you.

2. No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from separate points of view. Uniting with a brother's mind prevents the cause of sickness and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.

It is has been stated before that as long as we continue to see separation, we shall continue to see sickness, in ourselves and others. So the secret, if you wish to call it that, to sickness is not seeing separation any longer. Can you look upon others and see them not as the bodies you believed they are, but as the Spirit they are? And can you all others in this way, not separating some and including others? This seems to be a stumbling block for many of us.

3. The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined, and cannot separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own dream by sharing it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you want above all things that seem to glisten in the dream.

What goes on in your mind when you view another as being sick? Do you see them as the whole and complete beings they are, or as the sick bodies they believe they are. And if they ask of you as to whether they are sick or not, how do you respond?

4. The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world of dreams. The gap is little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. And thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. The purpose of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated, in a body which you see as if it were the cause of pain.

So we might say that if we close the gap, we crush the seeds of pestilence and every form of illness. Without a gap the end of fear is seen and the dream comes to its ending. Love is not in a world of dreams. You are not the separate body you think you are; your brother is not the separate body you think he is. There is no separation, only Oneness.

5. The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow?

If we experience pain, we believe in separation. And look here as to what separation is – nothing but an empty space containing nothing and doing nothing and meaning nothing. And is there really a space in the water after a ship has passed or is it not but an illusion that appears? Is the space but just the placement of water elsewhere for a moment. The water is still there, it just looks different.

6. God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, for He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. Let its effects be gone and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. The miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come and bridge His Son's returning to Himself.

God prepares for our return but only after we have removed all illusions from our mind. As long as we hold onto illusions, our vision is clouded over and we cannot see any bridge to cross. God is ready for us, but are we ready for God?

7. Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. The door is open, not to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the shining of a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like silver. They have nothing left behind the open door. What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?

I do not suppose this sits well with those who firmly believe they must save and save for later life, failing to live this life now. What is to say that what is save will provide them with life later. We save as others starve. This is how our world is seen. I do not wish to imply not to save, but I will state that as you give, you shall also receive. This thought has been mentioned more than a few times in the Course. If you give nothing to your brother, what can you expect in return? And if you feel a Oneness with your brother, would you not give to yourself? The world we know is already over when it began. There is nothing in this world of nothing and yet we continue to give value to nothing. When you finally experience death, are you taking all the nothings with you?

8. Be not afraid, my child, but let your world be gently lit by miracles. And where the little gap was seen to stand between you and your brother, join him there. And so sickness will now be seen without a cause. The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never sinned. The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never was. And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self. The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there. And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you.

Fear not as your world is being lit by miracles. Where the darkness once was is now light, and the gap you thought separated you and your brother is no longer seen. Without a gap of separation, sickness is no longer an option. Healing takes place, forgiveness is given, and no guilt is left for you to wear. And the real storehouse will be open to all and shared with any. No lack of anything will be experienced. No wants will be thought of. And there you shall all see the Oneness of All That Is.

9. This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown. For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. And no one is deprived or can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, and shares it equally with him. And in Their sharing there can be no gap in which abundance falters and grows thin. Here can the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. For love has set its table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.

Love has set the table where once we separated ourselves. What a beautiful thought. And a feast where the more that is given, the more that is available. The more that is received by each is the more given to each other. The supply is eternal and everlasting. Such as feast was not even a thought within the dream.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section IV. - The Greater Joining

1. Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to someone's dream of sickness and of death. It means that you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned, instead, on you. Thus have they no effects. And you are free of dreams of pain because you let him be. Unless you help him, you will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. And you become a figure in his dream of pain, as he in yours. So do you and your brother both become illusions, and without identity. You could be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil dream you share. You can be sure of just one thing; that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear.

Does this mean that to accept 'the correction' that we will not support our brother in his thoughts of illness and pain, of war and hatred? Allow him to have his dreams, and you your's. But see your brother from your dream not his.

2. There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one, but let the other go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the mind you would unite, but never with the dream. It is the dream you fear, and not the mind. You see them as the same, because you think that you are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and cannot tell apart.

For us to not be a part of the 'fearful dreams' whatever their form, takes all the courage we muster up – be quick to ask for more from Spirit should you believe you lack enough courage – but you have all that is required of already. You can accept your brother because you see beyond his appearance of a body, but you do not have to accept his dream. Of course you don't tell him he is wrong and you are right – merely accept him as he is and where he is. You can see him as the One Mind you know of and thus become joined in mind.

3. Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself, for your Identity depends on his reality. Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. He is not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his reality that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his.

You and your brother, and his brothers as well, share an illusion of themselves and being an illusion is not real. You all have your dreams you are dreaming. You all appear to be separate forms within the dream. But you now can see beyond the illusion of the form to soul of the spirit shining back at you, and in that reflection is there but One.

4. And yet, between your minds there is no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from you. Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and not on dreams of fear. Let him acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in yours. With faith in yours, he will not be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dreams. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in your brother's mind.

There appears to be a gap between your form and the form of your brother, but no gap ever existed between your minds – that have forever been one mind. Show your brother as you acknowledge your dream, that he dreams as well – a different dream, but a dream as well. Show your brother how acknowledging the dream, you can let it go and be that which you are, that which he is also. Perhaps your brother will see a gap between you both, but bring him closer to you and the gap vanishes before you both.

5. Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you where you stand. Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you must believe that it is your reality as well as his. You cannot do his part, but this you do when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of your own. Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced.

So if you and your brother do not meet in the gap you both see between you, where then do you meet? When both of you agree that the dream is an illusion, that fear is not real, and this body is not who you are, then you stand united as the One you are. No gap required, no space needed.

6. You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. What is the same seems different, because what is the same appears to be unlike. His dreams are yours because you let them be. But if you took your own away would he be free of them, and of his own as well. Your dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. Yet if you see there is no truth in yours, his dreams will go, and he will understand what made the dream.

You and your brother both stand confused, the normal state of this dream of fear. You see him different and he sees you as different also. You even appear to have the same dream. But if you take your dream and show it for what it is, an illusion, then your dream is not seen by you nor your brother. And your brother will follow you by seeing his dream as an illusion as well.

7. The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. No one is sick if someone else accepts his union with him. His desire to be a sick and separated mind can not remain without a witness or a cause. And both are gone if someone wills to be united with him. He has dreams that he was separated from his brother who, by sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant. And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.

Try this of for size, at least for a moment: If you accept that the Holy Spirit is within your mind and that of your brother, then is the Holy Spirit able to be fragmented into many pieces, or is Spirit but One and the One in your minds show that your mind and t hat of your brother are one and the same Mind. And if this is accepted then you would have no belief in sickness or disease. They are illusions of illusions. United we are healed, divided we are sick. United we are with Spirit, divided we are separate forms.

8. The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself. To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. And when he sees this picture he will recognize himself. If you share not your brother's evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.

The function of Spirit is to take the many forms we believe we see and place them together to show that there is only One, not many. In this Oneness is our sanity. If you do not see a dream, you shall see the Oneness. If you do not see your brother and his dream, you shall see your brother as yourself.

9. I thank You, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they are joined because what is in one is in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son! The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part.

Ever try to make one of those puzzles without a straight frame? This reminds me somewhat of that. All the pieces of the puzzle, all the forms of illusions we call brother, and correctly placed together and then the Hand of God brushes over the puzzle sealing it as but one piece – the One Piece.

10. Join not your brother's dreams but join with him, and where you join His Son the Father is. Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? Who would want to have the "benefits" of sickness when he has received the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot be a loss, and what is not of Him has no effects. What, then, would you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. And there will be no loss, but only gain.

Join with your brother but not with his dreams. Join with you brother as only you can join with him – with One Mind. What could either of you look for that you do not already have? Would either of you choose sickness over happiness? What God has given us can never be lost, can never be used up, but is intended for constant giving, constant extension. In Love, there is no gap. There is nothing to have the seeds of sickness grow – for they are seen as the illusions they are. Be willing to let go of what you believe in, and be aware of the knowledge you have forever had. You lose nothing, but have everything. One can never lose an illusion, but one can always gain in being aware of truth.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section V. - The Alternate to Dreams of Fear

1. What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting off and separating from? A gap that is perceived between you and your brother, and what is now seen as health? And so the good is seen to be outside; the evil, in. And thus is sickness separating off the self from good, and keeping evil in. God is the Alternate to dreams of fear. Who shares in them can never share in Him. But who withdraws his mind from sharing them is sharing Him. There is no other choice. Except you share it, nothing can exist. And you exist because God shared His Will with you, that His creation might create.

This is not a new lesson, but the repeat of one we have been told before. Why repeated? Obviously, because we are still demonstrating that we believe in sickness, in our limitation of this form we call a body, and the gap that separates us from others. We have seen sickness, suffering and death since we were children. It is something we came to believe in because it was something we believed we experienced, but did we? All of this is nothing more than a dream of fear. What other choice do we have? What is the opposite of fear? Then let's choose it here and now – let's lay down the dream of fear for the Love of God. And if you do it, you will still be in this world, but you will see your world in whole different light.

2. It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone from them because you did not give them your support. Where fear has gone there love must come, because there are but these alternatives. Where one appears, the other disappears. And which you share becomes the only one you have. You have the one that you accept, because it is the only one you wish to have.

I think it important that we constantly remember that we live in a dream of duality – of opposite to everything. So whatever comes up we know that an opposite is available to us as a choice. If we accept the dreams of death of our brother, then surely those dreams must be real, but we could reject those dream and see them for the illusions they are. We could give them no meaning and without meaning they would no longer exist. Each moment of each moment we have to choose – between fear and love – between truth and falsity. We must accept one and reject the other.

3. You share no evil dreams if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is not the dream he made. And so he cannot be a part of yours, from which you both are free. Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the evil dream, and thus releases him. Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you are the dream you share. And fearing it, you will not want to know your own Identity, because you think that It is fearful. And you will deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a something you are not. You will make war upon your Self, which seems to be your enemy; and will attack your brother, as a part of what you hate. There is no compromise. You are your Self or an illusion. What can be between illusion and the truth? A middle ground, where you can be a thing that is not you, must be a dream and cannot be the truth.

Forgiveness separates you from your dream and so your brother is seen as your reflection. You cannot attack God, nor even your brother. You can attack but yourself.

4. You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be the place where all your safety lies, and where your Self is safely hidden by what you have made. Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices that its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing is; what listening is for. It is as little able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know. Its eyes are blind; its ears are deaf. It can not think, and so it cannot have effects.

Are you getting what is in the gap we see separating us from our brother: illusions of fear – fear of sickness, of what it sees and what it hears. And yet all that is within this gap we believe is there, is illusion itself. None of it including the gap is real.

5. What is there God created to be sick? And what that He created not can be? Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sound. Yet are there other sounds and other sights that can be seen and heard and understood. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not they that hear and see, but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. Let not the body's ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that you imagined, and let them persuade their maker his imaginings are real.

Can God be sick? Can God create sickness? Does God not only create God – Love creates Love? We think we have eyes that see but they only see an illusion. We think we can hear but yet we only hear illusions. All manner of this form we call a body is but used in the illusion itself. What we think we see in a world we make is not real, therefore it is safe to say that what we see is not real. If none of this is real, then what is it? An illusion, a dream and we use those words so much, do we ever stop to realize what meaning we have given to them? Illusion – dream – nothing!

6. Creation proves reality because it shares the function all creation shares. It is not made of little bits of glass, a piece of wood, a thread or two, perhaps, all put together to attest its truth. Reality does not depend on this. There is no gap that separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. Truth has left no room for them in any place or time. For it fills every place and every time, and makes them wholly indivisible.

This sums it all up quite well. Is there any room within Creation for illusions? Is there any room within Truth for falsehood? Love is everywhere and nowhere it is not. That leaves nothing for fear to fill.

7. You who believe there is a little gap between you and your brother, do not see that it is here you are as prisoners in a world perceived to be existing here. The world you see does not exist, because the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is nothing. And there are no awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of recognizing love.

If you still believe in the illusionary gap between you and your brother, then look once again at the gap you think you see. What is it that you believe you see there? A world of fear? A world of hatred and war? A world of chaos and confusion? Look closely for the gap appears hidden, but you still believe it to be there. Find and see that nothing in the gap is real, including the gap itself. See that what you have been believing in is not real. And sooner or later you will see not even an emptiness exists where once you saw a gap.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section VI. - The Secret Vows

1. Who punishes the body is insane. For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. It does not wonder what it is. And so it has no need to be competitive. It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

If we believe in the body, we believe in a gap – separation, and if we believe in a gap, we are insane. This is not the first time we have been told we are insane in this world of insanity. What is sane about believing what you are not – believing you are this body. Look at what is told you about the body: if itself it is nothing; it has no purpose other than what you give it; it has no will, no preferences, no doubts and no fears. It simply does what you tell it to do. Is this you? Sound like a robot, right?

2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. It is not born and does not die. It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.

And just in case you are still believing in your body as real, here are a few more reasons why not to continue: You can and have blamed the body for many things, but the body can do nothing unless you have first told it to perform; You have blamed it for sight and sound and yet it only did what you commanded; the body has no feeling, makes no choices, and it neither was born nor dies. This is the body we have placed so much value on. You can make the body do many things, but the body can do nothing on its own.

3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. And you despise its acts, but not your own. It sees and acts for you. It hears your voice. And it is frail and little by your wish. It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.

And just in case you are not yet convinced how insane it is to see the body as real, here are a few more reasons: the body knows nothing; the body has no emotions or feelings; there are times you despise the body for what you believe it has done, but it has done nothing other that what you have told it to do; you hate the body because of the limitations you see in it, and yet you placed those limitations upon the body.

4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

Of course we don't remember taking these vows, but take them we have, and believe in them we do. This tiny fragment of a gap you have given the name 'body' to and have given the same name to every brother you see. You believe in bodies; you believe they can attack and be attacked; that they can suffer pain and sickness. But if this is but a tiny gap, what about the rest of your mind?

5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. Whoever says, "There is no gap between my mind and yours" has kept God's promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing is his brother healed.

This, for me, is one of the most quoted lines of the Course: 'Sickness is anger taken out upon the body.' You are angry at the body you believe is real, and therefore you further believe that you and your brother are separate; and even go so far as to accuse your brother of harming you, of making you sick. The anger, the frustration we feel and try to contain because we believe in an illusion is overpowering to comprehend. Again, this is a world of duality. So what is the opposite of all this? If we do not believe in the body, then we do become angry with it, then we do cause the body to appear sick, and instead we see the body as healed and likewise, no separation is apparent, so that our brother also appears healed. All this because we changed one thought we held in our mind.

6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. In his creation did his Father say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me." His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," though in that promise he was born. Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.

Let us disregard the 'secret vows' we made, and instead make an agreement that we have no desire to be separated. Being separated in not in our true nature – it is not as God is. Our new vows 'I will' are simply a repeat of those we have given God, but have long forgotten. And so the memory returns with more of what has forever been.

Chapter 28

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

Section VII. - The Ark of Safety

1. God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. For there is no lack in him. An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of Either, Who have promised to be One. God's promise is a promise to Himself, and there is no one who could be untrue to what He wills as part of what He is. The promise that there is no gap between Himself and what He is cannot be false. What will can come between what must be One, and in Whose Wholeness there can be no gap?

As God is, we are; God needs nothing, and we need nothing being as God is. There is no lack for there is nothing to lack. There is no empty space, no tiny gap, no separation – only the Oneness we have and will forever be. God is All That Is – there can be nothing to be added.

2. The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you because it is a part of God Himself. Are you not sick, if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the Call to healing and the Call to heal? Your savior waits for healing, and the world waits with him. Nor are you apart from it. For healing will be one or not at all, its oneness being where the healing is. What could correct for separation but its opposite? There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. You accept it wholly or accept it not. What is unseparated must be joined. And what is joined cannot be separate.

The relationship with our brother was before we were – the Oneness we all are. If sickness is believe present, it is only because we believe we are different from one another. Your brother calls to you for healing, but in order for you to respond with healing, you must first have it yourself. Deny healing for you, and you deny it for everyone. No separation exists – know it, believe it, see it.

3. Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you are as one. There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split between the two. A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some promise of relief. Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made a home like this, because it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, because it does, it can be seen as not your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.

The one thing that the Course taught early on, and repeats often is this: this is an either/or world we have made – there is no in between – it is either Love or fear. Those are the only two choices we have; there is not a third choice for us to make. Do you still wish to believe the body to be real when you have seen others dead? Is that a sign of eternity for you? Your home is within you, not outside of you. You can never be what God is not.

4. With this as purpose is the body healed. It is not used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the healing of God's Son, and for this purpose it cannot be sick. It will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that it not be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice, and given you the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are immune, because the choice cannot be made in terms of form. The choice of sickness seems to be of form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. And you are sick or well, accordingly.

So which are you: sick or well – incomplete or whole – Love or fear? Remember we are the dreamer of the dream, the choice of the dream is ours to make.

5. But never you alone. This world is but the dream that you can be alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. This seems to prove that you must be apart. Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. Yet faithlessness is sickness. It is like the house set upon straw. It seems to be quite solid and substantial in itself. Yet its stability cannot be judged apart from its foundation. If it rests on straw, there is no need to bar the door and lock the windows and make fast the bolts. The wind will topple it, and rain will come and carry it into oblivion.

I remember as a child, a very young child, I had 'scarlet fever' and in 'those days' you were taken to a hospital and isolated from other people except those that had the same disease. I remember when my mother would come to visit, she would be separated from me by a large glass window. We could talk, but we could not touch. She would bring things, but I could never take them home later. Nurses wore masks over their faces. Such was my experience with separation. Yet I still felt a connection to my mother, I still knew that I would eventually be let out of the hospital, when I could not comprehend, but I knew I would not spend the rest of life there. And in this world we often have that same feeling within us as we move through our dream. We know that we shall experience this dream forever; that we shall awake to see that we never left where we thought we had. Separation is truly sickness; healing is our Truth.

6. What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, not in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? What can be safe that rests upon a shadow? Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a feather's weight?

Would you believe in this form we call a body when we know that it shall not last? In this what we place our trust in? We place our beliefs in illusions. So what is the alternative?

7. Your home is built upon your brother's health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. The winds will blow upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with no effect. The world will wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within itself alone. It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto his home. And with this holy purpose is it made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father's Will with you.

The Truth of who we are shall stand forever – eternally – as God is, we are. Any illusion which one could conjure up will not move what is eternal. The body offers us nothing, and our Truth shows us everything.

Chapter 29

THE AWAKENING

Section I. The Closing of the Gap

1. There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal love is quite impossible. For it would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. How could you trust Him, then? For He must be deceptive in His Love. Be wary, then; let Him not come too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through which you can escape if there be need for you to flee.

Do you believe that there is no place that God is not already present? Then if you do, why do you believe in fear? If you do, why do you believe in the body and the separation? You are the Son of God, and your brother is the Son of God. Do you believe that? Then can anything possibly come between that which is One? Can you see how if a little tiny gap is present in this dream that believe in? If you continue to see even one brother different from you, that gap is present for you.

2. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. This is the consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and their hope.

Even though you may say you do not fear God, it is obvious you do when you see a brother different from you. But until this is all pointed out to us, we believe we know what love looks like and what hate feels like. Remember this is upside-down world we have made – what we believe we see is not real, and what we fail to see is. We have become so confused in the world of insanity that we think love is hate and hate is love. And this insane thinking is because we still hang onto that tiny gap we think is a life line for us.

2. The fear of God! The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has not yet gone. The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. You had decided that your brother is your enemy. Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again into an enemy. Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you approached, did he but instantly withdraw. A cautious friendship, and limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty that you had made with him. Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact. And violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed.

We continually deny our fear of God and yet we continue to demonstrate it. But that is okay, because this is an insane world and we are insane. But how about choosing to be sane? How about dropping the fear of God for the love of a brother? How about letting that past just lay there and just be here and now in the Oneness we are? Jesus never once taught about the fear of God! That came later by others for the sole purpose of trying to control and manipulate people. And they succeeded for a while. Then we gave others permission to tell us what thoughts we should have and how we should behave, etc. We were burying ourselves in 'shoulds'. But that was then and this is now. Extend your hand to your brother and hold a hand that becomes one with yours. If your brother looks different that you appear, look again – look beyond the façade of the body to depth of his spirit. And see there your reflection.

3. The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two separate bodies. And this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer, and separate till you and he elect to meet again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and thereby signify a meeting place to join. But always is it possible for you and him to go your separate ways. Conditional upon the "right" to separate will you and he agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which do protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. The body saves you, for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives to you the time in which to build again your separate self, which you truly believe diminishes as you and your brother meet.

Has the time come for you and your brother to meet again, and no longer see any gap? Is it time yet for the two of you to put away your fears of each other, and see each other as simply One? Or do you feel that you must continue a while longer playing the roles of separation? When is the time right?

4. The body could not separate your mind from your brother's unless you wanted it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you and him. Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself. And herein lies its power over you. For now you think that it determines when your brother and you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with your brother's mind. And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. And its "inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do, and keep your purpose limited and weak.

Amazing that we continue to value and believe in the body, isn't it? If you believe in the body, then you believe in separation. If you believe in separation, it appears not to be the right time to get together. But remember time we made to stretch out this drama we call a dream. How does time cease to be? By our letting go of past thought, past beliefs, past views and simply being in the Holy Instant where time cannot exist. Meet your brother here and the Oneness of you both will be shown and seen by many. Without time, the limitations we once saw in our bodies are no longer seen; the sickness we thought was there is gone.

5. The body will accommodate to this, if you would have it so. It will allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred in between. And it will take command of when to "love," and when to shrink more safely into fear. It will be sick because you do not know what loving means. And so you must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose not your own.

Instead of misusing every circumstance, you could just as easily use every circumstance as a sign of Love, of Truth. Remember it is still your dream and you are the dreamer. The choice is yours.

6. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that love go away, and leave you quietly alone in "peace."

Love will never ask sacrifice of you, for love is complete and whole. What is not, will demand sacrifice, but never become complete and whole. Love never comes and goes, but is eternally present. What does come and go is our fear of God, our fear of being this body and being limited and not having our needs met to our satisfaction.

7. .The body, innocent of goals, is your excuse for variable goals you hold, and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength or weakness. Would you know that nothing stands between you and your brother? Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, "God is Love."

If you say but one affirmation a day, make is this: 'God is Love, and therefore so am I." And then go ahead and make your excuses to yourself about everything you think you see in this dream. Is God a body? No, then I am not a body. If I am not a body, then my brother who I thought had a different body than I do, is not a body either. If he is not a body, then what is he? Look closely and see the Truth of both of you.

8. Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? Would you allow the body to say "no" to Heaven's calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? Yet can your self be lost by being found?

If you see your brother as One with you, then you have found God. If you no gap existing between you and your brother, then you have found God. And notice you do not really 'find' God, but realize the Presence was always present. Only you thought you were lost. God knows you have never left.

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Section II. - The Coming of the Guest

1. Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do not see them, they are there. Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in.

Another good example of how insane we are; we appear to choose suffering over being free; we choose to see our truth as false'; we believe this path to be too hard for us to walk, to difficult for us to travel, and yet it a straight smooth path to God. But we think this path will lead us to hell, not heaven. We are so confuse we don't know the difference between hell and heaven. We continue to believe that if we give up anything, then we have lost it forever. And we believe to get anything, we must take it instead of having the main gains simply be known to us. Because we do not see our Truth does not mean that the Truth is not present. Is there a place where God is not, and is this the reason we fear God because we have no place to hide from God?

2. You have accepted healing's cause, and so it must be you are healed. And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. Nor is it, in itself, a cause. But where its cause is must it be. Now is it caused, though not as yet perceived. And its effects are there, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace.

We all have within each of us All That Is. With this knowledge we are healed and whole and do not experience suffering, pain or sickness. With this knowledge, we no see a separation. Look within and see your Truth, and you will know what it is to be free. No regrets are to linger, only the joy and happiness of the moment.

3. It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wherever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the effects of love.

If you have come this far, if you have seen that pain and sin are illusions, as are your bodies and the separation that you believe existed, then you should certainly be rejoicing. Are the effects of your Truth – of Love so foreign to you that you must take a moment to recognize them? Remember what you have forever been, not what you thought you were.

4. Your Guest has come. You asked Him, and He came. You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. He needs your help in giving them to all who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. They will be healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid.

Up to this point in the Course, we have pretty much always gone to Spirit with requests, and now Spirit comes to us and requests something of us. Will you refuse Spirit this little task? He has laid at our feet the Truth we are, and asks that we share that Truth with all others – not just a few, but all others. As we heal so others are healed. If we try to leave one out, we have left ourselves out. So open the gifts presented to you so that you may extend them to others.

5. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have received. Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you invited Him to be. There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. And when you look on them, you will believe His Presence must be there. For what you now can do could not be done without the love and grace His Presence holds.

I do not see how much I can give, because of everything I have received. And yet, Spirit has entered within me and waits for me to come as well, to the place where I invited Him to stay. There is no other place where he can find me, nor where I can find Him. And there is nowhere else that the gifts of Spirit of joy and peace and all the happiness His Presence contains, can be found. I cannot see Spirit, but I see the gifts brought by Him. I cannot see Spirit, but I believe in His Presence. What is presented to me could only come from Spirit.

6. Such is the promise of the living God; His Son have life and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. What you have given "life" is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive apart from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. Yet what is that except the state confusion really means? Stability to those who are confused is meaningless, and shift and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.

We have constantly referred to our dream as one of chaos and here we call it confusion so that it may become more clear to us. Where confusion is, change is present. Where Love is, are All That is Changeless.

7. The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is possible. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body is.

What was your first reaction to the statement: 'The body does not change.' Do we not believe that it does and mostly that we are not happy with the changes we believe we see? Recall that the body is but a thought we hold in our mind. Because we believe in time, we further believe that the body can age and therefore we constantly change our thought of how we perceive the body. It is only the thought that changes, not the body. But change is not possible in immortality, in Truth. Truth is Truth – God is God – Love is Love. If we continue to see a change in the body, then we must also be aware that we still maintain the thought that the body is real.

8. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its nothingness is guarantee that it can not be sick. In your demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that God be less than all He really is. What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is lessened by the loss of you. And what is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him.

Recall that we have stated that the body of itself is nothing. It does only what the mind tells it to do. The body can never be anything other than what it is. If the body is seen as sick, it is because the mind sees the body as sick. And it will tell the body what other symptoms it may have as well. So if the mind does all this, who is the one thinking the thought that the mind is conveying to the body/

9. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power in itself. As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not more than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee.

Very early on in the Course we were told that the body was nothing, made from nothing in a world of nothing. And since that passage we have repeatedly be told that identical statement. Are you able to begin to grasp how deep some of our beliefs are? We still hold on to this one. If you say you do not, then I must ask you if see ALL brothers in the Light of Love, ALL of them as ONE with you? But when we do succeed at this, salvation is ours – all of us.

10. As "something" is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be the sum of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and His completion is its nothingness. Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him savior unto you, and only this. His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more or less than what is his.

And so who do you see as your Savior? Some of us may answer differently from others, but the answer is simple: your savior is your brother and you are savior to your brother. And the salvation is simply not believing in bodies – his or yours.

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Section III. - God's Witnesses

1. Condemn your savior not because he thinks he is a body. For 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?

Don't condemn your brother because he thinks he is a body, for you still do. Beyond his dreams, and your dreams is reality for both of you. First you must both learn what it is that a savior does, what is the function of a savior? Is it to give that which you are to each other, and know that by giving you are claiming to have that which is given? We have learned but perhaps do not yet know, that to give is to receive. If we think we are bodies, then we fear giving because we believe we will have less.

2. 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.

We have been created in the image of God – as God is, we are. Does God have less because He created us? Could there ever be less of God? If God is complete, then we are complete. If God is whole, then we are whole. If we deny one thing we are, we deny God is not that as well. You and your brother are savior to each other; you both need each other to be complete as the One you both are. If you see beyond the body of your brother, your brother shall see beyond your body as well. No walls exists between you other than the illusion you have that they do.

3. 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 still shines. You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can let yourself be wakened. You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams. And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. The darkness cannot choose that it remain. The coming of the light means it is gone. In glory will you see your brother then, and understand what really fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart. 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.

You cannot wake yourself! But how hard we do try at times, right? We want to do it all 'my way' instead of 'Thy way'. We cannot wake ourselves from this dream we are dreaming but we can be wakened by another. And this awakening is accomplished as we see beyond the form of the brother to the Christ Spirit within, and therein look to see our reflection. No form is seen, no darkness is present; only Light from within illuminates us both. And with the Light comes our wakening, as it does within this dream. As you forgive yourself your illusions, your illusions are gone.

4. 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.

Make way for Love, which you did not make, but which is your Truth. And this Love of which you are, can be extended to all you see. And this means to your brother whom you have forgiven by forgiving the thought you had been holding of him. In this simple act of forgiveness, in this simple act of extension of Love, your savior is shown to you, you are shown as savior to him.

5. 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 on you. And in his glad salvation you are saved.

How holy are we? So blessed that the Son of God is our savior. We watched as he step from the darkness of illusion into the Light of Eternity where we see as never before an image of brightness beyond description. And that brightness is received by all and the waking eyes are opened at last. And such is our salvation – to be awaken where we have never left.

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Section IV. - Dream Roles

1. Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream, but only on awaking. Could it be some dreams are kept, and others wakened from? The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goes with only one of these.

Here again is that message: you must choose one or the other, but not some of each. It is either love or fear? We want to wake from 'nightmares' but wish to continue to nice dreams. Some of the dreams we are finished with and no longer want, but others we wish to keep around a bit. And this is fine, but when you decide you have had enough and want to waken, then the choice is not between some and others, but is only between illusions or Truth. Either you wish to sleep or wish to waken, which you choose will produce the results accordingly.

2. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something else. The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. You would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way.

As a child, you believed and not believed in Santa Claus. When you were of a very young age, you were told to believe and you saw the results of your believing. When you got a bit older, you decided not to believe, and you still got presents, but somewhere in you was the little doubt that perhaps you might still believe. And here is not much different. Are we not as little children? If you believe in the miracle – if you believe your world can be seen differently by changing a thought, then know that to awaken in a joy and not fearful. You know your Truth for it is within you, constantly urging you on to greater leaps of faith, as they say. Have faith in who you are in Truth, and your illusions will be shown to you for what they are.

3. In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to function unfulfilled as you perceive the function. It can be in you or someone else, but where it is perceived it will be there it is attacked. Depression or assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear that is their core. And it is this the miracle perceives, and not the wrappings in which it is bound.

As you look upon your brother, past the form you thought he was, you see Truth. As you look at fear, you go beyond the form it takes and see what it is – an illusion – a thought in your mind. You have been fearful of a thought in your own mind! See beyond the packaging to what it contained.

4. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the "reason" your attack is justified? The dreams you think you like are those in which the functions you have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if they be fulfilled or merely wanted. It is the idea that they exist from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each one represents some function that you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing should represent, and should achieve for you. If it succeeds you think you like the dream. If it should fail you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering.

Here is one of those concepts we have to grasp: whether the dream is happy or sad, it is still a dream, an illusion. And no one in your dream will make you happy or sad, other than you, the Dreamer. Apparently we want to continue dreaming because we still are, only now we have the thought of awakening also within our mind. A seed that will grow should we allow it to do so.

5. .How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave the "proper" role to every figure which the dream contains. No one can fail but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear. The coverings may not appear to change, but what they mean has changed because they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for. A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy.

How would this dream appear to you if you were not the dreamer? Ever had that thought before? If you were to give this dream to the Holy Spirit, He would show you your dream from His perspective. Are you ready for that? No fear is ever contained in a dream of the Holy Spirit. No shadows nor darkness is viewed in His dreams. But do not forget – those are your dreams viewed in a different perspective – there not only must be another way, there is another way.

6. What is your brother for? You do not know, because your function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the function of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love.

Still doubtful over whether you should offer your dream to the Holy Spirit to be seen in a different perspective? The Holy Spirit loves the dreamer and not the dream. His view is His offering to you are Love. Will you not accept Love from the Holy Spirit?

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Section V - The Changeless Dwelling Place

1. There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to 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.

So after reading the description, don't you just want to go there? To a place where we forget this world; where no memory of sin nor illness is present; where time is not existent, and only the echoes of eternity are heard. Does such a place exist for us?

2. 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.

The first thing ego always wants to do is change what appears to be seen. But this place describe to us is beyond any change. This is the dwelling place of Love – of Truth – the place where God and His Son are – and we are the Son of God. This is our place of eternity. This is where we have never left. And the changelessness of this place is peace to us after we have believed in a world of constant changes, this is a blessing to our tired eyes. And listen to the stillness of the endless, surrounding peace. Remember the sound?

3. 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.

Accept the role given you by Spirit, while you wait upon the Son of God, your brother. You will see him as waken and in peace, as you are also wakened and at peace. Your brother is part of you, as you are part of him, because he is the Son of God and you are the Son of God. You must be as One. Your peace is seen in him, and his peace is felt by you. And every loving thought you hold, your brother holds as well.

4. 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.

Your brother is like yourself, a mirror of the image of God. He is a gentle reminder to you that he was created by the Love of God, as you were also. He is a messenger to you proclaiming that within him is God, and God is within you as well. Now be still as the Voice of God within him tells what the function of your brother is. Your brother was created by God so that you might be whole and complete, so that you can be seen in the Oneness of All That Is.

5. There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. Behold His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as his own. Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your peace. The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet come the happy dreams in which your hands are joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold on every vain illusion of the world. And being empty they receive, instead, a brother's hand in which completion lies.

God asks of us nothing more that to see in all brothers His shining glory as a gift to us. We see our brother, we behold the Son of God, and see within him all that creation is. And from your brother it is given to you and you find it deep within you in the quiet of the stillness. What is within your brother is within you. The happy dreams of what has forever been return to both, and the dreams of pain vanish from memory. And we all drop all the illusions we carried and believed, to be replaced with the love we give to each other. It is in the giving that we receive, and it is in the receiving that we give.

6. 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.

Every now and then we capture a glimpse of what is before us as we forgive, but only a glimpse because we go right back in believing in this world we make with nothing more than thoughts we hold. Remember we are the Dreamer of the Dream. Do you not desire to be a friend to God, then how is it that you judge your brother? Your brother is the Son of God. But your brother believes he is not, and further believes he is unworthy of the Love of God. And he receives this thought from what you extend to him. Are you extending Love – unconditional Love – or are you extending a substitute for love only found in this dream? Take the hand of your brother and clasp it tightly so that the death he thinks he holds shall be squeezed from it, and in its place have him hold Love. Forgive yourself for thoughts other than love you hold of him. Release him from that death and allow him to be in the peace of Truth.

7. 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.

Your brother is you savior and you are savior to your brother. This is what this dream is about. It is not about death, about hate, about separation and fear. But why do we hold onto this dream when another dream is possible? Because we have not asked for Spirit intervention in our dream; we have not asked that we see this dream differently; we have not asked that we see this dream through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. "Come Holy, Come." There is to be seen in our world 'death' – there is to be seen through the eyes of Spirit, Love. Are we so afraid of Love we will not chance to see what it is?

8. 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.

And what is the core of all our fear? What keeps us from seeing Truth instead of the illusion we choose? Everything is our world changes constantly – nothing is forever. In Truth, which can be shown us if but ask, eternity is ours. Changelessness is ours. Love is ours. God is ours.

Chapter 29

THE AWAKENING

Section VI. - Forgiveness and the End of Time

1. How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form. Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead of this.

So how willing are you to forgive your brother for all that you think he has done to you and to others? It takes but a little willingness to begin, but then we encounter the other point – we must include all brothers. Now how willing are you to forgive all brothers? If you are not experiencing peace, perhaps it is because you have not forgiven. And is 'forgiveness' truly a sacrifice on your part? What are you giving up except thoughts of fear?

2. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one. What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is. God's Son can never change by what men made of him. He will be as he was and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of his birth and death. Forgiveness will not change him. Yet time waits upon forgiveness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use.

And so your brother, you scream out that he must not make a bargain to die, for he cannot die. He and you are immortal as is God. Nothing changes immortality. Your brother – you also – are all that the Universe holds – you are the Oneness of All That Is. What we believe in this world we make will someday come to an end – including the saws, the planets, the universe. All of it has an ending except you and your brother. Time is not known in eternity. Change is not known in eternity. You and your brother are known in eternity. You and your brother will forever be as you both have forever been. An act of forgiveness will change nothing in eternity. But still in this world we continue to dream, forgiveness is necessary so that time will no longer have any purpose.

3. Nothing survives its purpose. If it be conceived to die, then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be. Think not that you can set a goal unlike God's purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see another purpose there.

Whatever has a purpose and accomplished its purpose will no longer be present; its purpose has been completed. If we believe our purpose is to be born and eventually die, then such is the purpose we shall adopt. But such a purpose can be changed. Do you truly believe you can believe in a purpose other than what God has intended? Do you think you can give yourself a purpose, you who are the Dreamer of the Dream? But the good news is that everything you think is subject to change. What you once believed can be seen differently. And you who thought the first purpose, can change that thought to the second purpose.

4. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one. Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. Life's function cannot be to die. It must be life's extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.

We are grateful to God that change is possible in this dream. Where would we be without change? Any illusion can be changed, but that which is Truth is not subject to change. Your function has been fixed in you by God and cannot be changed. All your goals in time can be changed with the exception of time. The only way to change time is through the act of forgiveness. And total forgiveness is meant here – total forgiveness – unconditional forgiveness – with no exceptions. With time ended, death is no longer an option. With death gone, what remains? Only life!

5. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body only if you think that it was made to crucify God's Son. For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. Let this be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. For nothing here but is defined as what you see it for.

We have gone pretty far in the Course and so I assume it safe to say that we all believe that the crucifixion of Jesus was the last useless act for all of us. Why dream of death when life is present? Why believe in what you see when you know that another way of seeing is available to you?

6. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God's Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.

Forgiveness of your brother, forgiveness of yourself brings about a new view of an old world. Now you see no fear but only joy and happiness. Now you begin to see the world of Love unfold before you, as time slips away only to be replaced by timelessness.

Chapter 29

THE AWAKENING

Section VII. - Seek Not Outside Yourself

1. Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.

What is outside yourself to search? Is it not a projection of a thought you hold, an illusion? And yet we forget that one important fact and continue to seek outside and yet never find what we seek. What we seek in not outside, it is not to be found in an illusion, for nothing is in an illusion. What you do find outside are nothing more than idols in an attempt to be your god, and yet each and every idol has fallen down for you; each idol has left you down. What we do experience in our looking is a frustration and anger. Recall that anger is sickness taken out upon the body? And the pain and suffering we endure to try to find what is not there. And yet many teachers have told us that indeed what we seek is there: money, prestige, glamour, position, etc. But these are not what we seek, for the quest is from within us. And that which we seek in there as well.

2. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so. And therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not.

We have all experienced that wanderlust in our life one time or more. That time when we become aware that we appear to be wandering aimlessly without knowing what it is we seek. And we look outside because outside is what we believe to be real. And we never quite find what it is we are looking for. We may look for something we think will make us complete. We may search for something we think will make us well. We may look for something that will make us wealthy. But in all our searches we never find what it is to make us happy. And then we do what we do best, we continue to search outside.

3. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks is but his death. Its form appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled.

And in our continuance we seek a thousand idols, and then a thousand more, and yet a thousand more. Each of those thousands will fail us except one that we are not even aware that we are seeking – death. Death seems to be outside of us and yet death appears to kill the Son of God who is eternal. And every idol has this same purpose, this same goal. And yet, the goal is never fulfilled.

4. Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death. To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and to have suffered loss. And by this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The search implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are.

Seek a goal outside yourself in which the body is a part, and death will be the end of the goal. Believe in the body, believe in death. Believe in death and you believe you can lack, and if you lack, you believe you must sacrifice, and if you sacrifice, you will suffer a loss. Do not seek outside yourself for nothing is to be found. Seeking there implies that you are not whole and complete, something that cannot be changed.

5. Idols must fall because they have no life, and what is lifeless is a sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole.

Again we are told that to look outside ourselves will only reveal death. Now if death is what you seek, then you know where to look. Are you having this dream in order that you may die? Nothing is outside of you but illusion upon illusion, and yet we strongly believe in those illusions at times. What we think is life, is death. What we think is love, is really fear. What we see in our world eventually turns to dust and blows away. That is what is outside of us.

6. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself.

If God dwells within us, then why would we seek anything more outside of us? God is All That Is, there is no seeking required. Our completion is within God. If we seek outside for something to make us complete, we are denying God. There is no idol to replace Truth. There is nothing outside us which is Truth.

7. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwise, the future will be like the past, and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one, and you see death and disappointment everywhere.

We have heard this before, but it is worthy of repeating: forget the purpose the past has given to your world, and the future will change accordingly. Are you not tired of depressing dreams? Would you not prefer to dream happy dreams? You are the Dreamer of the Dream, remember.

8. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not know the purpose of the world. You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are between the two. You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been given you. Your idols do what you would have them do, and have the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own.

How many times are we told to say this line; 'I do not know'? And yet that line is a key that opens so much for us. It says that we do not know what anything is for, what anything is, including this body. Everything in our world we have made, we have given it meaning, we have given it power and we have given it the appearance of being real. And there is the answer to our problem: we have done all of that, so we can undo all of that. This is our dream and we are the dreamer.

9. Yet where are dreams but in a mind asleep? And can a dream succeed in making real the picture it projects outside itself? Save time, my brother; learn what time is for. And speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sick by seeing idols there. Your holy mind is altar unto God, and where He is no idols can abide. The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is not the fear of loss of your reality. But you have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to threaten life and offer death.

If we are the dreamer, and this is a dream, then it would appear safe to admit that we must be asleep. And if we are asleep then what we are experiencing is not real. And all the idols made outside of us to save us from other illusions, are but dreams as well. Idols are but fear – fear of Truth, fear of God. We look to the idol because we fear looking at God. And the salvation a brother offers us now appears to be a threat to us instead.

10. It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there is no death, and only life exists. The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. An idol cannot take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is not despair.

But death is not real and our salvation proves that easily. Nothing is lost in death, it is not a sacrifice we make, it is nothing. And all the idols we found cannot take the place of God, of Truth, of who we are. Instead of moaning and groaning on the outside to idols we made, how about simply be quiet and go within to the Presence of God.

Chapter 29

THE AWAKENING

Section VIII. - The Anti-Christ

1. What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.

Would you know an idol if you saw one? Would you know God if you met God? The idols we choose are never idols initially, but they become idols almost unconsciously for us. They often appear as addictions – something we can't live without, or so we believe. And the power these idols have over us, is only the power we give them. Is there a purpose to an idol? Idols are feared and worshipped and yet we do not know what they are for. Could it be simply to replace God? And no matter how the idol is seen by us, in whatever form it takes, it is but an idol.

2. Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace.

No matter what the form, idols are but a substitute for our reality. They are a way of our escaping what is before us. Some appear that they will give us more of what we want, if only we knew what we wanted. Some idols are seen to provide safety to us from what we know not, other than a fear. A fear to offer us safety against a fear – how insane. We believe in idols because we think so little of ourselves; have a low self-esteem of what we are. And we look then to idols to raise us from where we find ourselves. We want them to do what we fear doing. And we look constantly out there for what we have within.

3. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind that is its source. Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His face like a dark veil that seems to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. Yet the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the light itself.

I remember reading once how an atheist did believe in God, because to deny God, one had to first believe God is. And such is the same with anti-Christ – they also believe in Christ but fear letting go of the idols they think are true. But all of this, whether and anti-Christ or an atheist, are but the same – simply a thought we hold in our mind. A thought we give power to, give value to, and give a form to. What an idol blocks is still there. An illusion cannot hide God.

4. This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God's way? Whose voice could make demand He enter not? The "more-than-everything" is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. Christ's enemy is nowhere. He can take no form in which he ever will be real.

The purpose of an idol is to separate us from our brother; to show us our brother as being different from us, perhaps less than we are. The idol appears to be a shade before the Light, but the Light still shines forth. We fear an idol which is but a thought. When we come to realize that everything in our world is but a thought, that everything is an illusion, then we raise the shades that we believe hide our Truth. Is there a place where God is not? If God is All That Is, then what might an idol really be?

5. What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and given power that it may be feared. Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what has life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it is.

So an idol is nothing but an illusion, like everything else in our world of illusions. And like any other illusion, we must believe it to be real before it comes to life with the power we have given it. But a change of thought will not restore the Truth for us, for the Truth was always present. The change of thought – the miracle – shows us that what we thought was hiding the Truth is taken down and cast away.

6. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol "dies." This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain and finally to die.

Whenever I think of idols, I recall my first idols – statues of Jesus, Mary or other 'special' people to pray to. And I prayed to these idols and began to believe in the idols and eventually forgot what the idol was to remind me of. The idol was to remind of what the idol had done in their life, what teachings it had left behind. And it is this that cracks the idol's base. An image is nothing, but the teachings are everything. There is no power beyond God. There is no place beside God. There is no time in God. There is no death in God. There are no illusions in God, but there are in my mind. What's the difference here? God knows It is God; I have forgotten who I am.

7. Where is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, has no place to be. An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything to be except His Will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere.

Where possibly could an idol that God is not already there? Can there possibly be a place where time can halt eternity? Can anything possibly alter that which is forever? Can darkness be real or is it but illusion as well? There is no place for an idol to be for there is no place that God is not present.

8. What purpose has an idol, then? What is it for? This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. The world believes in idols. No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of what; more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is an idol for. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes. An idol is a means for getting more. And it is this that is against God's Will.

What more of anything could you possibly have that is not included in All That Is? There are probably as many answers to the purpose of an idol as there are idols. The world we make believes in idols. We are always seeking more and more, and yet we know not what more is. But that appears not to matter, we just want more. And then the more we seek becomes our newest idol. And when that idol is depleted, we turn and make another idol to worship. If you can step back from your world for just a moment and observe it, you probably will have to laugh at yourself.

9. God has not many Sons, but only One. Who can have more, and who be given less? In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace. It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols have no purpose here. For more than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with Him? God gave you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of Himself. No idol can establish you as more than God. But you will never be content with being less.

God has but One Son – you – and me – and you and you...We may believe we see many forms but they are One in Truth. God has given us All That Is – each of us. And when we think we are less, we simply turn to a brother and find that he will show what we have. There is nothing more to have than All That Is, but why do we continue to believe we are less than All That Is?

Chapter 29

THE AWAKENING

Section IX. - The Forgiving Dream

1. The slave of idols is a willing slave. For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream.

We are willing slaves to worship that which has no life and look for power from the powerless. What has happened to us, the Son of God, that we would bow down to such things? And so the story will be told to us.

2. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son. How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor can he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.

And so this is how it came to be: I dreamed a dream of judgment, and in that dream I saw Heaven as hell, and hell as Heaven. And in that dream, I dreamt that God was now my enemy and I feared God. And so, how do I wake from a dream of judgment? And the answer is in the question – stop judging. As long as I judge, the dream continues. If I judge, I will many idols in my dreams, on which I will place the responsibility of my judgment. And as long as I judge, I shall not be aware of God. My idols to replace God are seen as terror and guilt.

3. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you from. Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. Judgment is an injustice to God's Son, and it is justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. God knows of justice, not of penalty. But in the dream of judgment you attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings.

We think an idol will save us from this dream, but the idol is a part of this dream and will only keep the dream alive. But is being desperate and in fear how we wish to see this dream? If we judge, we do an injustice to ourselves for as we judge, we so judge - ourselves. We cannot judge even one brother that we have not judged all brothers, including ourselves. And so what good have our idols done for us?

4. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. Little child, the light is there. You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own.

No salvation is possible in a dream containing idols, and such is the dream we are having, each of us. We look to idols instead of seeing our Truth. We look to idols as they hide what we seek. As a child you played with toys and you gave those toys names, and power – power to be what you wanted them to be. When you were done playing, you picked up your toys and put them away. And as you put them away, they became simply toys once more. And so we might do with the idols in our dreams – stop playing with them and put them away, taking from them all power we have given them.

5. Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. Yet can a dream attack? Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it.

Many years ago, before the age of TV, I listen to a radio show called 'Inner Sanctum' which was always a scary story and only on, I believe, for a half of an hour. I had no picture to see but the one I held in my mind. I was creating all the story as it was being told. Many times I would have a 'bad' dream because of what I held in my mind. My mother would simply tell me that I was only scaring myself – nothing really happened, it was only a story. And I recall, most times, I would go to sleep and forget the story. But now in this dream, as an adult, I see that I am still creating images in my mind and giving them power over me. Is it because I am but still a child who thinks it has aged? And so much appears to have happened since I was a young boy listening to radio, but all that appears to have happened is still what it was back then – a thought within my mind.

6. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children's game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand.

And indeed the time has come when my toys are to put away and I will then stop playing. Without the toys, the playing is over. And such is the simplicity of this dream. I have to stop judging and be aware of what is present to me. Without judgment, what is left in this dream? Have you gone for one whole minute without judging? Do you know what judging means? Any opinion you have is but a judgment. Any choice you make is but one of judgment. Can you make one minute without judging?

7. The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the purpose that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love.

So without judging, we still dream, but look now at what we dream; no longer any idols are seen; no longer is one substituted for another; no longer is one seen different from another; and most dramatic is that all forms are now seen as brothers.

8. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?

Do you need much more incentive to have a dream of forgiveness than to know that the dream shall not last, that it shall soon be over? These dream do not separate the mind, nor do they suggest someone else is dreaming the dream. And within this dream, a melody will be heard reminding you of another world where time does not exist. The simple act of forgivenss is a key that opens awakening for you. And the song will begin your journey back to where you never left.

9. Whenever you feel fear in any form, – and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you, – be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Your self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death.

If you feel fear, you can be sure you have some idol tucked away somewhere. And with all idols, you can be sure you will be betrayed by it. And you will be given the guilt and pain that accompany self-betrayal and uncertainty. And you will experience the deepest of depressions, all will be seen as doom and gloom. And having one idol, you will seek others, and death as well.

10. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to worship idols and to keep attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while he is remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty.

But forgiving dreams remind you that you exist in love and are not attacking yourself. So you see the terrors as those of a child and tell yourself that they are but in your mind – they are not real. Forgiving dreams are dreams of new beginnings where idols are let to fall and be forgotten. Forgiving dreams bring you full release from dreams of fear. You no longer have to fear your judgment for no one is seen to judge. And no penalties are seen for what was dreamt in fear.

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Introduction

1. The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. The speed by which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step. Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need.

A new beginning does not necessarily mean an ending – simply a new beginning where we are, in this moment. And so this is to be the focus for us while we complete the next two chapters. The goal is clear, in fact so clear some of us believe we can see the finished line but when we reach it depends on just one thing – nothing new and repeated once again for us – just our willingness to practice every step – not some of them, but all of them. You know how difficult it is for us to not judge everyone, we always have at least one person in mind whom we will judge, or even ourselves. And we are told that each time we practice these STEPS; we are helped along our way. And as we progress, we will be lead from our dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams of Love. We will be led from the dreams of pain and fear to dreams of love. This is not new news to us, we have been told of this before. Now it is being emphasized for us, and for a very good reason. A new beginning for us is the focus of the curriculum of the Course we are taking. And the many steps are necessary for us to attempt so that we may move beyond. We try the steps, do the steps, and allow the steps to become habit with us. But to become a habit, we have to REPEAT THOSE steps many times. Once established as habits, they will be our normal reaction to what will be presented TO US in this dream.

Chapter 30

THE NEW BEGINNING

Section I - Rules for Decision

1. Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.

We certainly do not know as we make many decisions in a day, but we do make them. These are what we want to replace with the knowledge we acquired through each step we take – a new habit for an old thought. Become aware of your thinking and change your thoughts as often as required to maintain thoughts of love. It will become habit forming with you. And if you find yourself not in the place of dedication, simply know you are not ready for the movement ahead. Eventually you will be. Whenever we resist anything, we have to surrender our resistance for the grace of persistence. To stop resisting, let go of what you fear. Be gentle with yourself and you will know when your time has come to begin your new beginning. Suddenly you will become aware that you are, and you will once again be in awe of you.

2. The outlook starts with this:

Today I will make no decisions by myself.

Know and remember and repeat many times to yourself, you will not make any decision by yourself today or any day. Ask for and receive the guidance from within you as to which decision is in your best interest – which decision will be in love and which is done in fear. If you make a decision by yourself, know that it is not the right decision. Remember one of the early lessons – steps – in the Course – 'I do not know what anything is for."

This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. But it must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should react to them. And then another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear.

When you ask for and receive guidance from Spirit, you can rest assured that you are not judging anything, you are simply seeing another view, one presented to you in Love.

3. This is your major problem now. (1) You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first. This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. And therefore angry. There are rules by which this will not happen. But it does occur at first, while you are learning how to hear.

And so here is our current challenge: you still make up your mind and then, perhaps, and only perhaps, you seek guidance. What's wrong with this system? You could seek guidance first and then make a decision with that guidance. Making up your mind first and then asking for an opinion of spirit shows that you are still thinking alone, separated from God. It is not because of ignorance that we ask for the help of Spirit – it is simply a fact that we know nothing.

4. (2)Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the things you would experience, and say:

If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.

These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a problem in itself.

We have all heard the expression: 'I plan and God laughs." There could be a little truth to that for Spirit must certainly find amusing how we believe we can continue through this dream just as we started, knowing full well, that this is not how we wish to have our dream play out. What happens when we simply affirm: "Thank You God for this day" and then allow this day to be presented to you as the gift it is?

5. But there will still be times when you have judged already. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want an answer that will work. Be certain this has happened if you feel yourself unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given you. This means you have decided by yourself, and cannot see the question. Now you need a quick restorative before you ask again.

Ever been here before in your life? That place where you believe so strong that you can do it all alone – need no help from anyone – especially God – only to find that you are blindly walking through life, bitter, sad and depressed. You come to a spot where you just don't know anything anymore – the question or the answer.

6. (3) remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something has occurred that is not part of it. Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and must have set an answer in your terms. Then say:

I have no question. I forgot what to decide.

This cancels out the terms that you have set, and lets the answer show you what the question must have really been.

Now remember the day you really want – that day of happiness and joy that others talk about. Acknowledge that your day is not going like that and there is something wrong WITH YOUR day. And soon, very soon, you will discover that you are talking to yourself – asking yourself a question and giving yourself an answer. Asking the question is good but not of yourself. Ask of Spirit and hear the answer given you within. Eventually you will discover that you will not question your day – you will start out your day asking for guidance AND THEN watching as your day UNFOLDS before you. No questions, no answers, no decisions, no judgments.

7. Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your opposition. For you have already gotten angry. And your fear of being answered in a different way from what your version of the question asks will gain momentum, until you believe the day you want is one in which you get your answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want. This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules that promise you a happy day. Yet this decision still can be undone, by simple methods that you can accept.

Follow this rule now, not promising yourself to do it later – right now, and yes there will be opposition and resistance, but do it anyways. Get mad at yourself if you believe it helps you, but follow this rule now. And soon, very soon, you will acknowledge suddenly that you are indeed doing as instructed.

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

At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now.

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

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

And so I hope I have been wrong.

So you make a decision that you do not like the feeling you are experiencing, at least you are making a decision. And being aware of just that little point, you might then want to look again in the event you decided incorrectly.

This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being thrust upon you but is something that you want and that you need, because you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped.

There is always another way of looking at anything, and here is the example now: The guidance you may believe you are not yet ready for is not forced upon you – quite the contrary, you must ask for it first before it is given. And that little tiny thought could grow to the understanding that it is okay for you to be as you are now, and know that you can change your mind later on and ask for help.

10. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that you will gain if what you have decided is not so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being right. But this much reason have you now attained; you would be better off if you were wrong.

WHAT HAPPENS at a turning point? A new beginning! And this is where you are now because you finally realized that it is not a matter of right or wrong, but knowing that what you decided can be changed. You might be wrong or you might be right, but it matters little to you.

11. (6) This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are not coerced, but merely hope to get a thing you want. And you can say in perfect honesty:

I want another way to look at this.

And this is how the Course began as well – there must be a different way. Wanting to see things differently opens up a world that held you captive to world of endless possibilities.

Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you really want. Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. Thus is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask?

12. (7) This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:

Perhaps there is another way to look at this.

What can I lose by asking?

Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is you who will be helped by it.

And listen to ego scream! What do you mean what do you to lose? With ego, you cannot lose anything for then you will no longer have it. But what's to lose? Even ego cannot answer well enough for you. So there might be a better way of seeing this, shouldn't I at least try it? And this other view that you once feared is a help to you; it helps you SEE YOUR world differently.

13. It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules that will protect you from the ravages of fear. When this has been achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. But meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here.

So it is easy to talk about this, but it is indeed another to do it. Yes, I can have a happy day if only I prevent unhappiness from entering it. But I am far enough in this Course to realize that if unhappiness enters, it is because I have beckoned it in. I have chosen it. So I must practice and practice the rules for undoing what I have done.

14. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real decision in itself. And yet, you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question really is with what you choose to make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do.

So let us say together: "I cannot make decisions by myself." We may have a lot of flak from ego on this but so what? The simple truth us that we cannot decide anything by ourselves. We either make decisions with ego or with Spirit. Ego is there making them for us while Spirit waits patiently for us to ask. Knowing this, we must remember to invite Spirit at all times, for we make decision at all times.

15. Your day is not at random. It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You always ask advice before you can decide on anything. Let this be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There is no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is, you must be wrong.

Your day is not a random day – it is a day presented to you based on the thoughts you hold within your mind and as to which COUNSEL YOU are listening to. Want a day of great joy? Ask for guidance of Spirit. Want a day of pain, suffering and fear? Follow the advice of ego in your decision making.

16. The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have?

What kind of a day do you want to experience? Spirit cannot give you a day of suffering, pain and misery, but It can show you how to see all that differently. As you see your world, so shall be your day.

17. It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world. It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined before there can be a decision. Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourself. Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received, so must you give.

What WOULD YOU like to extend to your world today? That which you shall experience is that which you shall be able to extend. If you want the best of happiness today, then you shall extend that as well into your world. Do you see how easily your world is seen differently? You are the Dreamer of the Dream, remember, and it is all up to you and the guidance you seek.

Chapter 30

THE NEW BEGINNING

Section II. - Freedom of Will

1. Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight yourself? He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. In His Divinity is but your own. And all He knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through Him. God asks you do your will. He joins with you. He did not set His Kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you. No spark of life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. And not one thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born. God is no enemy to you. He asks no more than that He hear you call Him "Friend."

We are far enough into the Course now to accept our Truth and in doing that, can you accept that the Holy Spirit is but the Voice of God, your link in this dream to God. Being a link means simply that you are not nor ever was separated from God. Therefore is not the Voice of God your own voice from within your essence of Truth? And when you oppose that Voice, disregard what is being told you, you are simply not listening to You from within. You are listening to you as ego. Your will is the Will of God. It could be nothing less because of who you are. Is it not time that you thought of yourself as your friend, dropping all the barricades you built over the years to keep yourself from meeting yourself?

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

Is it not one of the greatest joys to do simply your will – the Will of God? Your will is your freedom. Perhaps you have allowed others to dictate to you over the years, and you have followed their dictation, but now you have learned that you have a will of your own – a will in alignment with God. How much more powerful do you wish to be? Would God have given you anything if it were not intended to be experienced?

3. Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear established there. Now hear God speak to you, through Him Who is His Voice and yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate and be a prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life. Your will is boundless; it is not your will that it be bound. What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creation's birth. Remember Him Who has created you, and through your will created everything. Not one created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will.

So perhaps you were not even aware that God was seen as your enemy, but unconsciously that is true. Why else would you prefer not to find God or go to God with a problem THAT WAS facing you? Would you take a problem you wanted solved to an enemy? And as with all enemies, you developed hatred toward God. Hatred is nothing more than fear. You feared God but are not even sure why. Such is the reasoning of the ego. But God is not YOUR enemy and God has no hatred for you, only love, unconditional love. While it is true that God does not recognize this illusion we call a dream, God still provided us with the Holy Spirit as the Link to where we have never left.

4. What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is by your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share.

Recall that anger is sickness taken out upon the body? Why would we choose anger and sickness when blessings are there for the taking? We only think fear – we think we have an enemy and it is God – we think we are not worthy of the Love of God but are not sure why. The main point to all of this is that we think. All of the above is but a thought within our mind and we know that thoughts can be changed. We are the thinker so we can think another thought. We are not bound to chains unless we think so. We are not captive in our own jail unless we think we are. We believe we are not free when we shall forever be free. We even think we are this body when we are One with All That Is. We can think and think all we want, but nothing will ever change the fact that we are as God is.

5. God turns to you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation is it healed. And no one walks upon the earth but must depend on your decision, that he learn death has no power over him, because he shares your freedom as he shares your will. It is your will to heal him, and because you have decided with him, he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.

And this is what God asks of us: salvation of our world depends on us. It is a decision we must make, a thought we must hold in our mind. We must see our brother as to his Truth – that which is WITHIN HE and us as well. And we shall both be healed. But the healing never takes place alone. We must see a brother as he is, accept him as he is, and know who he is.

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THE NEW BEGINNING

Section III. - Beyond All Idols

1. Idols are quite specific. But your will is universal, being limitless. And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. Idols are limits. They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols and you ask for loss. Decide for truth and everything is yours.

You know from your dream so far that idols are at best short lived and do not give you what you thought they should. And so you went on to other idols only to find the same was true with all of them. What you think you need, you will never get. What you already have is All That Is. So, like everything else, it is once again a choice to you to make.

2. It is not form you seek. What form can be a substitute for God the Father's Love? What form can take the place of all the love in the Divinity of God the Son? What idol can make two of what is one? And can the limitless be limited? You do not want an idol. It is not your will to have one. It will not bestow on you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. So you see your will within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. Yet this could never be your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with small ideas and little things.

We have also learned by now that a form of anything is never satisfying to us, can never provide us what we are seeking. Is there but one form in your dream that gives you what you have already been given? Is there more that could be given that you already have? Is there anything besides the Love of God? An ego seeks an IDOL; a spirit does not know what an idol is. You are an idol to your own ego, and yet look at how your ego treats you. If what you seek is form, then seek it with ego. If what you seek is formless, then go within and find it.

3. Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you believe some form is missing. And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. Only if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself.

Remember the section on special relationships? Does this sound familiar? In special relationships we seek another to make us feel complete because we believe we lack something they have. And then we wait while we should feel complete and whole, and yet this never happens in a special relationship. One of the most pressing problems we make for ourselves is the feeling of being less than whole, less than complete and being alone. We harbor the idea of sin and believe in its consequences. And so we continue to search, never knowing exactly what it is we seek.

4. It never is the idol that you want. But what you think it offers you; you want indeed and have the right to ask for. Nor could it be possible it be denied. Your will to be complete is but God's Will, and this is given you by being His. God knows not form. He cannot answer you in terms that have no meaning. And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap that is not there. It is not this you want. Creation gives no separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of God. What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has?

Recall how we have learned that God does recognize this illusion we call dream? Here is a good response as to why God does not: God cannot answer us in terms that have no meaning. We are in this dream, and we ask God for 'favors' in this dream, but they and the words we use are meaningless to God for we have given them all the meaning they hold. This is the reason the Holy Spirit is our link – our interpreter to God for us. So far in your dream have you discover anyone or anything that can complete you? You are the Son of God and complete is how God created you.

5. Completion is the function of God's Son. He has no need to seek for it at all. Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. For more than whole is meaningless. If there were change in him, if he could be reduced to any form and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God created him. What idol can he need to be himself? For can he give a part of him away? What is not whole cannot make whole. But what is really asked for cannot be denied. Your will is granted. Not in any form that would content you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.

No need to seek for completion for we are. Beyond all the bodies we think we see, beyond all the forms that we believe we want and need, is our truth which has never changed nor can change. What God has created is as God has created. It is not possible to add anything to us to make us whole – we are whole and complete. So if you find yourself praying to God to be complete, whole and healed – guess what? You already are. You cannot improve on what you are. You cannot improve God beyond what God is.

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

Here is another point as to why God does not recognize this dream we believe is real – God only knows that which exists, and what exists God created. And what God knows is eternal, not just for a brief time and then gone, as in our dream. In the Mind of God, thoughts are not born nor do they die. See the difference between a Mind of Truth and one which dreams a dream? In seeing the difference, you can also realize the solution.

7. Thoughts seem to come and go. Yet all this means is that you are sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. An unremembered thought is born again to you when it returns to your awareness. Yet it did not die when you forgot it. It was always there, but you were unaware of it. The Thought God holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. It will always be exactly as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same when you remember. And it is the same within the interval when you forgot.

Somewhere deep within us is the memory of how we were before this dream began. Somewhere is the thought of our Truth still lingering for us to call forward and believe it once again. To believe it is to waken. We may have forgotten God but God has never forgotten Himself, nor is it possible.

8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. They await not birth. They wait for welcome and remembering. The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

We are beyond all change and forever shine. We do not await a birth, but we wait for our remembering of All That Is. We are unchangeable as is all eternity. And there will be no time, nor ever was a time, when we were not as we are now. We are the radiance of the Light of God. Where we shine, no fear can exist.

9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there.

There are some who can see and recognize the light, while there are some who can see the light and yet fail to understand it. When we seek for idols, we forget all about the light and focus elsewhere, but the light is still there, but is not seen.

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

The thought God holds of us is not affected by any illusion we could ever imagine. The thought that God holds of us is beyond this dream, to the waken state where we have forever been. We have and will forever be as God created us. We are the Truth and nothing can change the Truth.

11. Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. You have not two realities, but one. Nor can you be aware of more than one. An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. The star shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.

Could you possibly exist anywhere else but within the Mind of God? And yet we so strongly believe we can. Is what you see before you in the world you make what is to be called your reality? You are not in this DREAM; you are where you have forever been. There can be nothing as two realities for one must by its nature be false. Either you choose an idol to give you what you think you seek, or you accept who you are in Truth and know that this dream is just that – a dream. If you believe in idols then you will note that your body is older than it was once. There is no aging in Truth – eternity is without numbers.

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Section IV. - The Truth behind Illusions

1. You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up. You always fight illusions. For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. The truth could never be attacked. And this you knew when you made idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You attack but false ideas, and never truthful ones. All idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think they represent. What lies beyond them cannot be attacked.

This is another of the great examples of how insane this dream is: we attack anything that does not satisfy and fail to see that it is only something we made up – an illusion. We attack only in this dream but not in our reality. We attack fear but never truth. So what is it that we are trying to accomplish when we do this attack? What is it that we are trying to prove? Are we trying so hard to believe that this dream is real while knowing it is not? Are we actually angry and fearful of ourselves for dreaming such a dream/

2. The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys. A child is frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly, or when a soft and silent woolly bear begins to squeak as he takes hold of it. The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his "control" of what surrounds him. And he is afraid, because he thought the rules protected him. Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did not deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. He was mistaken. He misunderstood what made him safe, and thought that it had left.

We make this world in this dream we are having. We make the rules of the forms in our world, give meaning to the symbols we use for words and overall believe we are in control of this chaotic mess. But the safety we want is not to be found in this world although we look long and hard for it. Can safety be found in insanity? But the safety we seek, we already have in the knowledge of our Truth.

3. The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. It never was the thing you thought. It must appear to break your rules for safety, since the rules were wrong. But you are not endangered. You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to him. Yet while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are rules that they can seem to break and frighten him. Yet is he at the mercy of his toys? And can they represent a threat to him?

If we believe that this is a dream, and that everything and everyone in this dream is an image we have made within our mind, and that each image holds only the power and meaning we alone have given it, then we might be able to comprehend that nothing and no one in this dream can cause us harm. But we don't all believe in that yet. Some of us still believe that certain forms are meant to give us pleasure and when they do not, we believe we can attack them. We even go so far as to believe we are in danger from them.

4. Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. It is His laws that guarantee your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my child, so do not grieve for them. Their dancing never brought you joy. But neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely looked upon as children's toys without a single meaning of their own. See one in them and you will see them all. See none in them and they will touch you not.

Your reality is not what is BELIEVED before you in this dream. Your reality is your unending truth of who you are and where you have forever been. You are indeed the Dreamer of the Dream and you do indeed make the rules for this charade, but a dream and rules about do not make reality. Have you the same form you had when you were a child? No, everything in your dream changes, nothing lasts, AND NO laws are apparent for everything is subject to a finish. If you will see no meaning to anything and anyone in your dream, then you will begin to understand that no harm can be had by you. An illusion can do nothing to you.

5. Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not reality. Dwell not on them in any form. They but obscure reality, and they bring fear because they hide the truth. Do not attack what you have made to let you be deceived, for thus you prove that you have been deceived. Attack has power to make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no real effects at all? What could it be but an illusion, making things appear like to itself? Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. Yet this is equally forgotten in attack. God's Son needs no defense against his dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His one mistake is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions do?

Appearances are but screens before the truth. We see them and do not REALIZE that we can see beyond them. We see them and believe what we see so we look no further. Reality is behind every appearance. Reality is forever in front of us but we take great pains in our prevention to see it. What happens when you attack someone or something? Did you ever see one illusion attacking another illusion because the first illusion was fearful of the second illusion? Give any name to its FORM; call it any appearance you wish to see, but the fact that it is still an illusion does not change.

6. Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception. You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand. But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever you believe an idol gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus is he free.

In this dream we see what we want to see and believe in what we want to see, even though we use such expressions as "I don't believe what I see!" We are laughable at best. Appearances deceive us because we believe in them. But that can all change for us: we simply decide that whatever the appearance is before us that we think we see, there is nothing from it that we want to be whole and complete. This is our declaration of freedom from the world of idols and appearances.

7. Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.

Okay, now take this slowly and you will get through it. You are to forgive all the things that you think you did but never did. You are to overlook what you thought was there but was never there. And you are to stop see that which you believe is before you as real. You are to stop asking for things you do not need and recognize that what you have is All That Is. And finally you are asked to see this dream as just that – a dream.

8. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made. No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God can have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. What could God's plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself?

Here is the one simple rule for happy dreams; simply forgive instead of fear. There is no gap but only a thought of fear you held. Nothing will change your Reality. Dreams are seen as the nothing they are. And we, the Son of God, have nothing to complete That Which We Are, so that dreams are no means of giving us anything. And we shall wake to find that we have never left God.

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Section V. - The Only Purpose

1. The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not its goal, for the escape from guilt becomes its aim. The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the place of idols, which are sought no longer, for their "gifts" are not held dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and then understood.

We learned this early in the Course and now it is again repeated in the ending – forgiveness is the only purpose – is our only function. When we recognize that all things must be forgiven, then we recall that all things are but thoughts we hold in our mind. We forgive those thoughts and all things will be seen as they are, including our brother.

2. Here, it is thought that understanding is acquired by attack. There, it is clear that by attack is understanding lost. The folly of pursuing guilt as goal is fully recognized. And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the sole cause of pain in any form. No one is tempted by its vain appeal, for suffering and death have been perceived as things not wanted and not striven for. The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood. The world becomes a place of hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of happiness can be fulfilled. And no one stands outside this hope, because the world has been united in belief the purpose of the world is one which all must share, if hope be more than just a dream.

Now we have come to a place where WE NO longer chase after guilt, nor see idols for other than they are – nothing. We have arrived WHERE WE are beginning to grasp some of which has been told us throughout the Course. If we have not been putting that knowledge into practice, now is the time to do so. United with others in our world we know that the only purpose before us is forgiveness.

3. Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself. He has no wish for anything but this. And fear has dropped away, because he is united in his purpose with himself. There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and constant he can barely stay and wait a little longer, with his feet still touching earth. Yet is he glad to wait till every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go with him. For thus is he made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left behind.

That which we are and where we are is not yet totally remembered because the purpose of forgiveness is still needed in our world. We drop our fears of long ago, and focus on the only purpose there is – forgiveness. There is a knowing within us that we shall attain what we know is Truth but first the matter of forgiveness. And we take hold of the hand extended by our brother for we know that we do not make this last step without him. And soon, when we realize that our purpose has been fulfilled, we will advance to that final step.

4. The final step is God's, because it is but God Who could create a perfect Son and share His Fatherhood with him. No one outside of Heaven knows how this can be, for understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone because its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. And so is Heaven's Son prepared to be himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him.

And that final step is God's to take for us and we patiently WAIT that moment. Now we know that no fear exists, we have forgiven it all. Now we begin to accept our Truth – all that we are – and understand what that means to us.

5. The real world still falls short of this, for this is God's Own purpose; only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly fulfilled. The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived but wanted not. How willingly the mind can let them go when it has understood that idols are nothing and nowhere, and are purposeless. For only then can guilt and sin be seen without a purpose, and as meaningless.

Our Reality is a state of mind where idols have been seen for what they are in Truth, they are easily let go. Once we begin this type of thinking – once we begin to let go of all that we thought to be real for all that is Real, then we begin to grasp that nothing in this dream is real, including us. Even guilt and sin, and all fears, are seen as the illusions they are.

6. Thus is the real world's purpose gently brought into awareness, to replace the goal of sin and guilt. And all that stood between your image of yourself and what you are, forgiveness washes joyfully away. Yet God need not create His Son again, that what is his be given back to him. The gap between your brother and yourself was never there. And what the Son of God knew in creation he must know again.

And so what has forever been Truth is now again seen as Truth. What was seen as sin and guilt is seen as the nothing it was. And the appearance that we placed between our Truth and what we thought we were is now washed away by the forgiveness we practice. We are not to be re-created by God for we are as God created us. What we knew then, we are beginning to know again.

7. When brothers join in purpose in the world of fear, they stand already at the edge of the real world. Perhaps they still look back, and think they see an idol that they want. Yet has their path been surely set away from idols toward reality. For when they joined their hands it was Christ's hand they took, and they will look on Him Whose hand they hold. The face of Christ is looked upon before the Father is remembered. For He must be unremembered till His Son has reached beyond forgiveness to the Love of God. Yet is the Love of Christ accepted first. And then will come the knowledge They are One.

Only by joining with another are we ready at the edge of Reality, waiting for God to take us the rest of the way. Maybe we look back, but we see NOTHING THAT is real. Our path has been set to take us from illusions. As we take the hand of a brother, it is but the hand of the Christ Consciousness in each of us that we hold. We see in our brother the face of the Light of the World. We gladly accept what we see and begin to grasp the knowledge of our Truth.

8. How light and easy is the step across the narrow boundaries of the world of fear when you have recognized Whose hand you hold! Within your hand is everything you need to walk with perfect confidence away from fear forever, and to go straight on, and quickly reach the gate of Heaven itself. For He Whose hand you hold was waiting but for you to join Him. Now that you have come, would He delay in showing you the way that He must walk with you? His blessing lies on you as surely as His Father's Love rests upon Him. His gratitude to you is past your understanding, for you have enabled Him to rise from chains and go with you, together, to His Father's house.

Oh, if only we had reached out for this hand sooner! Now being in Christ Consciousness, we see that we have everything we need to walk from fear and straight beyond to where we have never left. You have come this far and no further delays exist.

9. An ancient hate is passing from the world. And with it goes all hatred and all fear. Look back no longer, for what lies ahead is all you ever wanted in your heart. Give up the world! But not to sacrifice. You never wanted it. What happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain? What moment of content has not been bought at fearful price in coins of suffering? Joy has no cost. It is your sacred right, and what you pay for is not happiness. Be speeded on your way by honesty, and let not your experiences here deceive in retrospect. They were not free from bitter cost and joyless consequence.

Allow that 'ancient hate' to pass before you. See the procession of hatred and fear following it, going with it. Do not look back for nothing is there. It is what is before you that you seek. What happens WHEN YOU give us illusions? You give your world and all that is in it. And you do not do this with a sacrifice on your part. Sacrifice never got you anything. Sacrifice only offered you pain and suffering, never happiness and joy. There is no need to try to buy joy or happiness – they are gifts given to you by God. Open them now and enjoy them.

Do not look back except in honesty. And when an idol tempts you, think of this:

There never was a time an idol brought you anything except the "gift" of guilt. Not one was bought except at cost of pain, nor was it ever paid by you alone.

You are done giving pain for the purchase of guilt. Accept instead the gifts given you by God, no cost, no charge, AND NO strings attached.

Be merciful unto your brother, then. And do not choose an idol thoughtlessly, remembering that he will pay the cost as well as you. For he will be delayed when you look back, and you will not perceive Whose loving hand you hold. Look forward, then; in confidence walk with a happy heart that beats in hope and does not pound in fear.

Whatever the cost of the idol you may choose, know that your brother is sharing in the expense. This is not about being alone, for you are not. This is all about being One with each other. There is no fear in being One.

11. The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined. Until they joined, they thought He was their enemy. But when they joined and shared a purpose, they were free to learn their will is one. And thus the Will of God must reach to their awareness. Nor can they forget for long that it is but their own.

As we joined with another, the fear of God dissolves and our purpose of forgiveness is seen as something we share. And in that moment, the Will of God is working. And soon we remember that the Will of God is our Will also. There is but One Will.

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Section VI. - The Justification for Forgiveness

1. 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 that would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is really there. This is not pardon. For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is not justified, your pardon will become the answer to attack that has been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being granted where it is not due.

Here is where we end our journey of fear. Here is where we see that anger was never justified and attack had no reason. Here is the end of our dream of terror. Now we can dream a dream of love. And all this because we practice forgiveness, our purpose.

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

Pardon goes with forgiveness as does an Oreo go with milk. If pardon held no justification, then you would be asked to sacrifice your rights, but no sacrifice is requested nor required of you. Just see the act of forgiveness as a natural act for you to perform. Forgiveness is contrary to anything the ego has ever presented to you. Forgiveness is sane, and therefore the ego knows NOTHING OF it.

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

If you could easily accept that forgiveness is natural for you, then you might grasp that forgiveness is real and totally justified. What happens when you attempt to forgive as the world teaches you? It has you saying you forgive but does not allow you to let go of a wrong. You say you forgive, but remember that you have been wronged.

4. 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 that your brother does not merit. For it is the truth that you can merit neither more nor less than he.

When you feel that pardon is not called for, you are in effect saying that you fear God. If you see another as guilty, you fear God. If you see another for anything other than what they are, you fear God. See your brother as the Self within each of you, and you know you have forgiven.

5. 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 cannot be overlooked. For if there were, it would be necessary first there be some sin that stands beyond forgiveness. There would be an error that is more than a mistake; a special form of error that remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake that had the power to undo creation, and to make a world that could replace it and destroy the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be some appearances that could withstand the miracle, and not be healed by it.

Through forgiveness we see beyond illusions. We see beyond the illusion of illness and sickness and the wholeness and completeness. Through forgiveness we change thoughts we have held in our mind about others, and about ourselves as well. We forgive us those thoughts we once held that were then so important to us that we were willing give up health and happiness for. We simply forgive and heal.

6. There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness cannot heal. This means that you prefer to keep some idols, 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?

And you know that anything other than full forgiveness is no forgiveness. And no forgiveness is denial of happiness for your brother and yourself. If you hold but one tiny thought that something is so strong that forgiveness will not remove it, then you continue with old habits of holding the power of an idol over that of Truth. There is nothing – no sin – no thought – no action – WHICH forgiveness cannot heal. It is like saying that what you see is real and what else you see is not. You know by the far into the Course that it is all about either/or – either you believe in what is real or you believe in what is not. You cannot believe in both.

7. 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 that you cannot forgive. And so there cannot be appearances that have replaced the truth about God's Son.

Do you think you can lock away some 'big sin' that no one will ever know you committed, a sin so bad that you know forgiveness will not do anything about? If you are to forgive, you must forgive everything. This is that same lesson of all or nothing that the Course reminds us of so often. Do you think that God knows of your 'major' sin? God knows nothing of this dream. God sees you only as you are, not as how you think you have been. 'biggie' you are holding onto, is you. Apply forgiveness to it now and watch as you see what it really was – a nothing – a thought you held in your mind holding you within a prison you long ago made.

8. Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack the power to heal.

Here again we are to show willingness and the door is open. With a little willingness we can see our brother as he is in Truth. With that same little willingness then we can see ourselves as well. And in this sight does healing take place. There is nothing that forgiveness cannot heal.

9. God's Son is perfect, or he cannot be God's Son. Nor will you know him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in all its consequences and its forms. There is no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself.

I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son, and in his glory will I see my own.

See your brother as the Perfect Son of God and you shall see yourself as the same, for you are but One that is seen as the Son of God. If God created you, are you then not perfect as God is perfect?

Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil that 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?

**There is nothing that the Will of God cannot do; there is nothing that forgiveness cannot accomplish**.

10. 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?

Never could a brother commit an error so grave that forgiveness would not erase and pardon would not be justified. And what is good for your brother is good for you. At all times remember that the image before you is an appearance of a fear – not the truth within it.

Chapter 30

THE NEW BEGINNING

Section VII. - The New Interpretation

1. Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? If He had, it has no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can affect its aim, but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. You add an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens now means something else. You take away another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.

Look at your world with the meaning you attached to it? What is that you see? Now look at your world with the assistance of Spirit. Now how does your world look? Where once you saw fear alone, what do you see there now with Spirit? Everything in your world shifts with each thought you have. You can give new meaning to what you see before you at any time.

2. What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the ease with which these labels change with other judgments, made on different aspects of experience. And then, in looking back, you think you see another meaning in what went before. What have you really done, except to show there was no meaning there? But you assigned a meaning in the light of goals that change, with every meaning shifting as they change.

And oh, those scripts we write about how we want our day to go! Do we ever tire of the same old same old? We judge based on WHAT WE judge before never allowing something to be viewed differently. Throw away your script and allow see that your day will still be present for you, but in a different view than you had planned. You will still have a day even if you do not have a script, in fact you will have a new day instead of instant replay of prior days. Your script simply takes your past and presents it to today, but it is still the past. What happens when you see a day for which you have no script? Perhaps it is at first fearful to you, but then as you allow it to unfold, you see a day like no other day – a day where you judge nothing but simply see it for what it is.

3. Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable meaning. But it must accord one meaning to them all. If they are given different meanings, it must be that they reflect but different purposes. And this is all the meaning that they have. Can this be meaning? Can confusion be what meaning means? Perception cannot be in constant flux, and make allowance for stability of meaning anywhere. Fear is a judgment never justified. Its presence has no meaning but to show you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid accordingly. But not because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in itself.

Perhaps one reason we appear so tired each day could be the fact that a different meaning has been given to everything we see, and so each item must have a different purpose as well. Does this make sense or does it show confusion. And is confusion what all the meaning is about? It is amazing that we work our minds so much when we could just allow them to be idle. If we did not judge, if we did not give meaning to everything we see, then what? Could it possibly be that we might hold a thought of peace there?

4. A common purpose is the only means whereby perception can be stabilized, and one interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this shared purpose is one judgment shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been given everything, and you are glad to see it everywhere. It cannot change because you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. And so you offer it to all events, and let them offer you stability.

What common purpose can you offer to all that you see in your world? What meaning best defines what you believe you see? If you do not judge them, then what are they to you?

5. Escape from judgment simply lies in this; all things have but one purpose, which you share with all the world. And nothing in the world can be opposed to it, for it belongs to everything, as it belongs to you. In single purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which must assume a different purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. There could be no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it is this idea of different goals that makes perception shift and meaning change. In one united goal does this become impossible, for your agreement makes interpretation stabilize and last.

If all your world held but one purpose for everything, what would your world then be like? There would be no wars for everything holds the same purpose. There would be no fear for everything would hold the same purpose. There would be no hatred, guilt, shame, etc. There would be no inequality for the purpose of all is the same.

6. How can communication really be established while the symbols that are used mean different things? The Holy Spirit's goal gives one interpretation, meaningful to you and to your brother. Thus can you communicate with him, and he with you. In symbols that you both can understand the sacrifice of meaning is undone. All sacrifice entails the loss of your ability to see relationships among events. And looked at separately they have no meaning. For there is no light by which they can be seen and understood. They have no purpose. And what they are for cannot be seen. In any thought of loss there is no meaning. No one has agreed with you on what it means. It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with meaning. It must be forever unintelligible. This is not communication. Your dark dreams are but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for meaning. Only dreams of pardon can be shared. They mean the same to both of you.

The goal of Spirit given to you and your brother is one of a single interpretation given to you both. In this you can communicate with him, and he with you, in such a way as to BE UNDERSTOOD. We no longer have to ask what he meant when he said this or that. Everything now is clear and concise. We see that the scripts we have been writing of the days we think we want are distorted and UNINTELLIGIBLE; they make no sense to no one. These are scripts done while we sleep and dream this dream. Forgiveness is understood by both OF YOU.

7. Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. It will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe the world is an uncertain place, in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. It is but your interpretations which are lacking in stability, for they are not in line with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear must rise. Do not continue thus, my brother. We have one Interpreter. And through His use of symbols are we joined, so that they mean the same to all of us. Our common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can communicate again.

It is your unstable interpretation of what you think you see that has your world appearing so unstable. And you feel fear! But this need not be. We have but to call upon Spirit for an interpretation and see our world in that way. And the world then is seen by all of us in one way – Spirit's way – and we can see the forgiveness is the key to open the doors blocking us from each other.

Chapter 30

THE NEW BEGINNING

Section VIII. - Changeless Reality

1. Appearances deceive, but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances you are deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It cannot change.

Appearances are indeed deceiving and are subject to change often, which makes them even more deceiving if that were possible. Our Reality, our Truth is changeless; it shall forever be and it has forever been. What you think you see in this world you make is subject to constant change, everything including you. And this is what we call real. This is not real but merely a display of illusion upon illusion.

2. The miracle is means to demonstrate that all appearances can change because they are appearances, and cannot have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation from appearances by showing they can change. Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception, both. It is obscured by changing views of him that you perceive as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health, his perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed. This demonstrates that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects that anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal because they change.

Appearances change because that is what appearances do – change. Reality is without change. Within your brother is a changelessness that is beyond appearance and beyond deception. It is only your views of your brother that obscure that which is within him. Your thoughts cloud your vision of him. The brother cannot be sick or lack anything but that can be your appearance of him. With forgiveness you see him as healed, but he was always healed.

3. What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? It does not seem to be the wish that no reality be so. Yet it is an assertion that some forms of idols have a powerful appeal that makes them harder to resist than those you would not want to have reality. Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but keep their unreality obscure and give to them reality instead. And Heaven gives no answer to the prayer, nor can a miracle be given you to heal appearances you do not like. You have established limits. What you ask is given you, but not of God Who knows no limits. You have limited yourself.

And again we are told it is only we who limit us. Temptation is a prayer we are told, that the miracle only has to do with certain appearances and not with all of them. But such a prayer IS NOT responded to by God. Within this prayer you are establishing limits but you are limitless in Truth, as God sees you.

4. Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have interposed between reality and your awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all. The cost of the belief there must be some appearances beyond the hope of change is that the miracle cannot come forth from you consistently. For you have asked it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. There is no miracle you cannot have when you desire healing. But there is no miracle that can be given you unless you want it. Choose what you would heal, and He Who gives all miracles has not been given freedom to bestow His gifts upon God's Son. When he is tempted, he denies reality. And he becomes the willing slave of what he chose instead.

This is one to remember: "There is no miracle you cannot have when you desire healing. But there is no miracle that can be given you unless you want it." If you insist that you only want part of the miracle, do you think you get part of the miracle? If you say that you only want so and so to heal but not such and such, do you think that healing takes place. Choose what you want and want what you choose. If healing is what you want, then healing is to be given you but without limits for you are limitless.

5. Because reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid of fear. It will be given you to look upon your brother thus. But not while you would have it otherwise in some respects. For this but means you would not have him healed and whole. The Christ in him is perfect. Is it this that you would look upon? Then let there be no dreams about him that you would prefer to seeing this. And you will see the Christ in him because you let Him come to you. And when He has appeared to you, you will be certain you are like Him, for He is the changeless in your brother and in you.

The miracle you want is just waiting for you to want it. But you must truly want it. (sounds like I have read t his before in the Course). How do you see your brother? What do you see within him that you also see in YOU? This is the vision you see when you look upon a brother in Truth. This is the vision you hold as you ask for a miracle in healing.

6. This will you look upon when you decide there is not one appearance you would hold in place of what your brother really is. Let no temptation to prefer a dream allow uncertainty to enter here. Be not made guilty and afraid when you are tempted by a dream of what he is. But do not give it power to replace the changeless in him in your sight of him. There is no false appearance but will fade, if you request a miracle instead. There is no pain from which he is not free, if you would have him be but what he is. Why should you fear to see the Christ in him? You but behold yourself in what you see. As he is healed are you made free of guilt, for his appearance is your own to you.

The vision above is the only vision to be seen. It is what 'Namaste' means to many of us. The Christ in me sees the Christ in you. In this vision is healing his and yours as well. In this vision is the freedom of both you seen. In this vision is the Oneness you are.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section I - The Simplicity of Salvation

1. How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true? Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what is true can not be false? You can no longer say that you perceive no differences in false and true. You have been told exactly how to tell one from the other, and just what to do if you become confused. Why, then, do you persist in learning not such simple things?

So how did you answer the last question? Salvation is as simple as accepting false to be false and true to be true. Even in our ego minds, false is not true and true is not false. AND YET we hang onto to the belief that salvation cannot be this simple. As usual, we tend to make life difficult instead of accepting the serene flow of Love it is. So why do we?

2. There is a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple things salvation asks you learn. It teaches but the very obvious. It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps that lead you gently from one to another, with no strain at all. This cannot be confusing, yet you are confused. For somehow you believe that what is totally confused is easier to learn and understand. What you have taught yourself is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too complex to grasp.

Recall all the lessons you have learned in your life, and look at the difficulty some of them presented to you, and yet you persisted to go ahead and learn them well. We moved through life this far going from one lesson to another, questioning very few of them. This does not appear to be confusing AND YET we act as if we are confused. Because we have become accustomed to the chaos, we do not recognize simplicity when it is presented to us. We are cautious of anything that appears so easy. Look back at what you have learned and look at what you must now learn – must now accept. So simple is now and so difficult was then.

3. No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. The lessons you have taught yourself have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure the simple and the obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else.

So basically we are being told that if we could learn all that we have learned, and believed all that we have learned, then we are capable of learning the simplicity of salvation. You have made the world before you; certainly you can accept salvation easily.

4. Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet you have learned more than this. You have continued, taking every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first accomplishment of learning; an enormity so great the Holy Spirit's Voice seems small and still before its magnitude. The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. You who have taught yourself the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you!

Okay, if we have taught ourselves that the Son of God – us – is guilty, certainly we can teach ourselves that salvation is simple. If we can teach and learn the ridiculous, we can also learn and teach the obvious. And all those lessons were learned within an instant of time although we believe it has been years.

5. Learning is an ability you made and gave yourself. It was not made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that it could be opposed, and that a will apart from it was yet more real than it. And this has learning sought to demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to teach. Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the Voice of truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true; too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is really true. Yet you will learn them, for their learning is the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world. His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they call from God and from your Self to you.

Before we held that one tiny mad idea in mind and started this dream of drama, we knew All That Is; learning was unknown for we knew All That Is. But in this drama, we dream we must learn so we began teaching ourselves for no one else is present but you. And we held all that learning to be true and became confused as to what was false. We even learned what true meant and what false represented. And we made all that learning so confusing and involved, so typical of an ego mind. But THE TRUTH is that salvation is simple; forgiveness is more than any power you could imagine. And salvation and forgiveness are yours.

6. Is this a little Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the senseless noise of sounds that have no meaning? God willed not His Son forget Him. And the power of His Will is in the Voice that speaks for Him. Which lesson will you learn? What outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubt and question? Can it be your little learning, strange in outcome and incredible in difficulty will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?

Even though we believe in this dream, we have within us the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God, forever linking us with where we have never left. Even the ego is not powerful enough to erase this link. But ego is powerful enough to appear to have a louder voice than the still, small voice within us. But here is but another example of an ego mind: louder means WE ARE unable to hear the other voice. But such is not the case. The Truth of who we are cannot change. We have learned to listen to the loud voice because it seems to be always first in response. But actually, the small voice is also present and patiently waits for us to listen to it. That which is of God has got to be simple for God is All That Is. No complication in that! And we are as God is, so we are the beautiful simplicity as well.

7. The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcome in a different world. And each world follows surely from its source. The certain outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guilty is the world you see. It is a world of terror and despair. Nor is there hope of happiness in it. There is no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There is no joy that you can seek for here and hope to find. Yet this is not the only outcome which your learning can produce. However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the lesson that reflects the Love of God is stronger still. And you will learn God's Son is innocent, and see another world.

So when the author tells us there are but two lessons to learn, I give it my utmost attention. The first lesson we are told is the one in which we believe we are guilt and corrupted as the world we see. We believe in terror, in war, in killing, in hopelessness. We fear everything and everyone. No joy is found in this lesson.

8. The outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guiltless is a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, nor left unanswered in the selfsame tongue in which the call was made. And you will understand it was this call that everyone and everything within the world has always made, but you had not perceived it as it was. And now you see you were mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who always wanted to be part of you. The soft eternal calling of each part of God's creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings.

The second lesson is that we are guiltless, being in a world of no fear, and one where love is forever present. Which of the two lessons is appealing to you? Which lesson do you wish to give up for the other? Will you choose a world of love and truth or a world of deceit and fear?

9. There is no living thing that does not share the universal Will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But only if His Son is innocent can He be Love. For God were fear indeed if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God's perfect Son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.

In the world of guiltlessness we know and experience our Truth. We are as God created us, in the image and likeness of God. Fear is unknown, and guilt is not a word we know. We look upon our world and see all others as the Wholeness (Holiness) they are, complete as they were created. We look out on the world we make and we the Oneness we have sought, and the memories of what we once knew flood back to us.

10. The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he learns his innocence. For hate must father fear, and look upon its father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous attack and pleads that love restore the dying world. You do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate; each call to war. Yet you will recognize Him as you give Him answer in the language that He calls. He will appear when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God is Love.

Perhaps the fear of God that we believe we have tucked hidden somewhere is truly the fear of who we believe we are as this ego, this body, this god we have come to believe in. In the false choice is fear, and all of its gifts: hatred, guilt, shame, war, terror, etc. In love is Love present. As we hear a call for help from another, we become aware that the other is us as well. As we respond to another, we respond to ourselves. What we offer and give another, we offer and give to ourselves.

11. What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome that you do not want? It is the recognition that it is a state of mind unwanted that becomes the means whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself. But listen, rather, to the deeper call beyond it that appeals for peace and joy. And all the world will give you joy and peace. For as you hear, you answer. And behold! Your answer is the proof of what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.

Ever think that temptation is only offered by ego, and never by Spirit? Temptation is a 'maybe' – Spirit never offers us a 'maybe'. Spirit offers us knowledge, ego offers us 'what-ifs'. This only leads to deception, disappointment and depression. But the knowledge offered us by Spirit leads us to seeing the world we make in a different perspective – a perspective of Love.

12. Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.

This is the perfect opening to a meditation: we are still an instant and let go of all we have learned – the past – and let go of a future we have projected from the past we held. In the now – in the holy instant – we experience All That Is – all that we are.

13. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.

In that holy instant of eternity, we hold no judgments, no thoughts of fear. In that holy instant we see our brother as the Savior we know him to be and we are eager to learn what he presents to us. In this learning we unite in the Oneness we are. This is how simple salvation is.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section II. - Walking with Christ

1. An ancient lesson is not overcome by the opposing of the new and old. It is not vanquished that the truth be known, nor fought against to lose to truth's appeal. There is no battle that must be prepared; no time to be expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. There is an ancient battle being waged against the truth, but truth does not respond. Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? He has no enemy in truth. And can he be assailed by dreams?

As ego, we thrive on conflicts – on apposition. We are constantly opposing something and many times, questioning ourselves as to why. We think we see a battleground before us – WHICH each day we enter the war zone and each day we go through the dangers we place before us. But then we are reminded that this is but a dream and we are but the Dreamer. So is there any truth within a dream?

2. Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the truth of what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment. The first is a decision that you make. But afterwards, the truth is given you. You would establish truth. And by your wish you set two choices to be made, each time you think you must decide on anything. Neither is true. Nor are they different. Yet must we see them both, before you can look past them to the one alternative that is a different choice. But not in dreams you made, that this might be obscured to you.

This is a review of what we have already been told. Does it sound familiar to you? What stands between you and your Truth? And do you remember the steps to be taken in letting go? The first is the decision we make, and then truth is shown to us. Then what? What do we do with the truth presented to us? Be gentle with yourself because this is still the dream you are having.

3. What you would choose between is not a choice and gives but the illusion it is free, for it will have one outcome either way. Thus is it really not a choice at all. The leader and the follower emerge as separate roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace. You see yourself divided into both these roles, forever split between the two. And every friend or enemy becomes a means to help you save yourself from this.

How do you see your brother? As a follower of you or a leader for you? Each is a separate state you believe. And each brother you look upon you CHOOSES to see two ways – as a friend or an enemy. And you see in them a chance for you to save yourself from the world you make.

4. Perhaps you call it love. Perhaps you think that it is murder justified at last. You hate the one you gave the leader's role when you would have it, and you hate as well his not assuming it at times you want to let the follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. And this is what you made your brother for, and learned to think that this his purpose is. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by you. And thus he merits death, because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you.

Can another ever fulfill the role you assign them satisfactorily for you? Can anyone ever prove to you to be the perfect specimen you want them to be? You love them one minute and hate them the next. Does this appear to be the characteristics of an ego? Do you realize that you are playing God when assigning roles to others? We all have a function given us.

5. And what of him? What does he want of you? What could he want, but what you want of him? Herein is life as easily as death, for what you choose you choose as well for him. Two calls you make to him, as he to you. Between these two is choice, because from them there is a different outcome. If he be the leader or the follower to you it matters not, for you have chosen death. But if he calls for death or calls for life, for hate or for forgiveness and for help, is not the same in outcome. Hear the one, and you are separate from him and are lost. But hear the other, and you join with him and in your answer is salvation found. The voice you hear in him is but your own. What does he ask you for? And listen well! For he is asking what will come to you, because you see an image of yourself and hear your voice requesting what you want.

And now we look at what your brother wants of YOU or what you believe the brother wants of you. Does he want what you have and you fear having less by offering it to him? How you respond to him is how you respond to you. He calls for healing and you offer him nothing. If you hear anything from him other than a call for love, you yourself are calling for the same. Have you listened carefully to your brother? Have you truly heard his call?

Before you answer, pause to think of this:

The answer that I give my brother is what I am asking for. And what I learn of him is what I learn about myself.

Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we heard; remembering how much we do not know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks beside us on the selfsame road. He is like us, as near or far away from what we want as we will let him be. We make no gains he does not make with us, and we fall back if he does not advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. And we go separately along the way unless you keep him safely by your side.

And once again we are asked to be still and listen; forgetting all that we have learned and surrendering that we know nothing. Your brother is neither a leader nor a follower, but walks with you on the path. He is a mirror of ourselves. What we see in him, we see in us. If we gain, he gains; if we have less, he has less. No step is taken that is not taken by the two of us. We hold his hand in the loving grasp that only God could have taught.

7. Because he is your equal in God's Love, you will be saved from all appearances and answer to the Christ Who calls to you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about this Son of God who calls to you. Christ calls to all with equal tenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but one answer to them all. Because He hears one Voice, He cannot hear a different answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him His only Son.

Experience what happens when you hold your brother's hand in Love. You see him as you are in God's Love. And from within him, you hear the Christ Consciousness call to you, and you are still and listen. And you surrender all thoughts you held of your brother, all learning you have held as truth, and you hear from within him and from within you, the Truth of Truth. And you experience the listening of but One Voice, seeing only Oneness before you.

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

Have you noticed who you are being led here by, being told to listen, to be STILL? Come here in this holy instant of no time without a thought of what you had learned and all images that you had believed to be true. Without value they will all drop to the side and vanish. You will see no attack and no need for needs. Just come here and be still – listen in that stillness to what you have been seeking. And you will learn that all you had once thought to be true is false, and what you have BEEN TOLD now is the only Truth.

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

Take the first sentence and simply stay with it for a while. We all have so many 'appearances' we have of others \- not just male or female but nationalities, religions, sexual preference, etc. We have so many categories for others, so many masks we have them wear, so many names we have given them. But all of this is false – nothing here is Truth. FORGIVE YOURSELF for the images you have made of him, and of yourself. No wonder he fears walking with you or fearful of touching your sleeve let alone taking your hand. Is this how one who is offered Love would react? Have you forgotten where this journey of no beginning is going? Have you forgotten that you cannot come upon its ending alone? Do you know which brother will take the journey with you?

10. An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great companion is and what he should be asking for, will be enough to let this happen. And you will perceive his purpose is the same as yours. He asks for what you want, and needs the same as you. It takes, perhaps, a different form in him, but it is not the form you answer to. He asks and you receive, for you have come with but one purpose; that you learn you love your brother with a brother's love. And as a brother, must his Father be the same as yours, as he is like yourself in truth.

Just an instant of time – an instant of an illusion is all that is asked of us to let salvation happen. Is this too much to ask of you? It is not for your brother who is eager to be asked. You only think you know his response but have you asked him with Love? Your purpose and his are but One. Your goal and his are but One. You and he are but One. There is no form to Truth, no boundaries or barriers erected around Truth.

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

The key word here is 'together' – together it all happens, alone nothing occurs. Just that simple, and weren't we told how simple salvation is? If you believe you are walking your path alone, then pause and listen, look and see who it is that walks with you, seeking the same goal as you. Darkness is a choice remember, Light is also a choice.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section III. - The Self-Accused

1. Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that will result in different outcomes, there is first one thing that must be overlearned. It must become a habit of response so typical of everything you do that it becomes your first response to all temptation, and to every situation that occurs. Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a "just" attack.

Just as you are the "Dreamer of the Dream", so are you the self-accuser of the self-accused. Allow the line "You never hate your brother for his sins, but only your own" to sink in deeply. Pause for a moment and allow the time it takes to comprehend this. You do not hate another for what they have done, but only for what you thought they did. Remember back in the early part of the Course how we learned that we only think someone can harm us, could do us harm. Here we are once again, if you fear your brother, you fear yourself. What is it that you fear in you? Do you fear that you are not who you think you as this body?

2. Why should his sins be sins, if you did not believe they could not be forgiven in you? Why are they real in him, if you did not believe that they are your reality? And why do you attack them everywhere except you hate yourself? Are you a sin? You answer "yes" whenever you attack, for by attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve. And what can you deserve but what you are? If you did not believe that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give attack to anyone at all. Why should you? What would be the gain to you? What could the outcome be that you would want? And how could murder bring you benefit?

Look at all the questions asked of us. How do you answer them? Stay with them a while and answer them as the thoughts flow through you – eventually coming to the point that you know nothing – that you believe in fear and you are discovering it is false.

3. Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not seen as purposes, but actions. Bodies act, and minds do not. And therefore must the body be at fault for what it does. It is not seen to be a passive thing, obeying your commands, and doing nothing of itself at all. If you are sin you are a body, for the mind acts not. And purpose must be in the body, not the mind. The body must act on its own, and motivate itself. If you are sin you lock the mind within the body, and you give its purpose to its prison house, which acts instead of it. A jailer does not follow orders, but enforces orders on the prisoner.

In the paragraph above was the question: "Are you a sin?" How did you answer that, and how does it compare with what is being presented here? Early on the Course told us that we were not this body and has repeated that message many times over to us. But have we grasped it? Apparently not, or we would not be told again. And just how do you look upon the body? Do you see it reacting of its own?

4. Yet is the body prisoner, and not the mind. The body thinks no thoughts. It has no power to learn, to pardon, nor enslave. It gives no orders that the mind need serve, nor sets conditions that it must obey. It holds in prison but the willing mind that would abide in it. It sickens at the bidding of the mind that would become its prisoner. And it grows old and dies, because that mind is sick within itself. Learning is all that causes change. And so the body, where no learning can occur, could never change unless the mind preferred the body change in its appearances, to suit the purpose given by the mind. For mind can learn, and there is all change made.

" **For mind can learn, and there is all change made." Here is our key to unlock the prison doors that we believe were forever closed. Any change you want will be completed within the mind. Any difference you may SEE will be seen in the mind. And how you see your body is a thought you hold in your mind as well. Must you see it grow older or might you think another thought – let go of what you had learned for what can be?**

5. The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose; that the body be the source of sin, to keep it in the prison house it chose and guards and holds itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, sickness and attack; of pain and age, of grief and suffering. Here are the thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules, and orders that the world be like itself; a place where nothing can find mercy, nor survive the ravages of fear except in murder and in death. For here are you made sin, and sin cannot abide the joyous and the free, for they are enemies which sin must kill. In death is sin preserved, and those who think that they are sin must die for what they think they are.

Is this how you wish to see your body? This is an example of depression, of hopelessness, of giving up. Here is where you believe in what you had been taught. Here is where you are when you fear to let go of the past. But here is not real.

6. Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it has been given you to change what you believe. The body will but follow. It can never lead you where you would not be. It does not guard your sleep, nor interfere with your awakening. Release your body from imprisonment, and you will see no one as prisoner to what you have escaped. You will not want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies, nor keep in chains, to the illusion of a changing love, the ones you think are friends.

"... **see what you believe" What do you believe? Do you really know anymore? Remember how we affirm we know nothing, did you include this in that statement? You know that you can change what you had once believed which was false to the Truth. Change your mind and your body responds according to the thought held there in the mind. Free your body from the imprisonment your mind has given it. As you release the thoughts that imprisoned your body, so shall those you look upon be released from their imprisonment as well.**

7. The innocent release in gratitude for their release. And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or yourself. For God has said there is no sacrifice that can be asked; there is no sacrifice that can be made.

Open you mind – what a concept! Open you mind and change your thoughts! And look around you and see your brother as never before seen, and see yourself as if for the first time as well. There is no sacrifice that must be made; no ritual to perform, just change your mind. It is as simple as that.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section IV. - The Real Alternative

1. There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. Why should this be? Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only choice. And you are in control of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you think, within the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict, and away from difficulties that concern you not. Yet they are your concern. How, then, can you escape from them by leaving them behind? What must go with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along.

Why would we believe that an illusion can offer us consolation and escape from illusions? Because we so believe in what we think we see here – we call it real, and yet, from what we have already learned in the Course, it is not, and we believe this deep within us. We have been reminded many times that what we believe we see, we are responsible for perceiving – what we see we choose to see. And this is how we live this dream we call a life – from a birth that never happened to a death that is an illusion as well. So how do we go about dropping these beliefs, leaving them along the path and moving forward without them?

2. Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There is no choice in its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made that problems could not be escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not what will the ending be, but when it comes.

What we can be certain of in this dream is the act of death, the last of the illusions and the ending of this dream. Nothing offered us in the world we make is real – nothing! So why do we work so hard trying to escape from our world at times, when it is nothing but an illusion? Remember how we were told that Love is real and fear is false? Is there Love in your world?

3. There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go beyond it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is not the lesson in itself. The lesson has a purpose, and in this you come to understand what it is for.

How does it feel to be told that no choice exists in your world? What's the use then, right? All the many ways we have tried to seek happiness – those many special relationships – those many disappointments – those that did not perform as we directed them – those that refused to make us happy although we commanded them to. All those other – all those other things – to make us happy and content and yet never did. Discouraged? You bet! And then we discovered that we couldn't change our world or the people in it, but we could change our thoughts about them – and then a new world was beginning to be formed. Remember that day when you thought life should end for you because of the hopelessness you felt? That was the day the lesson was given you as a test – how you answered the questions determined what you saw next. And here you are.

4. Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another place, when you have learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? Its purpose is the answer to the search that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found. Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this. Seek not another signpost in the world that seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none. Make fast your learning now, and understand you but waste time unless you go beyond what you have learned to what is yet to learn. For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp.

What encouraged you to get up and keep moving? What prompted you to pick up this Course and keep going with it? The Course is not a path but a tool for us to use as we climb out of the hole we believed we were in. It is a tool that we lean upon when the pain gets to be unbearable or so it appears. As we look in our world and see no hope, the Course pulls us forward even though we feel like simply dropping and let death come. And as this all takes place, we learn that we have the tool we need most right now. With it we do move away from the fears we believe were there. We move beyond the obstacles we thought prevented us from happiness. And we begin to grasp our Truth – the Truth we denied for so long and never forgot – that which is within us.

5. Who would be willing to be turned away from all the roadways of the world, unless he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should begin with this, to seek another way instead? For while he sees a choice where there is none, what power of decision can he use? The great release of power must begin with learning where it really has a use. And what decision has power if it be applied in situations without choice?

To see differently! What a statement for us to keep in our mind! Just saying it implies we know another way of seeing this world exists, and we want it. And we begin to realize that we do have another choice; that we do not have to look upon a world of fear and hostility.

6. The learning that the world can offer but one choice, no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a real alternative instead. To fight against this step is to defeat your purpose here. You did not come to learn to find a road the world does not contain. The search for different pathways in the world is but the search for different forms of truth. And this would keep the truth from being reached.

And now we see that our world offers us just one choice, that actually another does exist as well for us. In this is our beginning of an alternative to the world we make. Remember the struggle you may have had when you first started reading the Course? Years ago there was the expression of the blue marks on the wall – where we threw the book against. So why has this been shown you then? Could it be that you asked somewhere, sometime for a different way to see life? Your world offers you many paths on which to walk and THERE YOU shall see many forms of truth, but Truth has no form so you shall always be searching.

7. Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road away from it. This makes no sense, and cannot be the way. To you who seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat that to achieve a goal you must proceed in its direction, not away from it. And every road that leads the other way will not advance the purpose to be found. If this be difficult to understand, then is this course impossible to learn. But only then. For otherwise, it is a simple teaching in the obvious.

And as we come to ending this reading of the Course, we come upon this question that each of us must answer alone. Do you think that this Course is too difficult for you to learn? Do you think you are being led toward your happiness or away from it? Any road that leads away from your happiness must not be correct, right? But can you truly grasp this? The Course is not difficult to LEARN; only we make it so. The Course is simple; it was given to us that way. Be patient with yourself because you like all of us, have a lot to let go of; a lot that you have believed to be true and know you are beginning to question, knowing within you that it is not.

8. There is a choice that you have power to make when you have seen the real alternatives. Until that point is reached you have no choice, and you can but decide how you would choose the better to deceive yourself again. This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the same illusion and the same mistake. All choices in the world depend on this; you choose between your brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him. How utterly opposed to truth is this, when all the lesson's purpose is to teach that what your brother loses you have lost, and what he gains is what is given you.

Recall how many times you have heard "Love your neighbor as yourself" or "Love your brother as you do yourself"? The course in its simplicity teaches us – reminds us – that we alone have the power within us to choose to see this world and all that is it, in the Light of Love. The Course teaches us that we have such a choice and we can change our entire perspective in its use. In choosing to see this way, we shall see that our brother is but a reflection of ourselves. Our brother is not who we thought once he was, but who he, like us, has forever been. With choice we receive what our brother receives – give him love and you shall receive love. Give him less than love and you will receive less than love as well. The Course reminds us that we are separate bodies moving about in a dream, but that we are One with All That Is.

9. He has not left His Thoughts! But you forgot His Presence and remembered not His Love. No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal be one with His. What road in all the world will lead within, when every road was made to separate the journey from the purpose it must have unless it be but futile wandering? All roads that lead away from what you are will lead you to confusion and despair. Yet has He never left His Thoughts to die, without their Source forever in themselves.

Recall how we learned that God does not recognize this dream because it is an illusion? If we believe that, how could we believe that some pathway in an illusion could lead us back to God? Any and every road in this illusion leads us nowhere. Is it any wonder we get so frustrated at times, just wandering around going nowhere? And yet we have never left God but still insist we need a path back to God. What we need is a path of understanding that we never left God to begin with. This is what we are slowly changing in our minds.

10. He has not left His Thoughts! He could no more depart from them than they could keep Him out. In unity with Him do they abide, and in Their Oneness Both are kept complete. There is no road that leads away from Him. A journey from yourself does not exist. How foolish and insane it is to think that there could be a road with such an aim! Where could it go? And how could you be made to travel on it, walking there without your own reality at one with you?

And what goes for US goes for our brother. Our brother has not left God either. Does not that simple fact show us that we share something in common with him? "A journey from yourself" is a startling expression – is that we are actually doing in this dream, running away from ourselves and the Truth we know we are? We are running away from that we are also seeking.

11. Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-less aims. They have no meaning. You can not escape from what you are. For God is merciful, and did not let His Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is your escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can you be found. There is no path that does not lead to Him.

Do what you are told to do – forgive yourself from the madness you have so long believed in. Forgive yourself for believing you were on a journey going somewhere when it did little more than went in a circle. Did you enjoy chasing your own tail? Run as fast as you can, but who you are is still present. There is no place to be where you are not already there. Accept your truth and awake where you have never left.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section V. - Self-Concept versus Self

1. The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. Here it walks at home, where what it sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for. This is its purpose; that you come without a self, and make one as you go along. And by the time you reach "maturity" you have perfected it, to meet the world on equal terms, at one with its demands.

Self-Concept versus Self – who you think you are versus who you really are. Who you think you fits well into the world you make, but it is not who you are. The self is that which we develop as we move through this illusion, but it will never be who we are – that cannot change nor be altered.

2. A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God. The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions and it looks, at times with pity, on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil world.

We make the self we think we are; God has created the Self we really are. Is there any similarity? The self we made is one of limitations, boundaries, walls, and locked doors. The One created by God has no limiting factors, no boundaries, walls or doors of any kind.

3. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good. This aspect never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse.

The self we make is either innocent or it is guilt burdened. It is either one of a smile or one of fear. The self we make may laugh but then again it may cry. The self we make believes it can be assaulted by another, that another can cause it harm, even death.

4. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. Yet it is here the learning of the world has set its sights, for it is here the world's "reality" is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

And oh yes, the face! We are particular about the face we apply to the self – for the face says it all, right? The face is for others to see. We know what the face covers with its façade. We know the fear and the tension, the hate and guilt, the shame and anxiety hiding behind the face. This is not a true face of innocence but one of a mask we wear to hide from ourselves.

5. Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face that smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this: "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.

Is this your lesson in this dream? Are you willing to walk a path that leads nowhere? Are you going to be content with simply walking nowhere forever?

6. Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what you are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the things it makes you do. Your brother then is symbol of your sins to you who are but silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency, condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

If there is one thing that the Course stresses, it is this: as you see your brother you are. Whatever you think of your brother, you think the same of yourself. However you see your brother, you see yourself. Your brother, if you have caught on yet, is a mirror for you to look at you. Whatever you label your brother as, YOU wear the label as well. We have difficulty in accepting this, but until we do, we shall continue chasing our tail. There is no way off the treadmill of life until we drop the sins we believe our brother has committed.

7. Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning they do not exist. They are not given, so they must be made. Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear. What is a concept but a thought to which its maker gives a meaning of his own? Concepts maintain the world. But they can not be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them are made within the world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways and finally "maturing" in its thought. They are ideas of idols, painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single picture representing truth.

Here is a word we banter around a lot – 'concepts'. Take a closer look at them: they are learned, not natural, and they do not exist. So why is it that we place so much on something that isn't natural and does not exist?

8. A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it is for, and therefore cannot picture what it is. Yet is all learning that the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world's laws, and never seek to go beyond its roads nor realize the way you see yourself. Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you see this concept of the self must be undone, if any peace of mind is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. For otherwise, you would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and greater terror would arise in you.

The concept of what you believe you are as the body you see, is meaningless at best. But can we give it up? What happens if we do? Will we experience the total loss of self? And then what might we be? Fortunately for us, the Holy Spirit is ever present to aid us in discovering our Truth. The lessons we shall learn are aimed to teach us – to remind us – that we are not this body. If we are not this body, then what are we?

9. Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf. Let us consider, then, what proof there is that you are what your brother made of you. For even though you do not yet perceive that this is what you think, you surely learned by now that you behave as if it were. Does he react for you? And does he know exactly what would happen? Can he see your future and ordain, before it comes, what you should do in every circumstance? He must have made the world as well as you to have such prescience in the things to come.

Here we are told that the lesson plan of the Holy Spirit is arranged in easy steps FOR US to learn. It does tell us also that some lessons will be learned easier than OTHERS; some will have distressed to say the least. But the lessons are not something new but a different way of seeing the old. We want to see life differently and so we shall. Are you what your brother tells you you are? Is he what you claim he is?

10. That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this your contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one were generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what you are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could need defense?

As we come closer to the ending of the Text, the questions appear to be coming straight at us, leaving no room to duck. If one part of you is what your brother THINKS YOU are, who then makes the other part that you hide from behind a face of innocence? Who is that you are trying to keep your sins from? Who is that you do not want to meet up with?

11. Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that, in the light, the one who would not think it true is you. And what would happen to the world you see, if all its underpinnings were removed? Your concept of the world depends upon this concept of the self. And both would go, if either one were ever raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit does not seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a little question might be raised.

What do you think would happen if the 'underpinnings' of your world were removed? What would be left? What would you see? But Spirit has no intentions of having you panic in the face of an illusion.

12. There are alternatives about the thing that you must be. You might, for instance, be the thing you chose to have your brother be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way for active choice, and some acknowledgment that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the perceiver's mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the other go.

Maybe, just maybe, you might be the same as your brother is! Is that even possible? He looks different, talks different, dresses different, has a different belief system, etc. But maybe, he is as you are, and you are as he is. Why not try that thought on for a while. What else could your brother be? What are the alternatives?

13. Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question. Something must have gone before these concepts of the self. And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to the second from the first is that you somehow entered in the choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother is. And you must share his guilt, because you chose it for him in the image of your own. While only he was treacherous before, now must you be condemned along with him.

So where did this thought come from – that your brother might be other than what you think he is? Somewhere you must have decided that another way is possible, and from that the question appeared. But now you see that what you thought your brother was, you are. As you condemned him, so are you condemned. There must be another way of seeing this as well.

14. The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts. It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple statement that it thinks. And what can think has choice, and can be shown that different thoughts have different consequence. So it can learn that everything it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of the self appear to answer what it does not know.

Be honest with yourself, this whole concept of self thing has pre-occupied your mind on many occasions. It traps us so that we fail to see our TRUTH; we are too busy wondering about our self. However salvation is our escape from those concepts. Salvation, remember is simple. You have a choice always to make about any thought you hold. And this is something self has no response for.

15. Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept while you perceive a self that interacts with evil, and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself. To see a guilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind you see your own concealed desire to kill.

Simply stated, do not look for Truth in words. There are no words to describe TRUTH; there are no words which will define who you are. You have a choice of two concepts always. Which one you choose will either bring you closer to your Truth or will lead you further away.

16. You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes along. Each one will show the changes in your own relationships, as your perception of yourself is changed. There will be some confusion every time there is a shift, but be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening its grasp upon your mind. And be you sure and happy in the confidence that it will go at last, and leave your mind at peace. The role of the accuser will appear in many places and in many forms. And each will seem to be accusing you. Yet have no fear it will not be undone.

Recall those sections on special relationships? Remember how you saw a change when you applied the principles of a holy relationship? You saw then changes that took place by seeing differently. And perhaps you were not grateful immediately for what you saw, but now you are. This will occur for you as you begin to see life differently.

17. The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself.

You will learn nothing from your world unless you choose to learn them. And that time will come when you will see clearly that you do not and did not know who you were in this body. You have learned how to open your mind. Question each and every concept that you have learned, and then see them differently with the help of Spirit. Does this not sound like a very early lesson in this Course? Humbly surrender all that you think you know for all that you have forever known.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section VI. - Recognizing the Spirit

1. You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one. What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless.

Once again we have that either or situation: either we see flesh or we see spirit; either we see fear or we see Love. There is nothing else, no other choice. Only one is real so the other must be false. And what you choose to see determines what you think is real and what you think is not. Your entire view OF YOUR world rests on your decision here. If you choose flesh, then you believe you are this body and shall surely die. If you choose spirit, then you shall see beyond all flesh to the Truth therein.

2. Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. For constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt, because they chose to let it go instead.

Some may choose to see a body and the world of separation and chaos that accompanies the body. It is a world of sickness, pain, suffering and death. Others will choose the opposite. Salvation is the undoing of seeing otherwise.

3. Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your choice. For you can see the body without help, but do not understand how to behold a world apart from it. It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how this could ever be. You do not understand how what you see arose to meet your sight. For if you did, it would be gone. The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must be passed that both may disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place. How is this done? It is not done at all. What could there be within the universe that God created that must still be done?

Salvation is simply a statement telling you that you have a choice as to how you will see your world. You can see your body by simply looking at it, but cannot grasp how to see a world apart from it. This is the world salvation will correct, will provide you with another view, another perspective. And there is no need for concern on our part, just allow the scene to be shown. You think you see a veil hiding your view and then you see it no more and you question why. The answer is obvious, it was never there.

4. Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way to Heaven plain. The means are given you by which to see the world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done! In Heaven as on earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, nor what you think the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no difference what you look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God Himself has said, "Your will be done." And it is done to you accordingly.

Only in the arrogance of an ego could we believe we could make a way to Heaven. Spirit gives us all we need to see our world differently. Will we use them? We have a choice. And what we choose is what we shall see.

5. You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the truth of what you are. Undoing truth would be impossible. But concepts are not difficult to change. One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept of the self has changed.

Can you see your brother is his Truth if you do not see yourself in yours? Remember this is an either/or life – one or the other. We often fear giving up some concept that we have had for so long, believing we shall no longer have it – we will lose it. But what we held was but an illusion at best.

6. Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight. Do you forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses, and so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours. Are you a body? So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. Are you a spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared, but only loved. Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart? And what could hurt the truly innocent?

And here is another lesson repeated for us: are we vulnerable or invulnerable? How do you choose to see yourself? Are you afraid of your world? Are you this body? Do you believe that your body can be harmed by another? Are you of this world of death or are you at the World of Eternity? The big question: who do you believe you are?

7. Your will be done, you holy child of God. It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills of you can never change. The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself. And you are worthy that your will be done!

So remember in all the turmoil of the world we make, all the decisions we fear to make, the choices presented to us, that always God sees us as we have eternally been. We have never left where we think we once were, but are still there. What is within you shall light your path, your world, AND YOUR universe – should you choose to allow it to shine forth.

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section VII. - The Savior's Vision

1. Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize. Concepts are needed while perception lasts, and changing concepts is salvation's task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth, which has no opposite and cannot change. In this world's concepts are the guilty "bad"; the "good" are innocent. And no one here but holds a concept of himself in which he counts the "good" to pardon him the "bad." Nor does he trust the "good" in anyone, believing that the "bad" must lurk behind. This concept emphasizes treachery, and trust becomes impossible. Nor could it change while you perceive the "bad" in you.

A key for me here is this: Learning is change. We have been doing a lot of talking about learning and unlearning, while all the time we were discussing a change – a change in a thought we held in our mind. And so we see how easily we were led to this thinking. Concepts are find as concepts go, but they required change when we no longer hold them as truth. The mere fact that they can be changed show us that they are not truth, for truth is subject to change.

2. You could not recognize your "evil" thoughts as long as you see value in attack. You will perceive them sometimes, but will not see them as meaningless. And so they come in fearful form, with content still concealed, to shake your sorry concept of yourself and blacken it with still another "crime." You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused about yourself. But should one brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself is wholly changed. Your "evil" thoughts have been forgiven with his, because you let them all affect you not. No longer do you choose that you should be the sign of evil and of guilt in him. And as you give your trust to what is good in him, you give it to the good in you.

We cannot recognize an evil thought as long as we value that thought. We treasure many of our thoughts, and they are then seen as our treasures, certainly not as AN evil thought. But until we see them as without meaning, we shall continue to see their value. But allow one Savior – one brother – to come before you and you see him as the truth within him, then your entire concept of yourself is suddenly changed. It takes but one thought to drop a bushel of concepts that we now see as without meaning.

3. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him more than just a body, for the good is never what the body seems to be. The actions of the body are perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you, and thus of him as well. By focusing upon the good in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the good. And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there is another world.

And so as we see any brother – our Savior – differently from the form we HAD GIVEN him, so shall we see ourselves. As we look upon him and ourselves as well, we shall view less of the illusion of body and more of the Truth within both of us. And this view is your new concept of yourself. And with this new concept comes a different perspective of the world.

4. You live in that world just as much as this. For both are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged but never jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, because it was not made for you alone. Born as a gift for someone not perceived to be yourself, it has been given you. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for both of you.

Your new concept of your world is one of Reality, one that is familiar to you and appears strange. But the difference in this concept from others you have HAD is that this one is to be shared with others – it is not for you alone. As you offer it, it shall be accepted. As it is accepted, so shall you accept it. No separation is visible.

5. Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept of yourself may change. And look upon the good in him, that you may not be frightened by your "evil" thoughts because they do not cloud your view of him. And all this shift requires is that you be willing that this happy change occur. No more than this is asked. On its behalf, remember what the concept of yourself that now you hold has brought you in its wake, and welcome the glad contrast offered you. Hold out your hand, that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness which you offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let the cruel concept of yourself be changed to one that brings the peace of God.

Just a little willingness; no more than this is asked of us. Sound familiar? We have only to show a little willingness to be helped with the rest. This is how simple salvation is – how simple our life can be – how easy it is to see our truth. Hold out your hand and grasp the one before you and see yourself and your brother dissolve into the Oneness you both seek. Forgive yourself and your brother is forgiven as well.

6. The concept of yourself that now you hold would guarantee your function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. And thus it dooms you to a bitter sense of deep depression and futility. Yet it need not be fixed, unless you choose to hold it past the hope of change and keep it static and concealed within your mind. Give it instead to Him Who understands the changes that it needs to let it serve the function given you to bring you peace, that you may offer peace to have it yours. Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you can see yourself another way. Would you not rather look upon yourself as needed for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation's enemy?

The way we see ourselves now is a guarantee that our function will forever be undone – incomplete. And that thought does cause depression and bitterness. It makes life seem so FUTILE; what's the use of going on type of thing. But it can be changed unless we choose to hold the fear that has gripped us from letting go. Are you not tired enough now of this? Surrender it to the Holy Spirit – give it up – let it go – be humble at last and say you do not know how to deal with it. Do whatever it takes, and it takes very little, but give it up so that you can see what part you play in the salvation of your world, instead of an enemy opposed to it.

7. The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images, because you look on them as through a barrier that dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. The light is kept from everything you see. At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies beyond. At least, you merely look on darkness, and perceive the terrified imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. And what you see is hell, for fear is hell. All that is given you is for release; the sight, the vision and the inner Guide all lead you out of hell with those you love beside you, and the universe with them.

The concept of self you have made hides from you the Truth of who you are. It hides from you a world of love hidden behind the world of confusion and fear you have made. You keep the light within you so dim that nothing can be seen by it. And you fear the darkness before you and yet choose to see it. If you allow it, you can be led from this chaos of madness to the Truth waiting for you. What you have you must release, you must give up, surrender, let go of – whatever term you use – simply do it. You are being led by the Voice of God, do you fear It?

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

Look at your brother, gaze upon his face, peer into his eyes until at last you see but One Vision – the reflection of the Christ within him showing you the Christ within you. In this Vision is all that you have been seeking – the end of fear – the end of darkness – the end of sin believed in.

9. The veil across the face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, they all are different names for just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself that holds him off from you, and you away from him. The sword of judgment is the weapon that you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword, you must perceive the body as yourself, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what he is, and thus what you must be.

Many names, many terms, many descriptions for the separation that we believe exists between us and a brother. But they are but names, symbols given meaning by us; in Truth they do not exist nor does any distance between your brother and you. There is not one of you and one of him, but there is One of you both. Lay down the sword of judgment you have long carried. It is a heavy load and one you would gladly be rid of. Your brother is no more a body than you are. Your brother is no more separated from you, than you from him. Look at your brother and see there your reflection.

10. What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? And what could this give rise to but an image of yourself that can be miserable, and remain in hell and torment? Who has learned to see his brother not as this has saved himself, and thus is he a savior to the rest. To everyone has God entrusted all, because a partial savior would be one who is but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given you to save are but everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet; the unremembered and the not yet born. For God has given you His Son to save from every concept that he ever held.

So lead us not into temptation – lead us not into hell for we have already led ourselves there. We all have images of hell and those we believe are there. Look closely at those images and see if you do not recognize yourself in them. But we have learned that we can see our brother as One with us; that we can see beyond the appearance we judge him as having. We see beyond the nationality we see him as. And we see him as savior to us and US to him. God has entrusted us as savior to each other – not as a partial savior but as savior. And everyone – EVERYONE –, whom we have met, glimpsed, forgotten, or those we have never even met, including the unborn, are given us for the salvation of the world. We are that Savior.

11. Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the savior of the Son of God? How would you know his holiness while you see him apart from yours? For holiness is seen through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within, and thus expect to see it everywhere. And so they call it forth in everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of him. This is the savior's vision; that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see his own salvation everywhere. He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He brings the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is.

But what happens if we choose to remain in the hell we made? We are not recognized as the Savior of the Son of God, we have not even recognized our own truth. But we can climb out of hell – we can change our mind – we can choose to see our brother as he is and therefore as we are. Make this choice and bring your light to others so that they may see theirs also.

12. Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not. And from that wish a concept rises, teaching that you are the thing you wish to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. But while you cherish it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self whose image has the wish begot of you. For seeing can but represent a wish, because it has no power to create. Yet it can look with love or look with hate, depending only on the simple choice of whether you would join with what you see, or keep yourself apart and separate.

There are many forms of temptation, but all of them have one thing in common: they are but a wish to be what we are not. And from there we add value to the concept and keep it around believing in it. Until we no longer believe in it. But as long as we have a concept, we shall not see our brother as he is in truth, nor ourselves. We have but to make a choice between Love and fear, joined or separated.

13. The savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look on only what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And recognizing this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the answer given. And the door held open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the Christ in you.

As your Savior, your brother looks upon without judgment, he shall no past in you. He shall see only what has forever been present – your Truth. And when he asks as to what is the meaning of what he sees, the answer is given and the reflection of the Christ within each of you is seen. No veils, no curtains, no barriers shall block Truth.

14. Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing that you are not. And think as well upon the thing that you would be instead. It is a thing of madness, pain and death; a thing of treachery and black despair, of failing dreams and no remaining hope except to die, and end the dream of fear. This is temptation; nothing more than this. Can this be difficult to choose against? Consider what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you choose between. There are but two. Be not deceived by what appears as many choices. There is hell or Heaven, and of these you choose but one.

How will you recognize the many forms of temptations? If there appears more than two choices for you, know that it is temptation. There is only Love or fear to choose. Any form of temptation is but a wish to be what you are not, and isn't that how this crazy dream began? What is your choice at all times: Heaven or hell – Truth or False – Love or fear.

15. Let not the world's light, given unto you, be hidden from the world. It needs the light, for it is dark indeed, and men despair because the savior's vision is withheld and what they see is death. Their savior stands, unknowing and unknown, beholding them with eyes unopened. And they cannot see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, and offers them forgiveness with his own. Can you to whom God says, "Release My Son!" be tempted not to listen, when you learn that it is you for whom He asks release? And what but this is what this course would teach? And what but this is there for you to learn?

Do you see a responsibility here for you? You are the Light of the World – remember the lessons on that one? Your world is one of darkness and it requires your Light so that others may see. You are the Savior many are seeking. Can you be so arrogant as to tell God that you will not release His Son? But it is just that that we do when we do not include all our brothers in our Light. Did you realize that by not shining upon, the others continue in darkness? What has the Course been teaching you all along?

Chapter 31

THE FINAL VISION

Section VIII. - Choose Once Again

1. Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this:

Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.

For He has come, and He is asking this.

Now, choose again for you are not this body, your brother is not his body, and the world is not real. Your world is not one of limitations and barriers, but one of unlimited scope. You are a Savior of the world and your brother is depending on you for his salvation, as you are depending on your brother for yours. Climb out of the hell you have made and which you have placed your brothers.

2. 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.

This is how easy it is to make the choice. We choose between what we think is real and what we know is real. Take the time to decide if you are not clear; you may consult Spirit on each and every choice. Can you really believe that you can have power instead of weakness? Surrender that thought and all similar thoughts to Spirit so that you can be shown what is real.

3. Trials are but lessons that 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 that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity 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 altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind 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.

Recall how we were told if we did not learn one lesson, not to fret, for it would be repeated for us again later. Here we are told the same thing – trials are but lessons we failed to learn the previous time – not necessarily the first time, but the previous time. From within us comes that still small voice telling us to 'choose again' and again if necessary. The Truth within you assures you that you shall be removed from misery and given joy. It assures us that we shall be comforted and know we are not alone in a world of madness. Our new found strength from within us allows us to over any obstacle our mind can think of – we can always choose again.

4. The images you make cannot 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 choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is only what He wills.

And you are one of the saviors of the world! You have the power to choose again at all times. You will see the face of Christ before you reflecting your own image to you. It will take but another choice perhaps. You will never run out of opportunities to choose again.

5. 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.

Affirm this as often you make a choice, and you shall always make the choice of Truth. I am as God created me and will forever be. I am the Son of God and I can suffer nothing.

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.

This is the result of making choices in Truth – your weaknesses are now replaced with your strengths. Miracles are natural to you and are in each choice you make. Each change of thought is a miracle.

6. 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.

First person: I am as God created me, and so is every living thing I look upon, regardless of the images I see. What I behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to see myself defenseless and in hell. I will not yield to this, and I will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but simply disappear as mists rise before the sun. A miracle has come to heal me, and close the doors upon my dreams of weakness, opening the way to my salvation and release. I choose once again to see my brother as I would have him be, remembering that every choice I make establishes my own identity as I will see it and believe it is.

7. 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.

And we are asked but this little gift: to bring the gift of peace to all who wander in this world, lonely and uncertain. This is our task to perform. Taking the hand of our brother, we shall both see the Christ within us, and our eyes shall be opened to see that reflection in other's

8. 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. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you.

Here we are asked to not fail to hear the voice of the Course nor fail to listen to its words. Nothing is asked of us but our own release. Why stay in hell when there exists another option? Heaven is but a thought away. And indeed our eyes are tired and weary of seeing a world of fear. We welcome the choice to see a world opposite to fear, one in which pain and sorrow are not found. This is the vision we must share with others or we cannot see it ourselves. To give this gift is to make it ours. Sound familiar to you?

9. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where God's gift can once again be recognized as ours! And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone. And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of 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.

So as we walk this world together with all others, seeing them as One with us, we may see many chances for a choice to be made. And with each choice for Truth we make, the darkness before us shall vanish. And what shall be seen is the Heaven we seek. For we shall continue to hear and we shall continue to choose again until we can see that all are free as they are in Truth.

10. 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.

Many of us will read this as coming from the author – but take another read here. Is this not you thanking God for what has been shown you?

11. 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 the same will hold true here as well. Is it not your hand that is outstretched to every brother? Are we not thanking God for what our brothers are – our saviors?

12. 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.

And what more could be added than to affirm: Amen.

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Thank you for reading and using this book. The course of miracles has been with me for almost 20 years. Ten years ago I sat down and dissected the course and the results are this book. By going through it in this manner, everything contained in the course became so much clearer to me. I only hope that you will become more open to the teachings contained within the Course.

It is, as many before me have said, not the only course around. It is, however, the one that will define your spiritual path for you so that you would totally believe you are on it. It will not only open your physical eyes but your spiritual ones as well. Keep your mind quiet and your heart open. The Course will positively speak to you in a language only you will understand.

Thank you for purchasing my book.

Contact info: mailto: R.Rasmussen@aol.com

Ron Rasmussen

**Another book written by me: Choose Again - Moving Beyond A Course in Miracles**
