Chapter 13. THE GUILTLESS WORLD Introduction T-13.in.1. If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. 2 It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. 3 But herein lies the split. 4 For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. 5 All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial. 6 It is not an attempt to relinquish denial, but to hold on to it. 7 For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane. T-13.in.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. 2 The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. 3 Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. 4 For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. 5 Children are born into it through pain and in pain. 6 Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. 7 Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. 8 They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. 9 They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. 10 And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. 11 Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel. T-13.in.3. If this were the real world, God be cruel. 2 For no Father could subject His children to this as the price of salvation and loving. 3 4 If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. 5 Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it. 6 Adam's "sin" could have touched no one, had he not believed it was the Father Who drove him out of Paradise. 7 For in that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who do not understand Him could believe it. T-13.in.4. This world a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. 2 And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. p236 3 Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is not guilty. 4 He deserves only love because he has given only love. 5 He cannot be condemned because he has never condemned. 6 The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation. I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability T-13.I.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. 2 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. 3 Peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered only in peace. 4 Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other. 5 Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. T-13.I.2. In the strange world that you have made the Son of God sinned. 2 How could you see him, then? 3 By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. 4 For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. 5 Without guilt the ego has no life, and God's Son without guilt. T-13.I.3. As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. 2 Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. 3 You have "sinned" in the past, but there is no past. 4 Always has no direction. 5 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. 6 As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. 7 And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is. T-13.I.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. 2 The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. 3 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. p237 4 The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. 5 He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. 6 And what God gives has always been. T-13.I.5. You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. 2 He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. 3 For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. 4 Being in him, he has found it. 5 he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. 6 For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God's Mind. 7 God's Son will always be as he was created. 8 Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever. T-13.I.6. When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there is no guilt in God's Son. 2 And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. 3 For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. 4 You can condemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God's Son. 5 You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blamelessness. 6 Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. 7 Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father. T-13.I.7. As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening. 2 The Son of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father for you. 3 There is no road to travel on, and no time to travel through. 4 For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. 5 And so it has always been. 6 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 yours. T-13.I.8. You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. 2 You can hold on to the past only through guilt. 3 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. 4 No one who believes this can understand what "always" means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. 5 You are immortal because you are eternal, and "always" must be now. 6 Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego's continuity. p238 7 For if what has been will be punished, the ego's continuity is guaranteed. 8 Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. 9 And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. T-13.I.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. 2 The future, in time, is always associated with expiation, and only guilt could induce a sense of a need for expiation. 3 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. 4 For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless he is eternal. T-13.I.10. You cannot dispel guilt by making it real, and then atoning for it. 2 This is the ego's plan, which it offers instead of dispelling it. 3 The ego believes in atonement through attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack is salvation. 4 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? T-13.I.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. 2 In the ego's teaching, then, there is no escape from guilt. 3 For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real there no way to overcome it. 4 The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. 5 As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, He knows that this is true. 6 And being true for you, you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt attack is impossible. 7 You, then, are saved because God's Son is guiltless. 8 And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable. II. The Guiltless Son of God T-13.II.1. The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt. 2 Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt find it intolerable, since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that you cannot resist it. 3 On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, 4 Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind. p239 T-13.II.2. Yet consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. 2 You project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing it. 3 You do experience the guilt, but you have no idea why. 4 On the contrary, you associate it with a weird assortment of "ego ideals," which the ego claims you have failed. 5 Yet you have no idea that you are failing the Son of God by seeing him as guilty. 6 Believing you are no longer you, you do not realize that you are failing yourself. T-13.II.3. The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness. 2 For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God's Son by condemning him to death. 3 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. 4 It does not know who the Son of God is because it is blind. 5 Yet let it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it because it is afraid. T-13.II.4. Much of the ego's strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of guilt. 2 To the ego, 3 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. 4 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. 5 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. T-13.II.5. In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have crucified God's Son. 2 You have not admitted to this "terrible" secret because you would still wish to crucify him if you could find him. 3 Yet the wish has hidden him from you because it is very fearful, and so you are afraid to find him. 4 You have handled this wish to kill yourself by not knowing who you are, and identifying with something else. 5 You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncovered its source. 6 For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it you must believe its goal is yours. T-13.II.6. I have said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego. 2 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. p240 3 To the ego, the is God, and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder. 4 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. T-13.II.7. This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace. 2 Yet you are afraid of it. 3 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. 4 You often dismiss it more readily than you dismiss the ego's thought system. 5 To some extent, then, you must believe that by not learning the course you are protecting yourself. 6 And you do not realize that it is only your guiltlessness that protect you. T-13.II.8. The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct if it is understood. 2 Yet even when I interpret it for you, you may reject it and do not accept it for yourself. 3 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. 4 In the extreme, you are afraid of redemption and you believe it will kill you. 5 Make no mistake about the depth of this fear. 6 For you believe that, in the presence of truth, you might turn on yourself and destroy yourself. T-13.II.9. Little child, this is not so. 2 Your "guilty secret" is nothing, and if you will but bring it to the light, the light will dispel it. 3 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. 4 And you will see that you were redeemed with him, and have never been separated from him. 5 In this understanding lies your remembering, for it is the recognition of love without fear. 6 There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. 7 For the redeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of God, and to recognize him your redemption. p241 III. The Fear of Redemption T-13.III.1. You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. 2 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. 3 Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement. 4 We have said that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it. 5 Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. 6 You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. 7 You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. 8 You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. 9 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. 10 You are not really afraid of crucifixion. 11 Your real terror is of redemption. T-13.III.2. Under the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. 2 For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. 3 Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. 4 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. 5 For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed. 6 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. 7 You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevent you from this. 8 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. 9 This is what you really want to hide. T-13.III.3. In honesty, is it not harder for you to say "I love" than "I hate"? 2 You associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real power seems to you as your real weakness. 3 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. 4 The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded. p242 T-13.III.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. 2 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. 3 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 4 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. 5 . T-13.III.5. You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love because you did not. 2 You would rather be a slave of the crucifixion than a Son of God in redemption. 3 Your individual death seems more valuable than your living oneness, for what is given you is not so dear as what you made. 4 You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. 5 But hatred can, for it enters of its own volition and cares not for yours. T-13.III.6. You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation. 2 In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. 3 This is the fundamental illusion on which the others rest. 4 For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. 5 And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied. 6 Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God's Son. T-13.III.7. And yet he is not crucified. 2 Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. 3 Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. 4 Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. 5 Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. 6 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. T-13.III.8. Beneath all the grandiosity you hold so dear is your real call for help. 2 For you call for love to your Father as your Father calls you to Himself. 3 In that place which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father, in loving remembrance of Him. p243 4 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. 5 And perceiving it you will welcome it, and it will be yours. 6 For grandeur is the right of God's Son, and no illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he is. 7 Only his love is real, and he will be content only with his reality. T-13.III.9. Save him from his illusions that you may accept the magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. 2 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. 3 And thus you will exempt yourself from His healing power, for by not offering total love you will not be healed completely. 4 Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome. T-13.III.10. You who prefer separation to sanity cannot obtain it in your right mind. 2 You were at peace until you asked for special favor. 3 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. 4 Therefore you made of Him an unloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father could give. 5 And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. 6 He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his real Father, having attacked his own glorious equality with Him. T-13.III.11. In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. 2 In war he demanded everything and found nothing. 3 For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, except by departing in peace and returning to the Father? 4 If the Son did not wish to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. 5 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. 6 God did not allow this to happen. 7 Yet you demanded that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so. T-13.III.12. To "single out" is to "make alone," and thus make lonely. 2 God did not do this to you. 3 Could He set you apart, knowing that your peace lies in His Oneness? 4 He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. 5 Having given you creation, He could not take it from you. 6 He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer that would abide with you in your insanity. 7 And this He did. 8 No one who hears His answer but will give up insanity. 9 For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane. p244 10 But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there. IV. The Function of Time T-13.IV.1. And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. 2 For this is a course on love, because it is about you. 3 You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. 4 The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and you have no function at all in Heaven. 5 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. 6 As long as it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. 7 When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell. T-13.IV.2. Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. 2 Your definition of Heaven hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. 3 For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours. 4 If their reality is questioned, you believe that yours is. 5 For you believe that attack is your reality, and that your destruction is the final proof that you were right. T-13.IV.3. Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you were wrong? 2 While it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there life, no one would claim that it proves there life. 3 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. 4 You question Heaven, but you do not question this. 5 Yet you could heal and be healed if you did question it. 6 And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? 7 You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. 8 An open mind is more honest than this. T-13.IV.4. The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. 2 The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. 3 Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. p245 4 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. 5 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. T-13.IV.5. "Now" has no meaning to the ego. 2 The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it the past. 3 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. 4 It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. 5 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. 6 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. 7 You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you T-13.IV.6. The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. 2 They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. 3 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. 4 And this decision is one of future pain. 5 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. 6 The ego would preserve your nightmares, and prevent you from awakening and understanding they are past. 7 Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? 8 For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the encounter holy, would be excluded from your sight. 9 The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself, and the encounter is holy because you are. 10 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. T-13.IV.7. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. 2 The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. 3 The Holy Spirit interprets time's purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary. p246 4 He regards the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. 5 His emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time that can extend to the infinite, for is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. 6 It is in the reality of "now," without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. 7 For only "now" is here, and only "now" presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found. T-13.IV.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. 2 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. 3 Its continuity, then, would keep you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you from it. 4 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. T-13.IV.9. You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. 2 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. 3 Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. 4 It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. 5 This interpretation ties the future to the present, and extends the present rather than the past. 6 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. 7 And time will be as you interpret it, for of itself it is nothing. V. The Two Emotions T-13.V.1. I have said you have but two emotions, love and fear. 2 One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. 3 In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. 4 The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. 5 Yet they have one thing in common; they are all insane. 6 They are made of sights that are not seen, and sounds that are not heard. 7 They make up a private world that cannot be shared. 8 For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. 9 In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them. p247 T-13.V.2. Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ. 2 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. 3 Therefore, he does not see he made them, and that they are not whole. 4 For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only. T-13.V.3. It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. 2 For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. 3 Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer them. 4 And no one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. 5 Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. 6 Again and again have you attacked your brother, because you saw in him a shadow figure in your private world. 7 And thus it is you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. 8 Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others you are literally attacking what is not there. T-13.V.4. The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. 2 They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. 3 And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything is disordered, and where what is within appears to be without. 4 Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot recognize. T-13.V.5. You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them as though it were the other. 2 For love cannot abide in a world apart, where when it comes it is not recognized. 3 If you see your own hatred as your brother, you are not seeing him. 4 Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. 5 And you react with fear to love, and draw away from it. 6 Yet fear attracts you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. 7 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. T-13.V.6. As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. 2 You see what is not there, and you hear what makes no sound. 3 Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. 4 You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. 5 In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. p248 6 God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. 7 And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone. T-13.V.7. Little child, would you offer this to your Father? 2 For if you offer it to yourself, you offering it to Him. 3 And He will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is unworthy of Him. 4 Yet He would release you from it and set you free. 5 His sane Answer tells you what you have offered yourself is not true, but His offering to you has never changed. 6 You who know not what you do can learn what insanity is, and look beyond it. 7 It is given you to learn how to deny insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace. 8 You will see all that you denied in your brothers because you denied it in yourself. 9 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. 10 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. 11 The Father welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should offer Him. 12 For every Son of God is given you to whom God gave Himself. 13 And it is God Whom you must offer them, to recognize His gift to you. T-13.V.8. Vision depends on light. 2 You cannot see in darkness. 3 Yet in darkness, in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams although your eyes are closed. 4 And it is here that what you see you made. 5 But let the darkness go and all you made you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision. 6 Yet from denying vision it does not follow you cannot see. 7 But this is what denial does, for by it you accept insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your own perception. 8 Yet for this, light must be excluded. 9 Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see. T-13.V.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. 2 Beyond this darkness, and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. 3 Your "vision" comes from fear, as His from love. 4 And He sees for you, as your witness to the real world. 5 He is the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them to you. 6 He loves what He sees within you, and He would extend it. 7 And He will not return unto the Father until He has extended your perception even unto Him. p249 8 And there perception is no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him. T-13.V.10. You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. 2 Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. 3 See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. 4 And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. 5 Beyond your darkest dreams He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams. 6 And this will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father for you. T-13.V.11. The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. 2 And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light. 3 Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. 4 Because they saw the Son, they have risen in Him to the Father. 5 And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him. 6 In the sanity of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. 7 And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them. VI. Finding the Present T-13.VI.1. To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own. 2 But for this no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for reality leaves no room for any error. 3 This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him 4 His past has no reality in the present, so you cannot see it. 5 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. 6 In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. 7 If you remember the past as you look upon your brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now. T-13.VI.2. You consider it "natural" to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. 2 Yet this is because it is delusional. 3 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 p250 4 For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, 5 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. T-13.VI.3. 2 The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for He is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. 3 For if He is as He was created, there is no guilt in Him. 4 No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself. 5 To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. 6 The cloud that obscures God's Son to you the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. 7 If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there. T-13.VI.4. Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. 2 Past, present and future are not continuous, unless you force continuity on them. 3 You can perceive them as continuous, and make them so for you. 4 But do not be deceived, and then believe that this is how it is. 5 For to believe reality is what you would have it be according to your use for it delusional. 6 You would destroy time's continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own purposes. 7 You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. 8 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. T-13.VI.5. The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him as born again. 2 His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him. 3 And since his past is yours, you share in this release. 4 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. 5 You have looked for it where it is not, and therefore have not found it. 6 Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will dawn on eyes that see. 7 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. T-13.VI.6. Judgment and condemnation are behind you, and unless you bring them with you, you will see that you are free of them. 2 Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true. 3 All healing lies within it because its continuity is real. p251 4 It extends to all aspects of the Sonship at the same time, and thus enables them to reach each other. 5 The present is before time was, and will be when time is no more. 6 In it are all things that are eternal, and they are one. 7 Their continuity is timeless and their communication is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. 8 Only the past can separate, and it is nowhere. T-13.VI.7. The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you with them, and free you from the past. 2 Would you, then, hold the past against them? 3 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. 4 For the light of perfect vision is freely given as it is freely received, and can be accepted only without limit. 5 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 6 And they will not deny the truth in you, because you looked for it in them and found it there. T-13.VI.8. Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. 2 Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. 3 In timeless union with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. 4 God's guiltless Son is only light. 5 There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. 6 Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. 7 Each voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of light. 8 The holy light that shines forth from God's Son is the witness that his light is of his Father. T-13.VI.9. Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, for you will remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. 2 Those whom you heal bear witness to your healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own. 3 And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will return your thanks in His clear Answer to your call. 4 For it can never be that His Son called upon Him and remained unanswered. 5 His Call to you is but your call to Him. 6 And in Him you are answered by His peace. T-13.VI.10. Child of Light, you know not that the light is in you. 2 Yet you will find it through its witnesses, for having given light to them they will return it. 3 Each one you see in light brings your light closer to your awareness. 4 Love always leads to love. 5 The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. p252 6 And this they offer you who gave them joy. 7 They are your guides to joy, for having received it of you they would keep it. 8 You have established them as guides to peace, for you have made it manifest in them. 9 And seeing it, its beauty calls you home. T-13.VI.11. There is a light that this world cannot give. 2 Yet you can give it, as it was given you. 3 And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. 4 For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. 5 And you will lay aside the world and find another. 6 This other world is bright with love which you have given it. 7 And here will everything remind you of your Father and His holy Son. 8 Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. 9 All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. 10 Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them. T-13.VI.12. Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love of your free will, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. 2 The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. 3 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. 4 In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. 5 And that is why the nightmares come. 6 You dream of isolation because your eyes are closed. 7 You do not see your brothers, and in the darkness you cannot look upon the light you gave to them. T-13.VI.13. And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. 2 And you have followed them through all your nightmares, and have been faithful in your giving, for you were not alone. 3 Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world for you when you awake. 4 In your name He has given for you, and given you the gifts He gave. 5 God's Son is still as loving as his Father. 6 Continuous with his Father, he has no past apart from Him. 7 So he has never ceased to be his Father's witness and his own. 8 Although he slept, Christ's vision did not leave him. 9 And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept. p253 VII. Attainment of the Real World T-13.VII.1. Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: "The real world is not like this. 2 It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. 3 There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. 4 It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. 5 There is no day that brightens and grows dim. 6 There is no loss. 7 Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." T-13.VII.2. The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. 2 for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. 3 The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. 4 Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. 5 And yet their power is not the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal. T-13.VII.3. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. 2 The homes you built have never sheltered you. 3 The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. 4 Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. 5 Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. 6 This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. 7 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. T-13.VII.4. Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here, because you love it. 2 And what you call with love will come to you. 3 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. 4 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. T-13.VII.5. You have been wrong about the world because you have misjudged yourself. 2 From such a twisted reference point, what could you see? 3 All seeing starts with the perceiver, who judges what is true and what is false. 4 And what he judges false he does not see. 5 You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment enters reality has slipped away. 6 The out of mind out of sight, because what is denied is there but is not recognized. p254 7 Christ is still there, although you know Him not. 8 His Being does not depend upon your recognition. 9 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. T-13.VII.6. No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him. 2 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. 3 Love leads so gladly! 4 As you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. 5 You wait but for yourself. 6 To give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but will. 7 And Christ will always offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him. T-13.VII.7. It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. 2 He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. 3 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. 4 Disturbance of his peace can never be. 5 In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him and within him. 6 He must deny the world of pain the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. 7 And from this point of safety he looks quietly about him and recognizes that the world is one with him. T-13.VII.8. The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past. 2 Yet here it and you can understand it 3 God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns his Father's Love forever. 4 The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of the one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. 5 For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it will fade. 6 But this one thing is always yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. 7 Your one reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him. T-13.VII.9. You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it. 2 Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. 3 In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all perception is. 4 Knowledge needs no correction. 5 Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. 6 In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. 7 Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. 8 Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost. p255 T-13.VII.10. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son. 2 Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. 3 In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity? 4 In your world you do need things. 5 It is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself you are lacking. 6 Yet can you find yourself in such a world? 7 Without the Holy Spirit the answer would be no. 8 Yet because of Him the answer is a joyous 9 As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you. 10 Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. 11 The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. 12 Possession for its own sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches it builds to itself. 13 And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them. T-13.VII.11. Everything the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. 2 For although the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. 3 And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. 4 For where the ego sees salvation it sees separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. 5 Therefore ask not of yourself what you need, for you do not know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. 6 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. T-13.VII.12. Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. 2 For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light. 3 And what else could you need? 4 In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. 5 He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it. 6 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. 7 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. 8 He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming. T-13.VII.13. Leave, then, your needs to Him. 2 He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. 3 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. p256 4 Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. 5 God's Son is not a traveller through outer worlds. 6 However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. 7 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. T-13.VII.14. Whenever you are tempted to undertake a useless journey that would lead away from light, remember what you really want, and say: 2 The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? 3 What need have I but to awake in Him? T-13.VII.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. 2 Kneel not before the altars to sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. 3 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. T-13.VII.16. In me you have already overcome every temptation that would hold you back. 2 We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. 3 Hold me dear, for what except your brothers can you need? 4 We will restore to you the peace of mind that we must find together. 5 The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us and to yourself. 6 This is the only real need to be fulfilled in time. 7 Salvation from the world lies only here. 8 My peace I give you. 9 Take it of me in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to take away. 10 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. T-13.VII.17. We cannot sing redemption's hymn alone. 2 My task is not completed until I have lifted every voice with mine. 3 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. 4 The sound of it will banish sorrow from the mind of God's most holy Son, where it cannot abide. 5 Healing in time is needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. 6 You dwell not here, but in eternity. 7 You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. 8 Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to remember you. p257 9 Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity. VIII. From Perception to Knowledge T-13.VIII.1. All healing is release from the past. 2 That is why the Holy Spirit is the only Healer. 3 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. 4 It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. 5 For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows also it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all. 6 It therefore does not consider where it is, because the concept "where" does not mean anything to it. 7 It knows that it is everywhere, just as it has everything, and forever. T-13.VIII.2. The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowledge. 2 Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. 3 You are an aspect of knowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. 4 All knowledge must be yours, for in you is all knowledge. 5 Perception, at its loftiest, is never complete. 6 Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without meaning in Heaven. 7 Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. 8 Yet no perception, however holy, will last forever. T-13.VIII.3. Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with knowledge, making transfer to it possible. 2 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. 3 The separation has not interrupted it. 4 Creation cannot be interrupted. 5 The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all. 6 The miracle, without a function in Heaven, is needful here. 7 Aspects of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of unreality. 8 Aspects of reality can be seen in everything and everywhere. 9 Yet only God can gather them together, by crowning them as one with the final gift of eternity. p258 T-13.VIII.4. Apart from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no function. 2 He is not separate from Either, being in the Mind of Both, and knowing that Mind is One. 3 He is a Thought of God, and God has given Him to you because He has no Thoughts He does not share. 4 His message speaks of timelessness in time, and that is why Christ's vision looks on everything with love. 5 Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. 6 The golden aspects of reality that spring to light under His loving gaze are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them. T-13.VIII.5. This is the miracle of creation; 2 Every miracle you offer to the Son of God is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. 3 Though every aspect the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is the same, perceived in the same light and therefore one. 4 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. 5 For light must come into the darkened world to make Christ's vision possible even here. 6 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. T-13.VIII.6. They are all the same; all beautiful and equal in their holiness. 2 And He will offer them unto His Father as they were offered unto Him. 3 There is one miracle, as there is one reality. 4 And every miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the one reality of God. 5 The only miracle that ever was is God's most holy Son, created in the one reality that is his Father. 6 Christ's vision is His gift to you. 7 His Being is His Father's gift to Him. T-13.VIII.7. Be you content with healing, for Christ's gift you can bestow, and your Father's gift you cannot lose. 2 Offer Christ's gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles, offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, attune you to reality. 3 The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you and where to find them. 4 Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. 5 You who are part of it and all of it need only realize that it is of the Father, not of you. 6 Your role in the redemption leads you to it by re- establishing its oneness in your mind. T-13.VIII.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. p259 2 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. 3 And suddenly time will be over, and we will all unite in the eternity of God the Father. 4 The holy light you saw outside yourself, in every miracle you offered to your brothers, will be returned to you. 5 And knowing that the light is in you, your creations will be there with you, as you are in your Father. T-13.VIII.9. As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven. 2 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. 3 Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven. 4 The miracle that God created is perfect, as are the miracles that you established in His Name. 5 They need no healing, nor do you, when you accept them. T-13.VIII.10. Yet in this world your perfection is unwitnessed. 2 God knows it, but you do not, and so you do not share His witness to it. 3 Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality is witnessed to as one. 4 God waits your witness to His Son and to Himself. 5 The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him. 6 They witness to what you do not know, and as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. 7 For never would He leave His Own beloved Son outside them, and beyond Himself. IX. The Cloud of Guilt T-13.IX.1. Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon His Son. 2 The guilty always condemn, and having done so they will still condemn, linking the future to the past as is the ego's law. 3 Fidelity to this law lets no light in, for it demands fidelity to darkness and forbids awakening. 4 The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. 5 Therefore give no obedience to its laws, for they are laws of punishment. 6 And those who follow them believe that they are guilty, and so they must condemn. 7 Between the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you would free yourself. 8 Atonement stands between them, like a lamp shining so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you bound yourself will disappear. p260 T-13.IX.2. Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing. 2 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. 3 The ego rewards fidelity to it with pain, for faith in it pain. 4 And faith can be rewarded only in terms of the belief in which the faith was placed. 5 Faith makes the power of belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. 6 For faith is always given what is treasured, and what is treasured is returned to you. T-13.IX.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. 2 Be faithful unto darkness and you will not see, because your faith will be rewarded as you gave it. 3 You accept your treasure, and if you place your faith in the past, the future will be like it. 4 Whatever you hold dear you think is yours. 5 The power of your valuing will make it so. T-13.IX.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. 2 Therefore you cannot value one without the other, and guilt has become as true for you as innocence. 3 You do not believe the Son of God is guiltless because you see the past, and see him not. 4 When you condemn a brother you are saying, "I who was guilty choose to remain so." 5 You have denied his freedom, and by so doing you have denied the witness unto yours. 6 You could as easily have freed him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him to it. 7 And in his freedom would have been your own. T-13.IX.5. Lay not his guilt upon him, for his guilt lies in his secret thought that he has done this unto you. 2 Would you, then, teach him he is right in his delusion? 3 The idea that the guiltless Son of God can attack himself and make himself guilty is insane. 4 In any form, in anyone, 5 For sin and condemnation are the same, and the belief in one is faith in the other, calling for punishment instead of love. 6 Nothing can justify insanity, and to call for punishment upon yourself must be insane. T-13.IX.6. See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. 2 In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. 3 If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. p261 4 For so you learn that it is true for you. 5 Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part. 6 Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it there until it is undone. 7 Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. 8 Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. 9 With everyone whom you release from guilt great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice. T-13.IX.7. Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. 2 And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. 3 You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. 4 You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. 5 6 If you would look within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father. T-13.IX.8. Do not be afraid to look within. 2 The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. 3 Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. 4 Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. 5 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. 6 Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. 7 Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. 8 He does not value you as you do. 9 He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. 10 He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. 11 Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? 12 You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. 13 Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love. X. Release from Guilt T-13.X.1. You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. 2 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. 3 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. p262 4 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. T-13.X.2. Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. 2 No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. 3 For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person the guilt. 4 What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! 5 And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. 6 They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. 7 If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. 8 For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. 9 No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. 10 It is not shared, and so it is not real. T-13.X.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, will feel guilty. 2 Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. 3 You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. 4 It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. 5 Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. 6 They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. 7 Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control. T-13.X.4. When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. 2 The past is not you. 3 Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. 4 Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. 5 Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to "solve" the past, and still to see them as they really are? 6 Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. 7 You wanted not salvation in the past. 8 Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now? T-13.X.5. Determine, then, to be not as you were. 2 Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. 3 A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. 4 When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. p263 5 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. T-13.X.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. 2 The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. 3 For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. 4 The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. 5 If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. 6 The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them. T-13.X.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. 2 What He has saved you from is gone. 3 Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. 4 The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. 5 He has seen separation, but knows of union. 6 He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. 7 He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. 8 Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours. T-13.X.8. it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be 2 As yet it is not now. 3 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. 4 When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. 5 And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. 6 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. T-13.X.9. You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father's Love. 2 And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him. 3 Yet it is forever true. 4 In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. 5 Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. 6 Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. 7 The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. 8 Nothing can keep from you what Christ would have you see. 9 His Will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every child of God, as He would have you do. p264 T-13.X.10. Release from guilt as you would be released. 2 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. 3 4 There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. 5 You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. 6 You cannot be as you believed you were. 7 Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. 8 And this reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. 9 He would remove only illusions. 10 All else He would have you see. 11 And in Christ's vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God's Son. T-13.X.11. You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God's Sons unless you love them all and equally. 2 Love is not special. 3 If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal. 4 You can love only as God loves. 5 Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. 6 Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. 7 No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. 8 If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon himself. 9 To him I say: 10 Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. 11 In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him. T-13.X.12. No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. 2 His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. 3 Let us look upon him together and love him. 4 For in love of him is your guiltlessness. 5 But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. 6 I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever. T-13.X.13. Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. 2 The difference is that I love 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. 3 I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. p265 4 My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give my Father. 5 My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. 6 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. T-13.X.14. Praise be to you who make the Father One with His Own Son. 2 Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think of it. 3 Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never more be what it was. 4 Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. 5 See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of you. 6 United in this praise we stand before the gates of Heaven where we will surely enter in our sinlessness. 7 God loves you. 8 Could I, then, lack faith in you and love Him perfectly? XI. The Peace of Heaven T-13.XI.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. 2 Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real. 3 Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. 4 Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. 5 No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles if he himself perceives them as wholly without meaning. T-13.XI.2. God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy" is totally unreal. 2 You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you escaped. 3 The war is gone. 4 For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven. 5 Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because you made it not. 6 Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could endanger freedom. 7 Nothing destructive ever was or will be. 8 The war, the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came. T-13.XI.3. When we are all united in Heaven, you will value nothing that you value here. 2 For nothing that you value here do you value wholly, and so you do not value it at all. p266 3 Value is where God placed it, and the value of what God esteems cannot be judged, for it has been established. 4 It is wholly of value. 5 It can merely be appreciated or not. 6 To value it partially is not to know its value. 7 In Heaven is everything God values, and nothing else. 8 Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. 9 Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth one response. 10 There is no darkness and there is no contrast. 11 There is no variation. 12 There is no interruption. 13 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. T-13.XI.4. Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared. 2 Perfect perception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly shared. 3 It can also show you the results of sharing, while you still remember the results of not sharing. 4 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. 5 He has perfect faith in your final judgment, because He knows that He will make it for you. 6 To doubt this would be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. 7 How is this possible, when His mission is of God? T-13.XI.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. 2 It is impossible that this mission fail. 3 Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment. 4 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 done. 5 You will find the peace in which He has established you, because He does not change His Mind. 6 He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you. T-13.XI.6. You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. 2 You have need of contrast only here. 3 Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek. 4 When you have learned this, you will find the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear. 5 Truth comes of its own will unto its own. 6 When you have learned that you belong to truth, it will flow lightly over you without a difference of any kind. 7 For you will need no contrast to help you realize that this is what you want, and only this. 8 Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. 9 The Will of God can fail in nothing. p267 T-13.XI.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. 2 Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. 3 They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. 4 The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity because insanity is not the Will of God. 5 If that suffices Him, it is enough for you. 6 You will not keep what God would have removed, because it breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate. 7 His Voice be heard. T-13.XI.8. The Communication Link that God Himself placed within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken. 2 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. 3 Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him. 4 Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from Him Whose Will is peace. 5 You have it now. 6 The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it, and by extending it, to learn that it is in you. 7 God willed you Heaven, and will always will you nothing else. 8 The Holy Spirit knows only of His Will. 9 There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is. T-13.XI.9. You will learn salvation because you will learn how to save. 2 It will not be possible to exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wants to teach you. 3 Salvation is as sure as God. 4 His certainty suffices. 5 Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbs the mind of God's sleeping Son holds no power over him. 6 He will learn the lesson of awaking. 7 God watches over him and light surrounds him. T-13.XI.10. Can God's Son lose himself in dreams, when God has placed within him the glad Call to waken and be glad? 2 He cannot separate himself from what is in him. 3 His sleep will not withstand the Call to wake. 4 The mission of redemption will be fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity. 5 You do not have to know that Heaven is yours to make it so. 6 It so. 7 Yet to know it, the Will of God must be accepted as your will. T-13.XI.11. The Holy Spirit will undo for you everything you have learned that teaches that what is not true must be reconciled with truth. 2 This is the reconciliation the ego would substitute for your reconciliation to sanity and to peace. p268 3 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. 4 Failure is of the ego, not of God. 5 From Him you cannot wander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers everyone, for the salvation everyone, will not be perfectly accomplished. 6 You will be released, and you will not remember anything you made that was not created for you and by you in return. 7 For how can you remember what was never true, or not remember what has always been? 8 It is this reconciliation with truth, and only truth, in which the peace of Heaven lies. p269 Chapter 14. TEACHING FOR TRUTH Introduction T-14.in.1. Yes, you are blessed indeed. 2 Yet in this world you do not know it. 3 But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. 4 The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. 5 They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. 6 We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. 7 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. 8 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. I. The Conditions of Learning T-14.I.1. If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. 2 The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired for it is they that have been thrown away. 3 You can learn to bless, and cannot give what you have not. 4 If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. 5 And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away? 6 That is why miracles offer the testimony that you are blessed. 7 If what you offer is complete forgiveness you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. 8 How could you learn what has been done for you, unknown to you, unless you do what you would have to do if it been done for you? T-14.I.2. Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. 2 You will perceive the need for this if you realize that to deny is the decision not to know. 3 The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. 4 If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. 5 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. p270 6 This an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. 7 There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream sacred to you. 8 That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream. T-14.I.3. Seeing is always outward. 2 Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. 3 The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. 4 The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made his beliefs. 5 And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. 6 They will not be taken from him. 7 But they can be given up him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. 8 There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. 9 Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything. T-14.I.4. Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. 2 Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. 3 Undoing indirect, as doing is. 4 You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. 5 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. 6 You have set yourself the task of sharing what cannot be shared. 7 And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that possible to learn to do. T-14.I.5. The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. 2 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. 3 He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. 4 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. 5 It deceives you, because you chose to deceive yourself. 6 Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seem to encroach upon deception and strike at it. p271 II. The Happy Learner T-14.II.1. The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. 2 You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. 3 The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery happiness. 4 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. 5 You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. 6 Yet it may still make sense to you. 7 Have faith in nothing and you will find the "treasure" that you seek. 8 Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. 9 You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. 10 A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. 11 For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you learn how to make the untrue true. T-14.II.2. The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that is true. 2 This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. 3 Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. 4 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. 5 Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. 6 The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. 7 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. T-14.II.3. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. 2 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: 3 The truth is true. 4 Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. 5 Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. 6 Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. 7 Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. p272 8 You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. 9 And you will love it because you will understand it. T-14.II.4. Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. 2 Like God, He knows it to be true. 3 He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. 4 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. 5 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. 6 The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. 7 And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they have been nothing. 8 And you will see it with them. 9 Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness. T-14.II.5. When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. 2 And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. 3 Learn to be a happy learner. 4 You will never learn how to make nothing everything. 5 Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. 6 Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it undone. 7 I said before, "Be not content with nothing," for you have believed that nothing could content you. 8 T-14.II.6. If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. 2 And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true. 3 For what is builded there true, and built on truth. 4 The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. 5 With truth before you, you will not look back. T-14.II.7. The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. 2 All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom for you. 3 For truth true. 4 What else could ever be, or ever was? 5 This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is locked forever. 6 You made this door of nothing, and behind it nothing. 7 The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. 8 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. 9 For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep of darkness. p273 T-14.II.8. Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. 2 The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep. 3 The vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. 4 Where everything is clear, it is all holy. 5 The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. 6 For there is nothing else. 7 God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything. 8 Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true? III. The Decision for Guiltlessness T-14.III.1. The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning. 2 This is so essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. 3 The guiltless learner learns easily because his thoughts are free. 4 Yet this entails the recognition that guilt is interference, not salvation, and serves no useful function at all. T-14.III.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. 2 You believe that guilt and guiltlessness are both of value, each representing an escape from what the other does not offer you. 3 You do not want either alone, for without both you do not see yourself as whole and therefore happy. 4 Yet you are whole only in your guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness can you be happy. 5 There is no conflict here. 6 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. T-14.III.3. There is no compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape the pain that only guiltlessness allays. 2 Learning is living here, as creating is being in Heaven. 3 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. 4 Say therefore, to yourself, gently, but with the conviction born of the Love of God and of His Son: 5 What I experience I will make manifest. 6 If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear. 7 I choose to testify to my acceptance of the Atonement, not to its rejection. p274 8 I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and sharing it. 9 Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father. T-14.III.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. 2 The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. 3 The power of decision is all that is yours. 4 What you can decide between is fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion. 5 And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be true. 6 You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy. T-14.III.5. The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom and joy. 2 It is not a cause, but an effect. 3 It is the natural result of choosing right, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be free of guilt. 4 Everyone you offer healing to returns it. 5 Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. 6 Whether he does this or does it not will make no difference; you will think he does. 7 It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty. 8 The cost of giving receiving. 9 Either it is a penalty from which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear. T-14.III.6. No penalty is ever asked of God's Son except by himself and of himself. 2 Every chance given him to heal is another opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love. 3 If he refuses it he binds himself to darkness, because he did not choose to free his brother and enter light with him. 4 By giving power to nothing, he throws away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power. 5 And by not dispelling darkness, he became afraid of darkness and of light. 6 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. 7 It is His joy to teach it, as it will be yours. T-14.III.7. The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: Guiltlessness is invulnerability. 2 Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to everyone. 3 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. 4 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. p275 5 There is nothing to forgive. 6 No one can hurt the Son of God. 7 His guilt is wholly without cause, and being without cause, cannot exist. T-14.III.8. God is the only Cause, and guilt is not of Him. 2 Teach no one he has hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God has power over you. 3 4 Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. 5 Remember always that mind is one, and cause is one. 6 You will learn communication with this oneness only when you learn to deny the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as yours. 7 The power that God has given to His Son 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. T-14.III.9. Whenever you choose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively, and the decision will be wrong. 2 It will hurt you because of the concept of decision that led to it. 3 It is not true that you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself alone. 4 No thought of God's Son can be separate or isolated in its effects. 5 Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. T-14.III.10. Those who accept the Atonement invulnerable. 2 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. 3 They believe that increasing guilt is self-protection. 4 And they will fail to understand the simple fact that what they do not want must hurt them. 5 All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is good. 6 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. 7 There is nothing their will fails to provide that offers them anything of value. 8 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. T-14.III.11. It will never happen that you must make decisions for yourself. 2 You are not bereft of help, and Help that knows the answer. 3 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? 4 He will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. p276 5 Ask it not therefore of yourself. 6 Instead, accept His answer, for He knows that you are worthy of everything God wills for you. 7 Do not try to escape the gift of God He so freely and so gladly offers you. 8 He offers you but what God gave Him for you. 9 You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of it. 10 God knows you are. T-14.III.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? 2 Nothing can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it wholly pure. 3 Do not decide against it, for being of Him it must be true. 4 Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan God set for its Atonement, relinquishing its own. 5 You know not of salvation, for you do not understand it. 6 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. T-14.III.13. The One Who knows the plan of God that God would have you follow can teach you what it is. 2 Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. 3 Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what salvation and what you would be saved 4 The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt. 5 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. 6 He is the strong protector of the innocence that sets you free. 7 And it is His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. T-14.III.14. Let Him, therefore, be the only Guide that you would follow to salvation. 2 He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. 3 With Him you will not fail to learn that what God wills for you your will. 4 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. 5 Salvation is of Him to Whom God gave it for you. 6 He has not forgotten it. 7 Forget Him not and He will make every decision for you, for your salvation and the peace of God in you. T-14.III.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. 2 And you feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. 3 The Holy Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of self- replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. p277 4 What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. 5 Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. 6 Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. 7 Never forget the Love of God, Who has remembered you. 8 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. T-14.III.16. Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. 2 For His decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. 3 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? 4 Learn of His wisdom and His Love, and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. 5 For you decide for them and for yourself. T-14.III.17. How gracious it is to decide all things through Him Whose equal Love is given equally to all alike! 2 He leaves you no one outside you. 3 And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it with Him. 4 In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. 5 Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with Love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the decision. 6 And everyone will be. 7 Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? 8 Would you know this? T-14.III.18. You taught yourself the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your Creator. 2 Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with everything that is within Him, as it is within yourself. 3 Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose. T-14.III.19. Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and only this: 2 He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not. 3 Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn. 4 And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me. 5 Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is already there. p278 IV. Your Function in the Atonement T-14.IV.1. When you accept a brother's guiltlessness you will see the Atonement in him. 2 For by proclaiming it in him you make it yours, and you will see what you sought. 3 You will not see the symbol of your brother's guiltlessness shining within him while you still believe it is not there. 4 His guiltlessness is Atonement. 5 Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. 6 Yet truth is offered first to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. 7 The first in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. 8 Beyond the First there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and nothing but the First. T-14.IV.2. You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. 2 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. 3 This state, and only this, must you attain, with God beside you. 4 For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him. 5 You can perhaps feel His Presence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. 6 This cannot be taught. 7 Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself. T-14.IV.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. 2 Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. 3 For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be given. 4 Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. 5 Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. 6 Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. 7 On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn. 8 You will feel guilty till you learn this. 9 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. 10 Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here? T-14.IV.4. You need not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. 2 God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. 3 When you release them they are gone. 4 God will not fail, nor ever has in anything. p279 5 Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. 6 He created you out of Himself, but still within Him. 7 He knows what you are. 8 Remember that there is no second to Him. 9 There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. 10 Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. 11 Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son. 12 For this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His. T-14.IV.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. 2 Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. 3 How, then, can you decide what you should do? 4 Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He knows it. 5 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. 6 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. T-14.IV.6. When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. 2 There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. 3 Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. 4 The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do. 5 He knows. 6 And He will tell you, and then do it for you. 7 You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep. 8 For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this. T-14.IV.7. Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. 2 Therefore, you be guiltless. 3 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. 4 He cannot be known without His Son, whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. 5 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. 6 If you would but listen, and learn how impossible this is! p280 7 Do not endow Him with attributes you understand. 8 You made Him not, and anything you understand is not of Him. T-14.IV.8. Your task is not to make reality. 2 It is here without your making, but not without you. 3 You who have tried to throw yourself away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourself. 4 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. 5 There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly. 6 You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. 7 Would you know of One Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothing except giving? T-14.IV.9. The children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father, because they know that they are sinless. 2 The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. 3 Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. 4 It does not teach you what you are, or what your Father is. 5 The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. 6 His memory is yours. 7 If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. 8 Remembrance of reality is in Him, and therefore in you. T-14.IV.10. The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. 2 Each perceives the other as like himself, making both unable to communicate, because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself. 3 God can communicate only to the Holy Spirit in your mind, because only He shares the knowledge of what you are with God. 4 And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for only He knows what God is. 5 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. 6 Communication with God is life. 7 Nothing without it is at all. p281 V. The Circle of Atonement T-14.V.1. The only part of your mind that has reality is the part that links you still with God. 2 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? 3 4 Would you deny His yearning to be known? 5 You yearn for Him, as He for you. 6 This is forever changeless. 7 Accept, then, the immutable. 8 Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. 9 There is nothing of value here, and everything of value there. 10 Listen to the Holy Spirit, and to God through Him. 11 He speaks of you to 12 There is no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the Son is blessed in Him. T-14.V.2. Everyone has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each one is always the same; 2 Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. 3 Yet until he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. 4 The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. 5 His plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. 6 You know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. 7 His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God He holds in trust for you. 8 He would teach you nothing except how to be happy. T-14.V.3. Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created for you. 2 Who can condemn whom God has blessed? 3 There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share His shining innocence. 4 Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. 5 Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in all its forms. 6 To accuse is 7 The happy learners of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the right of all that God created. 8 Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it from them alone. T-14.V.4. The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation. 2 Do not try to steal it from him, or you will ask for guilt and will experience it. 3 Protect his purity from every thought that would steal it away and keep it from his sight. 4 Bring innocence to light, in answer to the call of the Atonement. 5 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. p282 T-14.V.5. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. 2 So will the world of separation slip away, and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son. 3 The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness that must have been denied to produce the need of healing. 4 Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. 5 Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? 6 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. 7 Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not attack. 8 To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them. T-14.V.6. Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. 2 There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. 3 There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim however it is taught. 4 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. 5 And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven, and the peace of God. 6 There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome. 7 The power of God Himself supports this teaching, and guarantees its limitless results. T-14.V.7. Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must result in peace. 2 No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. 3 You will not see yourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this. 4 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. 5 From everyone whom you accord release from guilt you will inevitably learn your innocence. 6 The circle of Atonement has no end. 7 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. T-14.V.8. Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. 2 For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity, from which no one is excluded. 3 Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. 4 Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone. 5 The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. 6 Stand quietly within this circle, and attract all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and holiness. 7 Abide with me within it, as a teacher of Atonement, not of guilt. p283 T-14.V.9. Blessed are you who teach with me. 2 Our power comes not of us, but of our Father. 3 In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. 4 I stand within the circle, calling you to peace. 5 Teach peace with me, and stand with me on holy ground. 6 Remember for everyone your Father's power that He has given him. 7 Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. 8 Stand not outside, but join with me within. 9 Fail not the only purpose to which my teaching calls you. 10 Restore to God His Son as He created him, by teaching him his innocence. T-14.V.10. The crucifixion had no part in the Atonement. 2 Only the resurrection became my part in it. 3 That is the symbol of the release from guilt by guiltlessness. 4 Whom you perceive as guilty you would crucify. 5 Yet you restore guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless. 6 Crucifixion is always the ego's aim. 7 It sees everyone as guilty, and by its condemnation it would kill. 8 The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in His gentleness He would release from fear and re-establish the reign of love. 9 The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion. 10 The temple you restore becomes your altar, for it was rebuilt through you. 11 And everything you give to God is yours. 12 Thus He creates, and thus must you restore. T-14.V.11. Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption. 2 If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. 3 If you leave him without, you join him there. 4 Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. 5 Refuse to accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring him into it by blessing him. 6 Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. 7 Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. 8 Cast no one out, for here is what he seeks along with you. 9 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. p284 VI. The Light of Communication T-14.VI.1. The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. 2 Nothing you understand is fearful. 3 It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and shrink away from it to further darkness. 4 And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness. 5 The obscure is frightening because you do not understand its meaning. 6 If you did, it would be clear and you would be no longer in the dark. 7 Nothing has hidden value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. 8 The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. 9 What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared. T-14.VI.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. 2 Attack will always yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. 3 There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. 4 What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. 5 The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them. T-14.VI.3. Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? 2 They are neither safe nor unsafe. 3 They do not protect; neither do they attack. 4 They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. 5 As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure fearful. 6 But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. 7 Without protection of obscurity only the light of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in light. 8 Everything else must disappear. T-14.VI.4. Death yields to life simply because destruction is not true. 2 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. 3 Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them both is meaningless. 4 All you have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. 5 And so you do not realize that only one means anything. 6 The other is wholly without sense of any kind. T-14.VI.5. You have regarded the separation as a means for breaking your communication with your Father. p285 2 The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means of re-establishing what was not broken, but been made obscure. 3 All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. 4 He knows you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you think you are. 5 All this and nothing else would He separate from you. 6 The power of decision, which you made in place of the power of creation, He would teach you how to use on your behalf. 7 You who made it to crucify yourself must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration. T-14.VI.6. You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language you have made. 2 It has no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather the disruption of communication. 3 If the purpose of language is communication, how can this tongue mean anything? 4 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. 5 You who made it are but expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. 6 Leave what you would communicate to Him. 7 He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you are in perfect communication. T-14.VI.7. You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. 2 Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. 3 He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. 4 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. 5 You speak two languages at once, and this must lead to unintelligibility. 6 Yet if one means nothing and the other everything, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. 7 The other but interferes with it. T-14.VI.8. The Holy Spirit's function is entirely communication. 2 He therefore must remove whatever interferes with communication in order to restore it. 3 Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. 4 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. 5 We must open all doors and let the light come streaming through. 6 There are no hidden chambers in God's temple. 7 Its gates are open wide to greet His Son. 8 No one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon his Father's welcome. p286 VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit T-14.VII.1. What do you want? 2 Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. 3 Opposites must be brought together, not kept apart. 4 For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as you are. 5 In union, everything that is not real must disappear, for truth union. 6 As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns. 7 Perception is the medium by which ignorance is brought to knowledge. 8 Yet the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise it becomes the messenger of ignorance rather than a helper in the search for truth. T-14.VII.2. The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. 2 Truth 3 It can neither be lost nor sought nor found. 4 It is there, wherever you are, being within you. 5 Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to you. 6 If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you you hid it and surrounded it with fear. 7 Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies hidden. 8 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. T-14.VII.3. It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. 2 From their point of view it is not true. 3 Yet it is true because God knows it. 4 These are clearly opposite viewpoints on what the "unknowing" are. 5 To God, unknowing is impossible. 6 It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist. 7 It is only this belief that the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about themselves. 8 They have defined themselves as they were not created. 9 Their creation was not a point of view, but rather a certainty. 10 Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain any conviction of reality. T-14.VII.4. Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. 2 You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. 3 Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. 4 If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. 5 But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. 6 Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. p287 7 You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. 8 Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. 9 Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. 10 One will go, because the other is seen in the same place. T-14.VII.5. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go. 2 Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. 3 What needs no protection does not defend itself. 4 Defense is of your making. 5 God knows it not. 6 The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth only because you made them against it. 7 His perception of them, according to His purpose, merely changes them into a call for what you have attacked with them. 8 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. 9 His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. 10 Therefore, to Him it is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you. 11 Do not delay in your return to peace by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. 12 Leave that to Him Who knows. 13 You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. 14 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. 15 You will see how easily all that He asks can be accomplished. T-14.VII.6. The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. 2 Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. 3 At your request He enters gladly. 4 He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. 5 But what you hide He cannot look upon. 6 He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. 7 The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. 8 Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. 9 He holds the light, and you the darkness. 10 They cannot coexist when both of You together look on them. 11 His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His. T-14.VII.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. 2 You cannot see alone. 3 Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you teaches you how to recognize what you see. p288 4 It is the recognition that nothing you see means anything alone. 5 Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning, including yours, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into meaning, emotion and purpose. 6 God has one purpose which He shares with you. 7 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. 8 Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His Love as yours. 9 All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God. VIII. The Holy Meeting Place T-14.VIII.1. In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. 2 All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. 3 Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God. 4 It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. 5 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. 6 Whom He would save for glory saved for it. 7 He has promised the Father that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. 8 To what He promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shares with God the promise that was given Him to share with you. T-14.VIII.2. He shares it still, for you. 2 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. 3 No altar stands to God without His Son. 4 And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of Both, but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father and to Son. 5 Can you offer guilt to God? 6 You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. 7 For They are not apart, and gifts to One are offered to the Other. 8 You know not God because you know not this. 9 And yet you do know God and also this. 10 All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. 11 He shines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. 12 Communication between what cannot be divided cannot cease. p289 13 The holy meeting place of the unseparated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. 14 All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. 15 Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as Both would have it be. 16 And so it is. T-14.VIII.3. Let your mind wander not through darkened corridors, away from light's center. 2 You and your brother may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. 3 He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. 4 They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all separation vanishes. 5 Unite with what you are. 6 You cannot join with anything except reality. 7 God's glory and His Son's belong to you in truth. 8 They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself. T-14.VIII.4. There is no substitute for truth. 2 And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. 3 And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. 4 Where God is, there are you. 5 Such is the truth. 6 Nothing can change the knowledge, given you by God, into unknowingness. 7 Everything God created knows its Creator. 8 For this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. 9 In the holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son with Them together. 10 There is one link that joins Them all together, holding Them in the oneness out of which creation happens. T-14.VIII.5. The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. 2 Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. 3 And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. 4 Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. 5 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. 6 To whom God gives Himself, He given. 7 Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own. p290 IX. The Reflection of Holiness T-14.IX.1. The Atonement does not make holy. 2 You were created holy. 3 It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are. 4 Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. 5 Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself. 6 The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? 7 The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. 8 Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. 9 And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. 10 The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was. T-14.IX.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. 2 It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. 3 How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? 4 What disappears in light is not attacked. 5 It merely vanishes because it is not true. 6 Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. 7 It cannot change with time or mood or chance. 8 Its changelessness is what makes it real. 9 This cannot be undone. 10 Undoing is for unreality. 11 And this reality will do for you. T-14.IX.3. Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not. 2 The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. 3 You are not frail with God beside you. 4 Yet without Him you are nothing. 5 The Atonement offers you God. 6 The gift that you refused is held by Him in you. 7 The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. 8 God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. 9 The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it Holiness. T-14.IX.4. In the temple, Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. 2 The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. 3 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. 4 There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of life. 5 For God is life, and they abide in life. 6 Life is as holy as the Holiness by which it was created. p291 7 The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness created life, and leaves not what It created holy as Itself. T-14.IX.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. 2 You can reflect Heaven here. 3 Yet no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. 4 Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. 5 You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. 6 God will shine upon it of Himself. 7 Only the clear reflection of Himself can be perceived upon it. T-14.IX.6. Reflections are seen in light. 2 In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves. 3 The reflection of God needs no interpretation. 4 It is clear. 5 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. 6 It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in him. 7 He recognizes it because he has been taught his need for it, but knows not where to look to find it. 8 Let him, then, see it in you and share it with you. T-14.IX.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. 2 The image of holiness that shines in your mind is not obscure, and will not change. 3 Its meaning to those who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the same. 4 All bring their different problems to its healing light, and all their problems find but healing there. T-14.IX.8. The response of holiness to any form of error is always the same. 2 There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. 3 Its one response is healing, without regard for what is brought to it. 4 Those who have learned to offer only healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. 5 There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the actual condition of what was but reflected to them here. 6 God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. 7 They do not merely reflect truth, for they truth. p292 X. The Equality of Miracles T-14.X.1. When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. 2 The reflections you accept into the mirror of your mind in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. 3 But eternity itself is beyond all time. 4 Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. 5 And you will turn from time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. 6 Reflect the peace of Heaven here, and bring this world to Heaven. 7 For the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it they leave all reflections behind. T-14.X.2. In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. 2 By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. 3 And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. 4 You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in is a world of limits. 5 In this world, it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. 6 The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher Who brings the laws of another world to this one. 7 The miracle is the one thing you can do that transcends order, being based not on differences but on equality. T-14.X.3. Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. 2 They can be simultaneous and legion. 3 This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. 4 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. 5 From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible. T-14.X.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. 2 You may indeed be so used to this that it causes you little surprise. 3 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. 4 This is true of the thoughts that cross the mind of those who think they live apart. 5 For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but seems to think. T-14.X.5. The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests and is never still. p293 2 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. 3 Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your mind. 4 The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order that you establish. 5 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. 6 For the ego chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. 7 Yet though the order you impose upon your mind limits the ego, it also limits you. 8 To order is to judge, and to arrange by judgment. 9 Therefore it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's. T-14.X.6. It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. 2 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. 3 The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. 4 It does not judge the call. 5 It merely recognizes what it is, and answers accordingly. 6 It does not consider which call is louder or greater or more important. 7 You may wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. 8 The answer is very simple. 9 The power of God, and not of you, engenders miracles. 10 The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. 11 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. 12 The power of God is limitless. 13 And being always maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone. 14 There is no order of difficulty here. 15 A call for help is given help. T-14.X.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. 2 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. 3 You are too bound to form, and not to content. 4 What you consider content is not content at all. 5 It is merely form, and nothing else. 6 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. T-14.X.8. The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. p294 2 To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. 3 Otherwise it will attack the form. 4 If you believe you understand something of the "dynamics" of the ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it. 5 For of yourself you could not understand it. 6 The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. 7 In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would "analyze" it, thus approving its importance. 8 Yet they but study form with meaningless content. 9 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. T-14.X.9. This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. 2 Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought that arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. 3 For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. 4 Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. 5 For no one alone can judge the ego truly. 6 Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. 7 The fact of union tells them it is not true. T-14.X.10. It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. 2 For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it. 3 Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold for yourself. 4 If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you. 5 Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. 6 If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. 7 The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find. T-14.X.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. 2 God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being for all. 3 Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. 4 Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. 5 Let the Holy Spirit show him to you, and teach you both his love and his call for love. 6 Neither his mind nor yours holds more than these two orders of thought. T-14.X.12. The miracle is the recognition that this is true. 2 Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. 3 But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are. p295 4 Earlier I said this course will teach you how to remember what you are, restoring to you your Identity. 5 We have already learned that this Identity is shared. 6 The miracle becomes the means of sharing It. 7 By supplying your Identity wherever It is not recognized, you will recognize It. 8 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. 9 Nor will the power of all His Love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. 10 How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them? XI. The Test of Truth T-14.XI.1. Yet the essential thing is learning that 2 Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. 3 You who have tried to keep power for yourself have "lost" it. 4 You still have the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your awareness of it that you cannot use it. 5 Everything you have taught yourself has made your power more and more obscure to you. 6 You know not what it is, nor where. 7 You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it must fail you. 8 For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond semblance of any kind. 9 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. T-14.XI.2. Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. 2 For you have taught yourself how to imprison the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even dream of it. 3 Can God learn how not to be God? 4 And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? 5 What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you and what you T-14.XI.3. Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourself in the past, by showing you only what you are 2 Learning has been accomplished before its effects are manifest. 3 Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. 4 learning gives the present no meaning at all. 5 Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past p296. 6 Your past is what you have taught yourself. 7 it all go. 8 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. 9 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. 10 Yet darkness cannot be seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. T-14.XI.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. 2 Yet God did not abandon you. 3 And so you have another lesson sent from Him, already learned for every child of light by Him to Whom God gave it. 4 This lesson shines with God's glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares so gladly with His Son. 5 Learn of His happiness, which is yours. 6 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. 7 Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light He will accept from you, because you do not want it. 8 And He will gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson He has learned for you. 9 Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Him means anything. T-14.XI.5. You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. 2 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. 3 Unless all this is true, there are dark lessons in your mind that hurt and hinder you, and everyone around you. 4 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. 5 Every dark lesson teaches this, in one form or another. 6 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. T-14.XI.6. Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything that you have taught yourself. 2 How would you know? 3 Your part is very simple. 4 You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not want. 5 Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned. 6 When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself: p297 7 I do not know what anything, including this, means. 8 And so I do not know how to respond to it. 9 And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now. 10 By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. 11 He will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant you abandon it, and offer it to Him. T-14.XI.7. You cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary. 2 And because you did, the means on which you can depend for miracles has been provided for you. 3 God's Son can make no needs his Father will not meet, if he but turn to Him ever so little. 4 Yet He cannot compel His Son to turn to Him and remain Himself. 5 It is impossible that God lose His Identity, for if He did, you would lose yours. 6 And being yours He cannot change Himself, for your Identity is changeless. 7 The miracle acknowledges His changelessness by seeing His Son as he always was, and not as he would make himself. 8 The miracle brings the effects that only guiltlessness can bring, and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness must be. T-14.XI.8. How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness? 2 That is impossible. 3 But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it impossible. 4 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. 5 Thus would you make Him undependable, and use this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons from Him. 6 And by so limiting the guidance that you would accept, you are unable to depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you. T-14.XI.9. Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you give He would withhold from you? 2 You have no problems that He cannot solve by offering you a miracle. 3 Miracles are for you. 4 And every fear or pain or trial you have has been undone. 5 He has brought all of them to light, having accepted them instead of you, and recognized they never were. 6 There are no dark lessons He has not already lightened for you. 7 The lessons you would teach yourself He has corrected already. 8 They do not exist in His Mind at all. 9 For the past binds Him not, and therefore binds not you. 10 He does not see time as you do. 11 And each miracle He offers you corrects your use of time, and makes it His. p298 T-14.XI.10. He Who has freed you from the past would teach you are free of it. 2 He would but have you accept His accomplishments as yours, because He did them for you. 3 And because He did, they yours. 4 He has made you free of what you made. 5 You can deny Him, but you cannot call on Him in vain. 6 He always gives His gifts in place of yours. 7 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. 8 Thank God that He is there and works through you. 9 And all His works are yours. 10 He offers you a miracle with every one you let Him do through you. T-14.XI.11. God's Son will always be indivisible. 2 As we are held as one in God, so do we learn as one in Him. 3 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. 4 Listen in silence, and do not raise your voice against Him. 5 For He teaches the miracle of oneness, and before His lesson division disappears. 6 Teach like Him here, and you will remember that you have always created like your Father. 7 The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. 8 This is the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this. T-14.XI.12. Those who remember always that they know nothing, and who have become willing to learn everything, will learn it. 2 But whenever they trust themselves, they will not learn. 3 They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they already know. 4 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. 5 Each brings the other with it, for it is the law of God they be not separate. 6 They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absent the other cannot be. T-14.XI.13. Only those who recognize they cannot know unless the effects of understanding are with them, can really learn at all. 2 For this it must be peace they want, and nothing else. 3 Whenever you think you know, peace will depart from you, because you have abandoned the Teacher of peace. 4 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. 5 Call not upon the ego for anything; it is only this that you need do. 6 The Holy Spirit will, of Himself, fill every mind that so makes room for Him. T-14.XI.14. If you want peace you must abandon the teacher of attack. 2 The Teacher of peace will never abandon you. 3 You can desert Him but He will never reciprocate, for His faith in you is His understanding. p299 4 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. 5 In this consistency lies His Holiness which He cannot abandon, for it is not His Will to do so. 6 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. 7 Make way for peace, and it will come. 8 For understanding is in you, and from it peace must come. T-14.XI.15. The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is His. 2 You think you know Him not, only because, alone, it is impossible to know Him. 3 Yet see the mighty works that He will do through you, and you must be convinced you did them through Him. 4 It is impossible to deny the Source of effects so powerful they could not be of you. 5 Leave room for Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power that nothing will prevail against your peace. 6 And this will be the test by which you recognize that you have understood. p300 Chapter 15. THE HOLY INSTANT I. The Two Uses of Time T-15.I.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? 2 Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. 3 God's Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. 4 He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. 5 When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn. T-15.I.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. 2 This is not so. 3 For the Holy Spirit uses time in His Own way, and is not bound by it. 4 Time is His friend in teaching. 5 It does not waste Him, as it does you. 6 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. 7 The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. 8 To the ego the goal is death, which its end. 9 But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which no end. T-15.I.3. The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. 2 For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate. 3 The ego wants dead, but not itself. 4 The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. 5 And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace even in death, it offers you immortality in hell. 6 It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. 7 How can the guilty hope for Heaven? T-15.I.4. The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. 2 Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. 3 The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. 4 Hell is its goal. 5 For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. 6 The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. 7 No one who follows the ego's teaching is without the fear of death. p301 8 Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? 9 We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought system before, but never so clearly as here. 10 For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. 11 Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. 12 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. 13 The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. 14 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. 15 Such is the ego's version of immortality. 16 And it is this the ego's version of time supports. T-15.I.5. The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. 2 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. 3 For it tells him hell is here as well, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. 4 The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. 5 And even there, its only value is that it is no more. T-15.I.6. How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! 2 And how terrifying! 3 For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. 4 The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that it can offer them escape. 5 But the belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. 6 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. 7 For no one who considers himself as deserving of hell can believe that punishment will end in peace. T-15.I.7. The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. 2 Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. 3 The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. 4 The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. 5 For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. 6 There is no escape from fear in the ego's use of time. 7 For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever. T-15.I.8. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this 2 Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. p302 3 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. 4 Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. 5 And the present extends forever. 6 It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. 7 No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now. T-15.I.9. This lesson takes no time. 2 For what is time without a past and future? 3 It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. 4 Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. 5 Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. 6 Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. 7 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. T-15.I.10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. 2 Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. 3 In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. 4 And Heaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation from change. 5 Change is an illusion, taught by those who cannot see themselves as guiltless. 6 There is no change in Heaven because there is no change in God. 7 In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you will remember God. 8 For remembering Him to remember freedom. T-15.I.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?" 2 Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? 3 He asks no more, for He has no need of more. 4 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. 5 In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity. T-15.I.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. 2 For the instant of holiness is shared, and cannot be yours alone. 3 Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a brother, that his instant of release is yours. 4 Miracles are the instants of release you offer, and will receive. p303 5 They attest to your willingness to released, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it. T-15.I.13. How long is an instant? 2 It is as short for your brother as it is for you. 3 Practice giving this blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time, and thus make time their friend for them. 4 The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to you through your giving it. 5 As you give it, He offers it to you. 6 Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join with Him in giving. 7 In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is your instantaneous escape from guilt. 8 You must be holy if you offer holiness. T-15.I.14. How long is an instant? 2 As long as it takes to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace and perfect love for everyone, for God and for yourself. 3 As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations who share it with you. 4 As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. 5 Long enough to transcend all of the ego's making, and ascend unto your Father. T-15.I.15. Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. 2 He needs but very little to restore God's whole power to you. 3 He Who transcends time for you understands what time is for. 4 Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. 5 There never was an instant in which God's Son could lose his purity. 6 His changeless state is beyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and without variability. 7 Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. 8 And so it is no longer time at all. 9 For caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God's creation, it is transformed into forever. 10 Give the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered for you, in that shining instant of perfect release. 11 Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit, and leave His giving it to you to Him. II. The End of Doubt T-15.II.1. The Atonement is time, but not time. 2 Being in you, it is eternal. 3 What holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. 4 No more are you. 5 For unless God is bound, you cannot be. 6 An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. 7 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. p304 8 What can take time, when all the obstacles to learning it have been removed? 9 Truth is so far beyond time that all of it happens at once. 10 For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all. T-15.II.2. Do not be concerned with time, and fear not the instant of holiness that will remove all fear. 2 For the instant of peace is eternal it is without fear. 3 It will come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher He has appointed to translate time into eternity. 4 Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. 5 His joy is not contained in time. 6 His teaching is for you because His joy is yours. 7 Through Him you stand before God's altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. 8 For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be. T-15.II.3. How long can it take to be where God would have you? 2 For you are where you have forever been and will forever be. 3 All that you have, you have forever. 4 The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass you. 5 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. 6 In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own. T-15.II.4. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support. 2 As a result, they witness to the ego in your perception, and seem to provide reasons for not letting it go. 3 Yet they are far stronger and much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. 4 And they support His strength. 5 It is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you. 6 And you will recognize which you have chosen by reactions. 7 A Son of God who has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother is always recognized. 8 He cannot be denied. 9 If you remain uncertain, it is only because you have not given complete release. 10 And because of this, you have not given a single instant completely to the Holy Spirit. 11 For when you have, you will be sure you have. 12 You will be sure because the witness to Him will speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand. 13 You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released through the Holy Spirit. 14 And then you will doubt no more. T-15.II.5. The holy instant has not yet happened to you. 2 Yet it will, and you will recognize it with perfect certainty. p305 3 No gift of God is recognized in any other way. 4 You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant, and will learn much from doing so. 5 Yet its shining and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this world by its own vision, you cannot supply. 6 And here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished and given wholly. T-15.II.6. Start now to practice your little part in separating out the holy instant. 2 You will receive very specific instructions as you go along. 3 To learn to separate out this single second, and to experience it as timeless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate. 4 Fear not that you will not be given help in this. 5 God's Teacher and His lesson will support your strength. 6 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. 7 Use it but for one instant, and you will never deny it again. 8 Who can deny the Presence of what the universe bows to, in appreciation and gladness? 9 Before the recognition of the universe that witnesses to It, your doubts must disappear. III. Littleness versus Magnitude T-15.III.1. Be not content with littleness. 2 But be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never be content with it. 3 Littleness is the offering you give yourself. 4 You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it. 5 Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you. 6 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. 7 Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. 8 You will always choose one at the expense of the other. T-15.III.2. Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. 2 Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it. 3 And whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. 4 It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. 5 You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your homecoming. 6 For you will be content only in magnitude, which is your home. p306 T-15.III.3. There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one you must learn to remember all the time. 2 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. 3 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. 4 Believe the little can content you, and by limiting yourself you will not be satisfied. 5 For your function is not little, and it is only by finding your function and fulfilling it that you can escape from littleness. T-15.III.4. There is no doubt about what your function is, for the Holy Spirit knows what it is. 2 There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him Magnitude. 3 You do not have to strive for it, because you have it. 4 All your striving must be directed against littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. 5 To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness is a task the little cannot undertake. 6 Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude and not your littleness. 7 Nor is it asked of you alone. 8 The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of His dear Son. 9 Search for the little, and you deny yourself His power. 10 God is not willing that His Son be content with less than everything. 11 For He is not content without His Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than his Father has given him. T-15.III.5. I asked you earlier, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?" 2 Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit every time you make a decision. 3 For every decision you make does answer this, and invites sorrow or joy accordingly. 4 When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He established you as host to Him forever. 5 He has not left you, and you have not left Him. 6 All your attempts to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, cannot make little whom God has joined with Him. 7 Every decision you make is for Heaven or for hell, and brings you the awareness of what you decided for. T-15.III.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. 2 But for this, you cannot side against Him in what He wills for you. 3 Decide for God through Him. 4 For littleness, and the belief that you can be content with littleness, are decisions you make about yourself. 5 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. p307 6 Neither give littleness, nor accept it. 7 All honor is due the host of God. 8 Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you, and in Whom you dwell. 9 Touch no one, then, with littleness in the Name of Christ, eternal Host unto His Father. T-15.III.7. In this season (Christmas) which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for you. 2 It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself. 3 It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. 4 For God would give Himself you. 5 He reaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son's creations, but without leaving you. 6 Far beyond your little world but still in you, He extends forever. 7 Yet He brings all His extensions to you, as host to Him. T-15.III.8. Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind, and wander not in vain? 2 It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. 3 But it is sacrifice to accept anything less than glory. 4 Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honor of Him Whose host you are. 5 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. 6 Love is not little and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him. 7 Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you give slip into nothingness. T-15.III.9. Holy child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace? 2 Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. 3 It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. 4 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. 5 My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. 6 Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. 7 My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. 8 And you are of your Father. 9 Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness. T-15.III.10. Decide with me, who has decided to abide with you. 2 I will as my Father wills, knowing His Will is constant and at peace forever with itself. 3 You will be content with nothing but His Will. p308 4 Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. 5 What my Father loves I love as He does, and I can no more accept it as what it is not, than He can. 6 And no more can you. 7 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. 8 But you will gladly give, having received. 9 The host of God needs not seek to find anything. T-15.III.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. 2 Yet think not you can substitute your plan for His. 3 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. 4 Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. 5 And thus will you remember it. T-15.III.12. Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. 2 For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are. 3 Hear not his appeal to hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. 4 Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. 5 God's power is forever on the side of His host, for it protects only the peace in which He dwells. 6 Lay not littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars and reaches even to Heaven, because of what is given it. IV. Practicing the Holy Instant T-15.IV.1. This course is not beyond immediate learning, unless you believe that what God wills takes time. 2 And this means only that you would rather delay the recognition that His Will is so. 3 The holy instant is this instant and every instant. 4 The one you want it to be it is. 5 The one you would not have it be is lost to you. 6 You must decide when it is. 7 Delay it not. 8 For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. 9 Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness. T-15.IV.2. Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. 2 The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. p309 3 As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. 4 By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. 5 Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. 6 Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God's. 7 His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace. 8 For peace is of God, and no one beside Him. T-15.IV.3. Be humble before Him, and yet great Him. 2 And value no plan of the ego before the plan of God. 3 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. 4 I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world for its release from littleness. 5 God would have His host abide in perfect freedom. 6 Every allegiance to a plan of salvation apart from Him diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own mind. 7 And yet it is your mind that is the host to Him. T-15.IV.4. Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which your Father has placed Himself? 2 This you will recognize in the holy instant, in which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but His. 3 For there lies peace, perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its conditions. 4 You can claim the holy instant any time and anywhere you want it. 5 In your practice, try to give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. 6 7 Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know where it is, and can only deceive yourself. T-15.IV.5. I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. 2 And the extent to which you learn to accept me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. 3 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. T-15.IV.6. The reason this course is simple is that truth is simple. 2 Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious. 3 You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. 4 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. 5 The simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. 6 This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. p310 7 It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. 8 It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything. T-15.IV.7. How can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them? 2 The only way you could do that would be to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instant what it is. 3 You believe you can harbor thoughts you would not share, and that salvation lies in keeping thoughts to yourself alone. 4 For in private thoughts, known only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep what you would have alone, and share what would share. 5 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. T-15.IV.8. Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off, because you would have it so. 2 It is impossible to recognize perfect communication while breaking communication holds value to you. 3 Ask yourself honestly, "Would I want to have perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything that interferes with it go forever?" 4 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. 5 And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose it. 6 For the holy instant is given and received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the single Will that governs all thought. T-15.IV.9. The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. 2 But it does require that you have none that you would keep. 3 Innocence is not of your making. 4 It is given you the instant you would have it. 5 Atonement would not be if there were no need for it. 6 You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself. 7 For what you would hide hidden from you. 8 In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself. 9 Let the Holy Spirit's purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. 10 Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing. p311 V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships T-15.V.1. The holy instant is the Holy Spirit's most useful learning device for teaching you love's meaning. 2 For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. 3 Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. 4 Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understand anything. 5 You would make no attempt to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not understand what anything means. 6 You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. 7 Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love. T-15.V.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. 2 We have said that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. 3 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. 4 How, then, could guilt not enter? 5 For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. 6 To be alone to be guilty. 7 For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality. T-15.V.3. You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. 2 If you would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can you understand it? 3 To believe that relationships, with love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation. 4 For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies. 5 How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can give you more than others? 6 The past has taught you this. 7 Yet the holy instant teaches you it is not so. T-15.V.4. Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. 2 This is why they shift and change so frequently. 3 They are not based on changeless love alone. 4 And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. 5 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. 6 Under His teaching, every relationship becomes a lesson in love. p312 T-15.V.5. The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. 2 Yet He also perceives that you have made special relationships, which He would purify and not let you destroy. 3 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. 4 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. 5 All the guilt in it arises from your use of it. 6 All the love from His. 7 Do not, then, be afraid to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship. 8 Your only need is His. T-15.V.6. Any relationship you would substitute for another has not been offered to the Holy Spirit for His use. 2 There no substitute for love. 3 If you would attempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you have placed less value on one and more on the other. 4 You have not only separated them, but you have also judged against both. 5 Yet you had judged against yourself first, or you would never have imagined that you needed your brothers as they were not. 6 Unless you had seen yourself as without love, you could not have judged them so like you in lack. T-15.V.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. 2 Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. 3 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. T-15.V.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. 2 In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. 3 Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. 4 Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. 5 In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present. T-15.V.9. God knows you 2 He remembers nothing, having always known you exactly as He knows you now. 3 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. 4 Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. p313 5 His frame of reference is simply God. 6 The Holy Spirit's timelessness lies only here. 7 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. T-15.V.10. All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because the blessing is not limited. 2 In the holy instant the Sonship gains as one, and united in your blessing it becomes one to you. 3 The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. 4 Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it. 5 God loves every brother as He loves you; neither less nor more. 6 He needs them all equally, and so do you. 7 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. 8 Yet in the holy instant you unite directly with God, and all your brothers join in Christ. 9 Those who are joined in Christ are in no way separate. 10 For Christ is the Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ. T-15.V.11. Think you that you can judge the Self of God? 2 God has created It beyond judgment, out of His need to extend His Love. 3 With love in you, you have no need except to extend it. 4 In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs, for there is only one. 5 For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God. 6 And it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be understood. VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God T-15.VI.1. It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt. 2 And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it. 3 Under the Holy Spirit's teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. 4 Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. 5 And this you cannot have while guilt remains. 6 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. T-15.VI.2. You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. 2 And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. p314 3 I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts. 4 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. 5 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. 6 And so we love him. T-15.VI.3. All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. 2 For holiness is power, and by sharing it, it gains in strength. 3 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. 4 Someone must always lose if you perceive yourself as weak. 5 Yet there is another interpretation of relationships that transcends the concept of loss of power completely. T-15.VI.4. You do not find it difficult to believe that when another calls on God for love, your call remains as strong. 2 Nor do you think that when God answers him, your hope of answer is diminished. 3 On the contrary, you are more inclined to regard his success as witness to the possibility of yours. 4 That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is strengthened by sharing. 5 What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your Father, are an idea. 6 And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. 7 Herein lies peace, for here there no conflict. T-15.VI.5. In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible. 2 For gain and loss are both accepted, and so no one is aware that perfect love is in him. 3 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. 4 By holding it within itself, there no loss. 5 The holy instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind, experiencing not loss but completion. 6 From this it follows you can only give. 7 And this love, for this alone is natural under the laws of God. 8 In the holy instant the laws of God prevail, and only they have meaning. 9 The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning at all. 10 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. 11 In that instant he is as free as God would have him be. 12 For the instant he refuses to be bound, he is not bound. T-15.VI.6. In the holy instant nothing happens that has not always been. 2 Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. 3 Nothing has changed. p315 4 Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside. 5 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. 6 Yet the Holy Spirit gives you this faith, because He offered it to me and I accepted it. 7 Fear not the holy instant will be denied you, for I denied it not. 8 And through me the Holy Spirit gives it unto you, as you will give it. 9 Let no need you perceive obscure your need of this. 10 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. T-15.VI.7. It is through that peace will come. 2 Join me in the idea of peace, for in ideas minds can communicate. 3 If you would give yourself as your Father gives His Self, you will learn to understand Selfhood. 4 And therein is love's meaning understood. 5 But remember that understanding is of the mind, and only of the mind. 6 Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in the mind with it. 7 If you were not an idea, and nothing but an idea, you could not be in full communication with all that ever was. 8 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. T-15.VI.8. In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of communication with all your brothers is remembered with Him. 2 For communication is remembered together, as is truth. 3 There is no exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone, and with it goes the whole basis for exclusion. 4 Without its source exclusion vanishes. 5 And this permits your Source, and that of all your brothers, to replace it in your awareness. 6 God and the power of God will take Their rightful place in you, and you will experience the full communication of ideas with ideas. 7 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. p316 VII. The Needless Sacrifice T-15.VII.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. 2 There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there no other love. 3 This is the only love that is fully given and fully returned. 4 Being complete, it asks nothing. 5 Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it has everything. 6 This is not the basis for any relationship in which the ego enters. 7 For every relationship on which the ego embarks special. T-15.VII.2. The ego establishes relationships only to get something. 2 And it would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt. 3 It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for the ego believes that anger makes friends. 4 This is not its statement, but it its purpose. 5 For the ego really believes that it can get and keep 6 This is its one attraction; an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all, except that no one recognizes it. 7 For the ego always seems to attract through love, and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt. T-15.VII.3. The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. 2 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. 3 No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. 4 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. 5 As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. 6 You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. 7 This host of God can have no real investment here. T-15.VII.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. 2 For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. 3 The ego wishes no one well. 4 Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. 5 It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. 6 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. p317 T-15.VII.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. 2 For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who cannot make himself host to the ego. 3 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. 4 For it is certain that if you will look at them, you will offer them gladly to Him. 5 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. T-15.VII.6. In one way or another, every relationship the ego makes is based on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. 2 The "sacrifice," which it regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. 3 For it would prefer to attack directly, and avoid delaying what it really wants. 4 Yet the ego acknowledges "reality" as it sees it, and recognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. 5 Yet to make guilty direct attack, although it does not seem to be. 6 For the guilty expect attack, and having asked for it they are attracted to it. T-15.VII.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. 2 For each one thinks that he has sacrificed something to the other, and hates him for it. 3 Yet this is what he thinks he wants. 4 He is not in love with the other at all. 5 He merely believes he is in love with sacrifice. 6 And for this sacrifice, which he demands of himself, he demands that the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself as well. 7 Forgiveness becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another is to lose him. 8 It is only by attack without forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt that holds all its relationships together. T-15.VII.8. Yet they only to be together. 2 For relationships, to the ego, mean only that bodies are together. 3 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. 4 As long as the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. 5 To the ego the mind is private, and only the body can be shared. 6 Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they bring the body of another closer or farther. 7 And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as good or bad. 8 What makes another guilty and holds him through guilt is "good." 9 What releases him from guilt is "bad," because he would no longer believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be "gone." p318 T-15.VII.9. Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would "bless" all unions. 2 And those who are united at its altar accept suffering and sacrifice as the price of union. 3 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. 4 For each believes that this decreases guilt in him. 5 The other seems always to be attacking and wounding him, perhaps in little ways, perhaps "unconsciously," yet never without demand of sacrifice. 6 The fury of those joined at the ego's altar far exceeds your awareness of it. 7 For what the ego really wants you do not realize. T-15.VII.10. Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship which the ego has "blessed," for anger its blessing. 2 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 be anger. 3 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. 4 Guilt is the only need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remain attractive to you. 5 Yet remember this; to be with a body is not communication. 6 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. T-15.VII.11. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear. 2 And how can He communicate with you, while you believe that to communicate is to make yourself alone? 3 It is clearly insane to believe that by communicating you will be abandoned. 4 And yet many do believe it. 5 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. 6 The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which they would keep minds apart. 7 For bodies cannot forgive. 8 They can only do as the mind directs. T-15.VII.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. 2 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. 3 And you will see safety in guilt and danger in communication. 4 For the ego will always teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the cause of loneliness. p319 5 And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, many have learned it. T-15.VII.13. Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt. 2 It is the Holy Spirit's teaching function to instruct those who believe communication to be damnation that communication is salvation. 3 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. T-15.VII.14. It is through the holy instant that what seems impossible is accomplished, making it evident that it is not impossible. 2 In the holy instant guilt holds no attraction, since communication has been restored. 3 And guilt, whose only purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here. 4 Here there is no concealment, and no private thoughts. 5 The willingness to communicate attracts communication to it, and overcomes loneliness completely. 6 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. 7 In the protection of your wholeness, all are invited and made welcome. 8 And you understand that your completion is God's, Whose only need is to have you be complete. 9 For your completion makes you His in your awareness. 10 And here it is that you experience yourself as you were created, and as you are. VIII. The Only Real Relationship T-15.VIII.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. 2 For a teaching assignment such as His, He must use everything in this world for your release. 3 He must side with every sign or token of your willingness to learn of Him what the truth must be. 4 He is swift to utilize whatever you offer Him on behalf of this. 5 His concern and care for you are limitless. 6 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. 7 And that in complete forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely. p320 T-15.VIII.2. Hear Him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. 2 You but seek in them what you have thrown away. 3 And through them you will never learn the value of what you have cast aside, but still desire with all your heart. 4 Let us join together in making the holy instant all that there is, by desiring that it all that there is. 5 God's Son has such great need of your willingness to strive for this that you cannot conceive of need so great. 6 Behold the only need that God and His Son share, and will to meet together. 7 You are not alone in this. 8 The will of your creations calls to you, to share your will with them. 9 Turn, then, in peace from guilt to God and them. T-15.VIII.3. Relate only with what will never leave you, and what you can never leave. 2 The loneliness of God's Son is the loneliness of his Father. 3 Refuse not the awareness of your completion, and seek not to restore it to yourself. 4 Fear not to give redemption over to your Redeemer's Love. 5 He will not fail you, for He comes from One Who cannot fail. 6 Accept your sense of failure as nothing more than a mistake in who you are. 7 For the holy host of God is beyond failure, and nothing that he wills can be denied. 8 You are forever in a relationship so holy that it calls to everyone to escape from loneliness, and join you in your love. 9 And where you are must everyone seek, and find you there. T-15.VIII.4. Think but an instant on this: God gave the Sonship to you, to ensure your perfect creation. 2 This was His gift, for as He withheld Himself not from you, He withheld not His creation. 3 Nothing that ever was created but is yours. 4 Your relationships are with the universe. 5 And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. 6 For all its parts are joined in God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. 7 Christ knows of no separation from His Father, Who is His one relationship, in which He gives as His Father gives to Him. T-15.VIII.5. The Holy Spirit is God's attempt to free you of what He does not understand. 2 And because of the Source of the attempt, it will succeed. 3 The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God does, for He would teach you what you do not understand. 4 God would respond to every need, whatever form it takes. 5 And so He keeps this channel open to receive His communication to you, and yours to Him. 6 God does not understand your problem in communication, for He does not share it with you. 7 It is only you who believe that it is understandable. 8 The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable, and yet He understands it because you made it. p321 T-15.VIII.6. In the Holy Spirit alone lies the awareness of what God cannot know, and what you do not understand. 2 It is His holy function to accept them both, and by removing every element of disagreement, to join them into one. 3 He will do this because it is His function. 4 Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it must be possible because it is the Will of God. 5 And let Him Whose teaching is only of God teach you the only meaning of relationships. 6 For God created the only relationship that has meaning, and that is His relationship with you. IX. The Holy Instant and the Attraction of God T-15.IX.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. 2 It is this shift to vision that is accomplished in the holy instant. 3 Yet it is needful for you to learn just what this shift entails, so you will become willing to make it permanent. 4 Given this willingness it will not leave you, for it permanent. 5 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. 6 Therefore, in this there will be no delay when you are ready for it. 7 God is ready now, but you are not. T-15.IX.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. 2 For it is impossible to recognize as wholly without gratification what you think you want. 3 The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation. 4 And both are nothing more than attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it impossible. 5 For communication must be unlimited in order to have meaning, and deprived of meaning, it will not satisfy you completely. 6 Yet it remains the only means by which you can establish real relationships, which have no limits, having been established by God. T-15.IX.3. In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you. 2 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. p322 3 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. 4 This will never be accomplished. 5 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. T-15.IX.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. 2 Love would give increase. 3 Limits are demanded by the ego, and represent its demands to make little and ineffectual. 4 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. 5 His body cannot give it. 6 And seek it not through yours. 7 Yet your minds are already continuous, and their union need only be accepted and the loneliness in Heaven is gone. T-15.IX.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. 2 No one can hear Him speak of this and long remain willing to linger here. 3 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. 4 Would you not exchange your little relationships for this? 5 For the body 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. T-15.IX.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. 2 But this you must remember; the attraction of guilt opposes the attraction of God. 3 His attraction for you remains unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, you can turn away from love. 4 What you invest in guilt you withdraw from God. 5 And your sight grows weak and dim and limited, for you have attempted to separate the Father from the Son, and limit their communication. 6 Seek not Atonement in further separation. 7 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. 8 For his belief in limits imprisoned him. p323 T-15.IX.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. 2 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. 3 In the holy instant there are no bodies, and you experience only the attraction of God. 4 Accepting it as undivided you join Him wholly, in an instant, for you would place no limits on your union with Him. 5 The reality of this relationship becomes the only truth that you could ever want. 6 All truth here. X. The Time of Rebirth T-15.X.1. It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. 2 For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. 3 Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. 4 But here it is the Holy Spirit's function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. 5 This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. 6 Yet you know not how to do it. 7 Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate birth through Him. 8 The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. 9 Release me as I choose your own release. 10 The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart. T-15.X.2. The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. 2 For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. 3 What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? 4 And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. 5 I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. 6 Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. 7 And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you. T-15.X.3. We who are one cannot give separately. 2 When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. 3 For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. 4 The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. 5 Give it to me, that you may have it. p324 6 The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. 7 And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone. T-15.X.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. 2 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. 3 It seems like many, but it is all the same. 4 For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. 5 What is not love is always fear, and nothing else. T-15.X.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. 2 Yet it necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. 3 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. 4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. 5 This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. 6 You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. 7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. 9 And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. 11 Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. 12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what. T-15.X.6. As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. 2 And the payment does not seem to be yours. 3 While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. 4 You are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. 5 The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. 6 For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. 7 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. p325 8 And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear. T-15.X.7. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! 2 For total love would demand total sacrifice. 3 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. 4 For you see love as destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? 5 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. 6 And this you think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you. T-15.X.8. You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. 2 Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. 3 The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. 4 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. 5 To Him you ascribed the ego's treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from Him. 6 And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. 7 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. T-15.X.9. You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. 2 Nor can you be partial host to it. 3 You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. 4 You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make. 5 And yet it is the recognition of the decision, that makes the decision so easy. 6 Salvation is simple, being of God, and therefore very easy to understand. 7 Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself. 8 In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God. p326 XI. Christmas as the End of Sacrifice T-15.XI.1. Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making. 2 And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where it is not. 3 Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you. 4 And you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety. 5 Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the Thought that has been given you. 6 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. T-15.XI.2. The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. 2 See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. 3 He comes demanding nothing. 4 No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. 5 In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning. 6 For He is Host to God. 7 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. 8 Love must be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it. 9 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. T-15.XI.3. This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. 2 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. 3 Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me. 4 All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. 5 Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. 6 And without sacrifice there love be. T-15.XI.4. You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. 2 For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. 3 Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. 4 Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. p327 5 Through peace you invite them back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be. 6 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. 7 Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? 8 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? T-15.XI.5. As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. 2 And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others. 3 For who could thrust Heaven and its Creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? 4 And who could suffer sacrifice and loss without attempting to restore himself? 5 Yet how could you accomplish this yourself, when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the deprivation? 6 Deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack is justified. 7 And as long as you would retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love. T-15.XI.6. So is it that, in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it. 2 Yet you find not love. 3 It is impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. 4 The meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning apart from you. 5 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. 6 Unless the universe were joined in you it would be apart from God, and to be without Him to be without meaning. T-15.XI.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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 Where, then, sacrifice? 5 The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. 6 For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re- establishes, love comes of itself. p328 T-15.XI.8. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. 2 Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. 3 What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? 4 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. 5 For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son's creation. T-15.XI.9. God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and lets Him enter and abide where He would be. 2 And by your welcome does He welcome you into Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome Him is returned to Him. 3 And we but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves. 4 Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them. 5 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. T-15.XI.10. This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. 2 I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. 3 Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. 4 Say, then, to your brother: 5 I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself. 6 I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. 7 In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together. 8 So will the year begin in joy and freedom. 9 There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. 10 Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. 11 Make this year different by making it all the same. 12 And let all your relationships be made holy for you. 13 This is our will. 14 Amen. p329