Chapter 4. THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO Introduction T-4.in.1. The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. 2 It certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. 3 Devotion to a brother cannot set you back either. 4 It can lead only to mutual progress. 5 The result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is the opposite of fatigue. 6 To be fatigued is to be dis-spirited, but to be inspired is to be in the spirit. 7 To be egocentric is to be dis- spirited, but to be Self-centered in the right sense is to be inspired or in spirit. 8 The truly inspired are enlightened and cannot abide in darkness. T-4.in.2. You can speak from the spirit or from the ego, as you choose. 2 If you speak from spirit you have chosen to "Be still and know that I am God." 3 These words are inspired because they reflect knowledge. 4 If you speak from the ego you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming it, and are thus dis- spiriting yourself. 5 Do not embark on useless journeys, because they are indeed in vain. 6 The ego may desire them, but spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its Foundation. T-4.in.3. The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey." 2 Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. 3 If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. 4 Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. 5 It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. 6 Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. 7 Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." 8 The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. 9 Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. 10 This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. 11 We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. p52 I. Right Teaching and Right Learning T-4.I.1. A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them. 2 Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. 3 They are in the same order of learning, and unless they share their lessons conviction will be lacking. 4 A good teacher must believe in the ideas he teaches, but he must meet another condition; he must believe in the students to whom he offers the ideas. T-4.I.2. Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change. 2 Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation. 3 They always perceive it as a move toward further separation, because the separation was their first experience of change. 4 You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego you will find peace. 5 This profound confusion is possible only if you maintain that the same thought system can stand on two foundations. 6 Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. 7 Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. 8 The ego a contradiction. 9 Your self and God's Self in opposition. 10 They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. 11 They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. 12 They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication. 13 Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker can be misguided. 14 He cannot, however, make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. T-4.I.3. Spirit need not be taught, but the ego must be. 2 Learning is ultimately perceived as frightening because it leads to the relinquishment, not the destruction, of the ego to the light of spirit. 3 This is the change the ego must fear, because it does not share my charity. 4 My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. 5 I will never attack your ego, but I am trying to teach you how its thought system arose. 6 When I remind you of your true creation, your ego cannot but respond with fear. T-4.I.4. Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. 2 Refusing to change your mind will not prove that the separation has not occurred. 3 The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind. p53 4 You dream of a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. 5 This is very real to you. 6 You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it. 7 If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God. T-4.I.5. Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own learning that they will one day no longer need him. 2 This is the one true goal of the teacher. 3 It is impossible to convince the ego of this, because it goes against all of its own laws. 4 But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the lawmaker believes. 5 It is natural for the ego to try to protect itself once you have made it, but it is not natural for you to want to obey its laws unless believe them. 6 The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin. 7 You can, because of the nature of yours. T-4.I.6. Egos can clash in any situation, but spirit cannot clash at all. 2 If you perceive a teacher as merely "a larger ego" you will be afraid, because to enlarge an ego would be to increase anxiety about separation. 3 I will teach with you and live with you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need for a teacher. 4 This is the opposite of the ego-oriented teacher's goal. 5 He is concerned with the effect of his ego on other egos, and therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego preservation. 6 I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as you believe it. 7 I am constantly being perceived as a teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself. T-4.I.7. Your worth is not established by teaching or learning. 2 Your worth is established by God. 3 As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority. 4 Teachers must be patient and repeat their lessons until they are learned. 5 I am willing to do this, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you. 6 Again,-nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. 7 This point is not debatable except in delusions. 8 Your ego is never at stake because God did not create it. 9 Your spirit is never at stake because He did. 10 Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts. T-4.I.8. The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. p54 2 It will remain doubtful as long as you believe in its existence. 3 You who made it cannot trust it, because in your right mind you realize it is not real. 4 The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is. 5 You are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of spirit. 6 When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. 7 Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are. T-4.I.9. God is not the author of fear. 2 You are. 3 You have chosen to create unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself. 4 You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. 5 God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting. 6 Your ego has chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it. 7 When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible. 8 9 Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable. 10 The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. 11 God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you. T-4.I.10. The ego is afraid of the spirit's joy, because once you have experienced it you will withdraw all protection from the ego, and become totally without investment in fear. 2 Your investment is great now because fear is a witness to the separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it. 3 Leave it behind! 4 Do not listen to it and do not preserve it. 5 Listen only to God, Who is as incapable of deception as is the spirit He created. 6 Release yourself and release others. 7 Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourself to others, and do not accept such a picture of them yourself. T-4.I.11. The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you, because it cannot build otherwise. 2 Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. 3 Its weakness is your strength. 4 Only God could make a home that is worthy of His creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession. 5 Yet His home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter it. 6 Of this you can be wholly certain. 7 God is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of making the eternal. T-4.I.12. Of your ego you can do nothing to save yourself or others, but of your spirit you can do everything for the salvation of both. p55 2 Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. 3 Spirit is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance and gladly sheds its light everywhere. 4 The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them truer perception. 5 The Kingdom of Heaven is the spirit's right, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the Love of God for His creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and only of Him. 6 Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself. T-4.I.13. I will substitute for your ego if you wish, but never for your spirit. 2 A father can safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves no confusion about the child's origin. 3 The brother can protect the child's body and his ego, but he does not confuse himself with the father because he does this. 4 I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance. 5 I could not understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself. 6 Let us undertake to learn this lesson together so we can be free of them together. 7 I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. 8 Spirit is far beyond the need of your protection or mine. 9 Remember this: 10 In this world you need not have tribulation because I have overcome the world. 11 That is why you should be of good cheer. II. The Ego and False Autonomy T-4.II.1. It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. 2 In fact, it is the best question you could ask. 3 There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. 4 Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding. 5 Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete. T-4.II.2. Everyone makes an ego or a self for himself, which is subject to enormous variation because of its instability. 2 He also makes an ego for everyone else he perceives, which is equally variable. p56 3 Their interaction is a process that alters both, because they were not made by or with the Unalterable. 4 It is important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place in the mind as when it involves physical proximity. 5 Thinking about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is physical interaction. 6 There could be no better example that the ego is only an idea and not a fact. T-4.II.3. Your own state of mind is a good example of how the ego was made. 2 When you threw knowledge away it is as if you never had it. 3 This is so apparent that one need only recognize it to see that it does happen. 4 If this occurs in the present, why is it surprising that it occurred in the past? 5 Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, though hardly to something that occurs with such persistence. 6 But do not forget that the mind need not work that way, even though it does work that way now. T-4.II.4. Think of the love of animals for their offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. 2 That is because they regard them as part of themselves. 3 No one dismisses something he considers part of himself. 4 You react to your ego much as God does to His creations,-with love, protection and charity. 5 Your reactions to the self you made are not surprising. 6 In fact, they resemble in many ways how you will one day react to your real creations, which are as timeless as you are. 7 The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. 8 Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. 9 When teaching is no longer necessary you will merely know God. 10 Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. 11 That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self. T-4.II.5. Undermining the ego's thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. 2 Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors, although they may well harm themselves if you do not. 3 In this sense you are still a baby. 4 You have no sense of real self-preservation, and are likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. 5 Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that must go together. 6 Your attitudes even toward this are necessarily conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. 7 This will not last. 8 Be patient a while and remember that the outcome is as certain as God. p57 T-4.II.6. Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. 2 This is obvious when you consider what is involved. 3 To the ego, to give anything implies that you will have to do without it. 4 When you associate giving with sacrifice, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give. 5 "Giving to get" is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in relation to other egos. 6 It is therefore continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity that gave rise to it. 7 Its whole perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that is real. 8 "Self- esteem" in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory. 9 This "self-esteem" is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego's existence. T-4.II.7. The ego literally lives by comparisons. 2 Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible. 3 The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it. 4 That is why the concept of "getting" arose in the ego's thought system. 5 Appetites are "getting" mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself. 6 This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called "higher ego needs." 7 Body appetites are not physical in origin. 8 The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. 9 But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is really possible. T-4.II.8. The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. 2 This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. 3 It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. 4 The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own. 5 The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit's acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. 6 Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. 7 It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. 8 While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. 9 This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional. 10 The creations of God do not create myths, although creative effort can be turned to mythology. p58 11 It can do so, however, only under one condition; what it makes is then no longer creative. 12 Myths are entirely perceptual, and so ambiguous in form and characteristically good-and- evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful connotations. T-4.II.9. Myths and magic are closely associated, since myths are usually related to ego origins, and magic to the powers the ego ascribes to itself. 2 Mythological systems generally include some account of "the creation," and associate this with its particular form of magic. 3 The so-called "battle for survival" is only the ego's struggle to preserve itself, and its interpretation of its own beginning. 4 This beginning is usually associated with physical birth, because it is hard to maintain that the ego existed before that point in time. 5 The more "religiously" ego-oriented may believe that the soul existed before, and will continue to exist after a temporary lapse into ego life. 6 Some even believe that the soul will be punished for this lapse. 7 However, salvation does not apply to spirit, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. T-4.II.10. Salvation is nothing more than "right-mindedness," which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One- mindedness is restored. 2 Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, and therefore wrong- mindedness is obliterated. 3 The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. 4 The mind then has only one direction in which it can move. 5 Its direction is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which it adheres. T-4.II.11. It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting perception is merely a temporary expedient. 2 It is necessary only because misperception is a block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a steppingstone towards it. 3 The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable realization that perception is unnecessary. 4 This removes the block entirely. 5 You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. 6 That is a reasonable question. 7 You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. 8 Who is the "you" who are living in this world? 9 Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. 10 It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it implies no change at all. 11 It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. p59 12 Knowledge never involves comparisons. 13 That is its main difference from everything else the mind can grasp. III. Love without Conflict T-4.III.1. It is hard to understand what "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" really means. 2 This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. 3 The word "within" is unnecessary. 4 The Kingdom of Heaven you. 5 What else you did the Creator create, and what else you is His Kingdom? 6 This is the whole message of the Atonement; a message which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts. 7 You, too, have a Kingdom that your spirit created. 8 It has not ceased to create because of the ego's illusions. 9 Your creations are no more fatherless than you are. 10 Your ego and your spirit will never be co-creators, but your spirit and your Creator will always be. 11 Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. 13 Amen. T-4.III.2. This is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temptation. 2 It is a declaration of independence. 3 You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully. 4 The reason you need my help is because you have denied your own Guide and therefore need guidance. 5 My role is to separate the true from the false, so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and can shine into your mind. 6 Against our united strength the ego cannot prevail. T-4.III.3. It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards spirit as its "enemy." 2 The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. 3 The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. 4 All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. 5 It tells you this life is your existence because it is its own. 6 Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. 7 No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. p60 8 How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God? T-4.III.4. You who identify with your ego cannot believe God loves you. 2 You do not love what you made, and what you made does not love you. 3 Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its maker. 4 You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His creations because of your hatred for the self you made. 5 You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. 6 No love in this world is without this ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence the concept is beyond its understanding. 7 Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly. 8 This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego's "drive to get." T-4.III.5. There is a kind of experience so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never want to cover or hide it again. 2 It is necessary to repeat that your belief in darkness and hiding is why the light cannot enter. 3 The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for you, but for which you must ask. 4 This is not a condition as the ego sets conditions. 5 It is the glorious condition of what you are. T-4.III.6. No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. 2 In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever. 3 Let us ask the Father in my name to keep you mindful of His Love for you and yours for Him. 4 He has never failed to answer this request, because it asks only for what He has already willed. 5 Those who call truly are always answered. 6 Thou shalt have no other gods before Him because there none. T-4.III.7. It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that opposes knowledge. 2 You retain thousands of little scraps of fear that prevent the Holy One from entering. 3 Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make to block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made. 4 No one can see through a wall, but I can step around it. 5 Watch your mind for the scraps of fear, or you will be unable to ask me to do so. 6 I can help you only as our Father created us. 7 I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true. 8 I will never forsake you any more than God will, but I must wait as long as you choose to forsake yourself. p61 9 Because I wait in love and not in impatience, you will surely ask me truly. 10 I will come in response to a single unequivocal call. T-4.III.8. Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. 2 Be very honest with yourself in this, for we must hide nothing from each other. 3 If you will really try to do this, you have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for the Holy One to enter. 4 We will prepare for this together, for once He has come, you will be ready to help me make other minds ready for Him. 5 How long will you deny Him His Kingdom? T-4.III.9. In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. 2 3 This one fact means the ego does not exist, and this makes it profoundly afraid. 4 In the ego's language, "to have" and "to be" are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. 5 The Holy Spirit knows that you both everything and everything. 6 Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of "getting," which implies a lack, has already been accepted. 7 That is why we make no distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God. T-4.III.10. The calm being of God's Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind the ego rules. 2 The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are asleep or awake. 3 Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. 4 Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth? IV. This Need Not Be T-4.IV.1. If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. 2 That you listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior. 3 Yet this is what you want. 4 This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. 5 Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ. 6 The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. 7 How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? p62 8 But where you look to find yourself is up to you. T-4.IV.2. I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you change your mind. 2 When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then . 3 In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. 4 Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. 5 Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and then change your mind to think with God's. 6 This may seem hard to do, but it is much easier than trying to think against it. 7 Your mind is one with God's. 8 Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. 9 As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father. T-4.IV.3. When you are sad, . 2 Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. 3 Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise. T-4.IV.4. When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and . 2 You can be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them. T-4.IV.5. When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but have not. 2 Leave the "sins" of the ego to me. 3 That is what Atonement is for. 4 But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you. 5 While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt. 6 . T-4.IV.6. Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. 2 It offers you nothing. 3 When you have given up this voluntary dis- spiriting, you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. 4 Yet you are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself. 5 . T-4.IV.7. The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. 2 The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort. p63 3 Side with me consistently against this deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back. 4 The disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can disheartened. T-4.IV.8. Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you have refused? 2 There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. 3 Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. 4 Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal. 5 Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them. 6 Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment. 7 Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack or protect; to hurt or to heal. 8 The ego be brought to judgment and found wanting there. 9 Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist. 10 Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it. T-4.IV.9. You are a mirror of truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect light. 2 To the ego's dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there because I know these images are not true." 3 Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing that this and only this must be. 4 His Mind shone on you in your creation and brought your mind into being. 5 His Mind still shines on you and must shine through you. 6 Your ego cannot prevent Him from shining on you, but it can prevent you from letting Him shine through you. T-4.IV.10. The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God. 2 The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego's rule and the healing of the mind. 3 I was created like you in the First, and I have called you to join with me in the Second. 4 I am in charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks. 5 Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. 6 I assure you this is a mistake of your ego. 7 Do not mistake it for humility. 8 Your ego is trying to convince you that it is real and I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real than you are. 9 That knowledge, and I assure you that it knowledge, means that Christ has come into your mind and healed it. p64 T-4.IV.11. I do not attack your ego. 2 I do work with your higher mind, the home of the Holy Spirit, whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind, which is its home. 3 I am your vigilance in this, because you are too confused to recognize your own hope. 4 I am not mistaken. 5 Your mind will elect to join with mine, and together we are invincible. 6 You and your brother will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored. 7 I raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God created. 8 Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? 9 I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles; you do. 10 I have called and you will answer. 11 I understand that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love. 12 My calling you is as natural as your answer, and as inevitable. V. The Ego-Body Illusion T-4.V.1. All things work together for good. 2 There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment. 3 The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together. 4 The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominance. 5 The ego has every reason to do this, according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. 6 Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation. T-4.V.2. A major source of the ego's off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God. 2 Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself. 3 The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. 4 It cannot, however, make them cease to be. 5 It therefore tries to conceal not only "unacceptable" body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to it. 6 Being concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. 7 By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge. p65 T-4.V.3. Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane. 2 Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself. 3 In one sense the ego's fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego. 4 But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, makes no sense at all. T-4.V.4. The body is the ego's home by its own election. 2 It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. 3 This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. 4 Yet the ego hates the body, because it cannot accept it as good enough to be its home. 5 Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. 6 Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is its protector, the mind is also told that the body cannot protect it. 7 Therefore, the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?" to which the ego replies, "Turn to me." 8 The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to for protection. 9 The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but it does have a typical solution. 10 It obliterates the question from the mind's awareness. 11 Once out of awareness the question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked. T-4.V.5. This is the question that be asked: "Where can I go for protection?" 2 "Seek and ye shall find" does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize. 3 Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized and consciously directed. 4 The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind. 5 Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. 6 You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you. 7 However, not everything you may want to learn has lasting value. 8 Indeed, many of the things you want to learn may be chosen their value will not last. T-4.V.6. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is eternal, because the eternal must come from God. 2 Eternalness is the one function the ego has tried to develop, but has systematically failed to achieve. 3 The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues touching on the real question in any way. 4 By becoming involved with tangential issues, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. p66 5 The ego's characteristic busyness with nonessentials is for precisely that purpose. 6 Preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding learning progress. 7 In all these diversionary tactics, however, the one question that is never asked by those who pursue them is, "What for?" 8 This is the question that must learn to ask in connection with everything. 9 What is the purpose? 10 Whatever it is, it will direct your efforts automatically. 11 When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort; a decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind. VI. The Rewards of God T-4.VI.1. The ego does not recognize the real source of "threat," and if you associate yourself with the ego, you do not understand the situation as it is. 2 Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you. 3 I have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. 4 This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. 5 We cannot safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard yourself as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or as long as you believe that you are here. 6 The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself. 7 Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate it. T-4.VI.2. In learning to escape from illusions, your debt to your brother is something you must never forget. 2 It is the same debt that you owe to me. 3 Whenever you act egotistically towards another, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. 4 The term "holy" can be used here because, as you learn how much you are indebted to the whole Sonship, which includes me, you come as close to knowledge as perception can. 5 The gap is then so small that knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it forever. T-4.VI.3. You have very little trust in me as yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your ego for guidance. 2 The results will convince you increasingly that this choice is the only sane one you can make. p67 3 No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing. 4 Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain, because pain is an ego illusion, and can never induce more than a temporary effect. 5 The rewards of God, however, are immediately recognized as eternal. 6 Since this recognition is made by you and not the ego, the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical. 7 You may believe that you have already accepted this difference, but you are by no means convinced as yet. 8 The fact that you believe you must escape from the ego shows this; but you cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it. T-4.VI.4. The ego and the spirit do not know each other. 2 The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. 3 Having done this, it denies all truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that are. 4 The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your decision to use the device that enables it to endure. T-4.VI.5. How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? 2 He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. 3 You can only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. 4 This teaches him to associate his misery with its absence, and the opposite of misery with its presence. 5 It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth. 6 I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. 7 You have taught yourself the opposite. 8 You are still free to choose, but can you really want the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God? T-4.VI.6. My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way. 2 Your mission is very simple. 3 You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego, and I do not choose God's channels wrongly. 4 The Holy One shares my trust, and accepts my Atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His. 5 I have said before that I am in charge of the Atonement. 6 This is only because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through others. 7 My chosen channels cannot fail, because I will lend them my strength as long as theirs is wanting. p68 T-4.VI.7. I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception He can bridge the little gap. 2 Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want. 3 I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother to know God. 4 If you are grateful to your brother, you are grateful to God for what He created. 5 Through your gratitude you come to know your brother, and one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father. 6 Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right. 7 Because you are the Kingdom of God I can lead you back to your own creations. 8 You do not recognize them now, but what has been dissociated is still there. T-4.VI.8. As you come closer to a brother you approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you. 2 Salvation is a collaborative venture. 3 It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me. 4 God will come to you only as you will give Him to your brothers. 5 Learn first of them and you will be ready to hear God. 6 That is because the function of love is one. VII. Creation and Communication T-4.VII.1. It is clear that while the content of any particular ego illusion does not matter, its correction is more helpful in a specific context. 2 Ego illusions are quite specific, although the mind is naturally abstract. 3 Part of the mind becomes concrete, however, when it splits. 4 The concrete part believes in the ego, because the ego depends on the concrete. 5 The ego is the part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation. T-4.VII.2. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply being. 2 The ego is thus against communication, except insofar as it is utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. 3 The communication system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything else it dictates. 4 Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself, and it will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. 5 This disruption is a reaction to a specific person or persons. 6 The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in spurious generalization which is really not abstract at all. 7 It merely responds in certain specific ways to everything it perceives as related. p69 T-4.VII.3. In contrast, spirit reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. 2 Nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. 3 It knows that what is true is everything that God created. 4 It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator. 5 This communication is the Will of God. 6 Creation and communication are synonymous. 7 God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. 8 Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His creations naturally communicate with Him and like Him. 9 This communication is perfectly abstract, since its quality is universal in application and not subject to any judgment, any exception or any alteration. 10 God created you by this and for this. 11 The mind can distort its function, but it cannot endow itself with functions it was not given. 12 That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being. T-4.VII.4. Existence as well as being rest on communication. 2 Existence, however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking. 3 Being is completely without these distinctions. 4 It is a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real. 5 To whatever extent you permit this state to be curtailed you are limiting your sense of your own reality, which becomes total only by recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you. 6 This is your reality. 7 Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. 8 It is your real home, your real temple and your real Self. T-4.VII.5. God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. 2 Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. 3 That is why God created you. 4 Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. 5 That is what creation means. 6 "How," "what" and "to whom" are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. 7 Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between and as there is in existence. 8 In the state of being the mind gives everything always. T-4.VII.6. The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. 2 This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. 3 He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it. p70 4 But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. 5 And this He does know. 6 He knows it in His Own Being and its experience of His Son's experience. 7 The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. T-4.VII.7. God has kept your Kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. 2 Revelation is not enough, because it is only communication God. 3 God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He does want it brought to others. 4 This cannot be done with the actual revelation; its content cannot be expressed, because it is intensely personal to the mind that receives it. 5 It can, however, be returned by that mind to other minds, through the attitudes the knowledge from the revelation brings. T-4.VII.8. God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. 2 This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist. 3 The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them. 4 Their helpfulness is their praise of God, and He will return their praise of Him because they are like Him, and they can rejoice together. 5 God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom. 6 Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its individual willingness to share in it. 7 The truly helpful are God's miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. 8 I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you. p71 Chapter 5. HEALING AND WHOLENESS Introduction T-5.in.1. To heal is to make happy. 2 I have told you to think how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many you have refused. 3 This is the same as telling you that you have refused to heal yourself. 4 The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. 5 Radiance is not associated with sorrow. 6 Joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share it, and promotes the mind's natural impulse to respond as one. 7 Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same time, and thus deprive others of the joy of responding wholeheartedly. T-5.in.2. To be wholehearted you must be happy. 2 If fear and love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, the only possible whole state is that of love. 3 There is no difference between love and joy. 4 Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous. 5 To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to make one. 6 That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is offered. 7 Every part benefits, and benefits equally. T-5.in.3. You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. 2 You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude. 3 You need not know them individually, or they you. 4 The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. 5 Only God's holy children are worthy channels of His beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. 6 It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. 7 That is why the healer's prayer is: 8 Let me know this brother as I know myself. p72 I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit T-5.I.1. Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. 2 This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. 3 Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. 4 If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. 5 Remember that spirit knows no difference between and 6 The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. 7 To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. 8 Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. 9 While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. 10 If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. 11 If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. 12 All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. 13 Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. 14 If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone. T-5.I.2. Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts: 2 Thoughts increase by being given away. 3 The more who believe in them the stronger they become. 4 Everything is an idea. 5 How, then, can giving and losing be associated? T-5.I.3. This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. 2 I have said already that I can reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. 3 The Holy Spirit is in your right mind, as He was in mine. 4 The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. 5 It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. 6 It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ thinking. T-5.I.4. The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity that has a symbolic function. 2 He is referred to as the Healer, the Comforter and the Guide. 3 He is also described as something "separate," apart from the Father and from the Son. p73 4 I myself said, "If I go I will send you another Comforter and he will abide with you." 5 His symbolic function makes the Holy Spirit difficult to understand, because symbolism is open to different interpretations. 6 As a man and also one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Holy Spirit or the Universal Inspiration, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for all. 7 I could not have It myself without knowing this. 8 The word "know" is proper in this context, because the Holy Spirit is so close to knowledge that He calls it forth; or better, allows it to come. 9 I have spoken before of the higher or "true" perception, which is so near to truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap. 10 Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot oppose. 11 Therefore you can obstruct it, although you can never lose it. T-5.I.5. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception. 2 He came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the Atonement principle at the same time. 3 Before that there was no need for healing, for no one was comfortless. 4 The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the Call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. 5 When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed there will be no Call to return. 6 But what God creates is eternal. 7 The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. T-5.I.6. God honored even the miscreations of His children because they had made them. 2 But He also blessed His children with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions so high they could reach almost back to Him. 3 The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. 4 He represents a state of mind close enough to One-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. 5 Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge, or cross over into it. 6 It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of transferred or "carried over," since the last step is taken by God. T-5.I.7. The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself: 2 First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who attains it could believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain. 3 Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. p74 4 This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way. 5 Finally, it points the way beyond the healing that it brings, and leads the mind beyond its own integration toward the paths of creation. 6 It is at this point that sufficient quantitative change occurs to produce a real qualitative shift. II. The Voice for God T-5.II.1. Healing is not creating; it is reparation. 2 The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. 3 This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar, because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. 4 The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. 5 Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. 6 God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. 7 The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of Will between Father and Son. T-5.II.2. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. 2 He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. 3 This is the vocation of the mind. 4 The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the Call to right thinking. 5 The Holy Spirit is God's Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating. T-5.II.3. The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. 2 When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the Call to joy. 3 This Call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at Its sound. 4 That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. 5 One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. 6 But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. 7 The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. 8 His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. 9 It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. 10 It takes effort and great willingness to learn. 11 It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Sons. p75 T-5.II.4. You the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. 2 The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. 3 His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. 4 Before the separation you did not need guidance. 5 You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now. T-5.II.5. God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. 2 Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. 3 By choosing one you give up the other. 4 The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. 5 God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. 6 When you chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. 7 Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice. T-5.II.6. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. 2 You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. 3 As a result, there are choices you must make. 4 In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. 5 Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. 6 Choosing depends on a split mind. 7 The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. 8 God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. 9 The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks. T-5.II.7. The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because It is incapable of arrogance. 2 It does not demand, because It does not seek control. 3 It does not overcome, because It does not attack. 4 It merely reminds. 5 It is compelling only because of what It reminds you 6 It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make. 7 The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace. 8 Peace is stronger than war because it heals. 9 War is division, not increase. 10 No one gains from strife. 11 What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? 12 If you listen to the wrong voice you lost sight of your soul. 13 You cannot lose it, but you can not know it. 14 It is therefore "lost" to you until you choose right. T-5.II.8. The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. 2 He is in the part of your mind that always speaks for the right choice, because He speaks for God. p76 3 He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy. 4 The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's Will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. 5 Both Heaven and earth are in you, because the call of both is in your mind. 6 The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. 7 These altars are not things; they are devotions. 8 Yet you have other devotions now. 9 Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to serve. 10 The call you answer now is an evaluation because it is a decision. 11 The decision is very simple. 12 It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you. T-5.II.9. My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. 2 It was only my decision that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. 3 My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision. 4 This decision is the choice to share it, because the decision itself the decision to share. 5 It is made by giving, and is therefore the one choice that resembles true creation. 6 I am your model for decision. 7 By deciding for God I showed you that this decision can be made, and that you can make it. T-5.II.10. I have assured you that the Mind that decided for me is also in you, and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. 2 This Mind is unequivocal, because it hears only one Voice and answers in only one way. 3 You are the light of the world with me. 4 Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. 5 The Holy Spirit is the Call to awaken and be glad. 6 The world is very tired, because it is the idea of weariness. 7 Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for God. 8 Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be as One. 9 What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole? 10 Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. T-5.II.11. When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger. 2 As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the oneness in which it was created. 3 Remember that "yoke" means "join together," and "burden" means "message." 4 Let us restate "My yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way; "Let us join together, for my message is light." p77 T-5.II.12. I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must respond to the same Mind to do this. 2 This Mind is the Holy Spirit, Whose Will is for God always. 3 He teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and to behave like me as a result. 4 The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief, but not beyond accomplishment. 5 What we can accomplish together has no limits, because the Call for God is the Call to the unlimited. 6 Child of God, my message is for you, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you. III. The Guide to Salvation T-5.III.1. The way to recognize your brother is by recognizing the Holy Spirit in him. 2 I have already said that the Holy Spirit is the Bridge for the transfer of perception to knowledge, so we can use the terms as if they were related, because in His Mind they are. 3 This relationship must be in His Mind because, unless it were, the separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to healing. 4 He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly yours and also partly God's. 5 This needs clarification, not in statement but in experience. T-5.III.2. The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. 2 Being thought, the idea gains as it is shared. 3 Being the Call God, it is also the idea God. 4 Since you are part of God it is also the idea of yourself, as well as of all His creations. 5 The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. 6 It is strengthened by being given away. 7 It increases in you as you give it to your brother. 8 Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. 9 He may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you have. 10 This dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call for God in him, and thus acknowledge Its being. T-5.III.3. There are two diametrically opposed ways of seeing your brother. 2 They must both be in your mind, because you are the perceiver. 3 They must also be in his, because you are perceiving him. 4 See him through the Holy Spirit in his mind, and you will recognize Him in yours. 5 What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen. p78 T-5.III.4. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. 2 That is why you must share It. 3 It must be increased in strength before you can hear It. 4 It is impossible to hear It in yourself while It is so weak in your mind. 5 It is not weak in Itself, but It is limited by your unwillingness to hear It. 6 If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone your thoughts will frighten you because, by adopting the ego's viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide. 7 This is bound to produce fear. T-5.III.5. Delay is of the ego, because time is its concept. 2 Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity. 3 I have said before that the Holy Spirit is God's Answer to the ego. 4 Everything of which the Holy Spirit reminds you is in direct opposition to the ego's notions, because true and false perceptions are themselves opposed. 5 The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what the ego has made. 6 He undoes it at the same level on which the ego operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change. T-5.III.6. I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. 2 So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity. 3 Eternity is an idea of God, so the Holy Spirit understands it perfectly. 4 Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is the ego's domain, accepts it without question. 5 The only aspect of time that is eternal is T-5.III.7. The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the spirit. 2 His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to work with the ego's beliefs in its own language. 3 His ability to look beyond symbols into eternity enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which He speaks. 4 He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding. 5 Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge. 6 The Holy Spirit is in light because He is in you who are light, but you yourself do not know this. 7 It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to reinterpret you on behalf of God. T-5.III.8. You cannot understand yourself alone. 2 This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place of the Sonship is God. 3 This is your life, your eternity and your Self. 4 It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. 5 It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. 6 This vision frightens the ego because it is so calm. 7 Peace is the ego's greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. p79 8 The ego becomes strong in strife. 9 If you believe there is strife you will react viciously, because the idea of danger has entered your mind. 10 The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. 11 The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego welcomes it. 12 The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. 13 Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war. T-5.III.9. Perception derives meaning from relationships. 2 Those you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. 3 The separation is merely another term for a split mind. 4 The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. 5 What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. 6 You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions. T-5.III.10. The Holy Spirit is the perfect Teacher. 2 He uses only what your mind already understands to teach you that you do not understand it. 3 The Holy Spirit can deal with a reluctant learner without going counter to his mind, because part of it is still for God. 4 Despite the ego's attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego, although the ego does not recognize it. 5 The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His Own dwelling place; the place in the mind where He is at home. 6 You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of God. 7 You who are part of God are not at home except in His peace. 8 If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity. T-5.III.11. The ego made the world as it perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home. 2 The Holy Spirit must perceive time, and reinterpret it into the timeless. 3 He must work through opposites, because He must work with and for a mind that is in opposition. 4 Correct and learn, and be open to learning. 5 You have not made truth, but truth can still set you free. 6 Look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as He understands. 7 His understanding looks back to God in remembrance of me. 8 He is in communion with God always, and He is part of you. 9 He is your Guide to salvation, because He holds the remembrance of things past and to come, and brings them to the present. 10 He holds this gladness gently in your mind, asking only that you increase it in His Name by sharing it to increase His joy in you. p80 IV. Teaching and Healing T-5.IV.1. What fear has hidden still is part of you. 2 Joining the Atonement is the way out of fear. 3 The Holy Spirit will help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful, and teach you that only what is loving is true. 4 Truth is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your ability to accept. 5 It belongs to you because, as an extension of God, you created it with Him. 6 It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you. 7 Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. 8 Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore cannot be protected. 9 The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom, and the union of the Sonship is its protection. 10 The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom because the Sonship is united. 11 In the presence of those who hear the Holy Spirit's Call to be as one, the ego fades away and is undone. T-5.IV.2. What the ego makes it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. 2 Its existence is unshared. 3 It does not die; it was merely never born. 4 Physical birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing. 5 Everything that continues has already been born. 6 It will increase as you are willing to return the unhealed part of your mind to the higher part, returning it undivided to creation. 7 I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free. 8 You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase, but having made them you did not realize how to undo them. 9 You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. 10 They will not disappear from your mind without the Atonement, a remedy not of your making. 11 The Atonement must be understood as a pure act of sharing. 12 That is what I meant when I said it is possible even in this world to listen to one Voice. 13 If you are part of God and the Sonship is One, you cannot be limited to the self the ego sees. T-5.IV.3. Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs to every part. 2 It is shared it is loving. 3 Sharing is God's way of creating, and also yours. 4 The ego can keep you in exile from the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom itself it has no power. 5 Ideas of the spirit do not leave the mind that thinks them, nor can they conflict with each other. 6 However, ideas of the ego can conflict because they occur at different levels and also include opposite thoughts at the same level. 7 81 8 You can share only the thoughts that are of God and that He keeps for you. 9 And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. 10 The rest remains with you until the Holy Spirit has reinterpreted them in the light of the Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. 11 When they have been sufficiently purified He lets you give them away. 12 The decision to share them their purification. T-5.IV.4. I heard one Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. 2 Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. 3 The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. 4 You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. 5 Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. 6 This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek." T-5.IV.5. Teaching is done in many ways, above all by example. 2 Teaching should be healing, because it is the sharing of ideas and the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them. 3 I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me I learned it. 4 I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing you can depend on it. 5 Make it dependable in my name because my name is the Name of God's Son. 6 What I learned I give you freely, and the Mind that was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it. T-5.IV.6. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing, and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. 2 By following Him you are led back to God where you belong, and how can you find the way except by taking your brother with you? 3 My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away. 4 As you teach so shall you learn. 5 I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God Who created me. 6 You forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers. 7 You must learn to see them as they are, and understand they belong to God as you do. 8 How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things that are God's? T-5.IV.7. The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to create is of God. 2 Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing because, having received the idea of healing, they must give it to hold it. 3 The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas is withheld from the Kingdom. p82 4 The joint will of the Sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father, because only the complete can think completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. 5 Everything you think that is not through the Holy Spirit lacking. T-5.IV.8. How can you who are so holy suffer? 2 All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. 3 I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. 4 I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. 5 They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. 6 They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. 7 You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. 8 You go with my blessing and for my blessing. 9 Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. 10 I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. 11 The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. 12 We cannot lose. 13 My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. 14 His quiet children are His blessed Sons. 15 The Thoughts of God are with you. V. The Ego's Use of Guilt T-5.V.1. Perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more personally meaningful if the ego's use of guilt is clarified. 2 The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. 3 The ego's purpose is fear, because only the fearful can be egotistic. 4 The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. 5 But again, remember that both are in you. T-5.V.2. In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create. 2 The word "create" is appropriate here because, once what you have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in creation. 3 What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy. 4 This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its peace is unassailable. 5 It is invulnerable to disruption because it is whole. 6 Guilt is disruptive. 7 Anything that engenders fear is divisive because it obeys the law of division. p83 8 If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. 9 Guilt is more than merely not of God. 10 It is the symbol of attack on God. 11 This is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. 12 This is the belief from which all guilt really stems. T-5.V.3. The ego is the part of the mind that believes in division. 2 How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? 3 We spoke before of the authority problem as based on the concept of usurping God's power. 4 The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes that it you. 5 If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. 6 Whenever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. 7 The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. 8 However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. 9 It represents a delusional system, and speaks for it. 10 Listening to the ego's voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you. 11 Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected. T-5.V.4. Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. 2 It is your acceptance of it that makes it real. 3 If you enthrone the ego in your mind, your allowing it to enter makes it your reality. 4 This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions. 5 I said before that you must learn to think with God. 6 To think with Him is to think like Him. 7 This engenders joy, not guilt, because it is natural. 8 Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is unnatural. 9 Unnatural thinking will always be attended with guilt, because it is the belief in sin. 10 The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love, but as a positive act of assault. 11 This is necessary to the ego's survival because, as soon as you regard sin as a lack, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. 12 And you will succeed. 13 The ego regards this as doom, but you must learn to regard it as freedom. T-5.V.5. The guiltless mind cannot suffer. 2 Being sane, the mind heals the body because has been healed. 3 The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything. 4 I said before that illness is a form of magic. 5 It might be better to say that it is a form of magical solution. 6 The ego believes that by punishing itself it will mitigate the punishment of God. p84 7 Yet even in this it is arrogant. 8 It attributes to God a punishing intent, and then takes this intent as its own prerogative. 9 It tries to usurp all the functions of God as it perceives them, because it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted. T-5.V.6. The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can. 2 That is why the question, "What do you want?" must be answered. 3 You are answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. 4 Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. 5 Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable. 6 The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. 7 Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey. 8 The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. 9 God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. 10 You made the other, and so you can. 11 Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. 12 What you made can always be changed because, when you do not think like God, you are not really thinking at all. 13 Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can believe in them. 14 But you are wrong. 15 The function of thought comes from God and is in God. 16 As part of His Thought, you think apart from Him. T-5.V.7. Irrational thought is disordered thought. 2 God Himself orders your thought because your thought was created by Him. 3 Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. 4 They also show that you believe you can think apart from God, and want to. 5 Every disordered thought is attended by guilt at its inception, and maintained by guilt in its continuance. 6 Guilt is inescapable by those who believe they order their own thoughts, and must therefore obey their dictates. 7 This makes them feel responsible for their errors without recognizing that, by accepting this responsibility, they are reacting irresponsibly. 8 If the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for is atoned for cannot be yours. 9 The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. 10 You be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking if it could not be undone. 11 The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified form only. 12 If you accept the remedy for disordered thought, a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain? p85 T-5.V.8. The continuing decision to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. 2 We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. 3 Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. 4 What you want you expect. 5 This is not delusional. 6 Your mind make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. 7 It will also return to full creation the instant it has done so. 8 Having given up its disordered thought, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent. VI. Time and Eternity T-5.VI.1. God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while wait. 2 All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for theirs. 3 Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. 4 You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you in time. 5 Yet your election is both free and alterable. 6 You do not belong in time. 7 Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever. T-5.VI.2. Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. 2 They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. 3 This is the ego's continuity. 4 It gives the ego a false sense of security by believing that you cannot escape from it. 5 But you can and must. 6 God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. 7 When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. 8 My role is only to unchain your will and set it free. 9 Your ego cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose it at every possible moment and in every possible way. 10 And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it. T-5.VI.3. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of the Kingdom cannot be lost. 2 The Mind that was in me in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. 3 Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. 4 How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you? 5 The two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously; or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first p86. 6 Alternate interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made. T-5.VI.4. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decision, much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court's decisions in this world. 2 The ego's decisions are always wrong, because they are based on the error they were made to uphold. 3 Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly. 4 Not only does the ego cite Scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself. 5 The Bible is a fearful thing in the ego's judgment. 6 Perceiving it as frightening, it interprets it fearfully. 7 Being afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would also be against you. T-5.VI.5. There are many examples of how the ego's interpretations are misleading, but a few will suffice to show how the Holy Spirit can reinterpret them in His Own light. T-5.VI.6. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" He interprets to mean what you consider worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. 2 Your judgment of what is worthy makes it worthy for you. T-5.VI.7. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" is easily reinterpreted if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. 2 The statement emphasizes that vengeance cannot be shared. 3 Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, Who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind, which is part of God. T-5.VI.8. "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. 2 It becomes merely an attempt to guarantee the ego's own survival. 3 To the Holy Spirit, the statement means that in later generations He can still reinterpret what former generations had misunderstood, and thus release the thoughts from the ability to produce fear. T-5.VI.9. "The wicked shall perish" becomes a statement of Atonement, if the word "perish" is understood as "be undone." 2 Every loveless thought must be undone, a word the ego cannot even understand. 3 To the ego, to be undone means to be destroyed. 4 The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your thought, but because it is uncreative and therefore unsharing, it will be reinterpreted to release you from fear. 5 The part of your mind that you have given to the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind belongs. 6 You can delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you cannot introduce the concept of fear into it. p87 T-5.VI.10. You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. 2 It will merely dismiss the case against you. 3 There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. 4 Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's Own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. 5 It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. 6 The case may be fool- proof, but it is not God-proof. 7 The Holy Spirit will not hear it, because He can only witness truly. 8 His verdict will always be "thine is the Kingdom," because He was given to you to remind you of what you are. T-5.VI.11. When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I meant that I came to share the light with you. 2 Remember my reference to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that I said, "Do not look there." 3 It is still true that where you look to find yourself is up to you. 4 Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself. 5 Is not a child of God worth patience? 6 I have shown you infinite patience because my will is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. 7 His Voice was in me as It is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the Name of its Creator. T-5.VI.12. Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects. 2 This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. 3 Infinite patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results it renders time unnecessary. 4 We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device to be abolished when it is no longer useful. 5 The Holy Spirit, Who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. 6 He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return you to eternity and remain to bless your creations there. 7 He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is truly blessed. 8 Because He has been given you freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him. VII. The Decision for God T-5.VII.1. Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God's? 2 Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from Him? 3 Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? p88 4 You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you. 5 You are His care because He loves you. 6 His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of His care. 7 You cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His Will, but you can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created by it. T-5.VII.2. There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. 2 They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. 3 Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. 4 Unless the healer heals himself, he cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. 5 He has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed God created it whole. 6 You are merely asked to return to God the mind as He created it. 7 He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal you. 8 Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers is yours. T-5.VII.3. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you? 2 God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. 3 He wills to keep it in perfect peace, because you are of one mind and spirit with Him. 4 Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. 5 It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. 6 This willingness means that you do not want to be healed. T-5.VII.4. But the time is now. 2 You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the remedy could not be of your making. 3 God Himself gave you the perfect Correction for everything you made that is not in accord with His holy Will. 4 I am making His plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfill it. 5 God weeps at the "sacrifice" of His children who believe they are lost to Him. T-5.VII.5. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God's creations. 2 Perceiving this as "sin" you become defensive because you expect attack. 3 The decision to react in this way is yours, and can therefore be undone. 4 It cannot be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. p89 5 If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you. T-5.VII.6. Decision cannot be difficult. 2 This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. 3 Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. 4 Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. 5 Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. 6 Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation: 7 I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. 8 I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. 9 I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace. 10 I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. 11 I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me. p90 Chapter 6. THE LESSONS OF LOVE Introduction T-6.in.1. The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. 2 Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. 3 Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. 4 Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. 5 What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? 6 The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. 7 You cannot attacked, attack no justification, and you responsible for what you believe. T-6.in.2. You have been asked to take me as your model for learning, since an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. 2 Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. 3 This is a responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all, and no one can organize his life without some thought system. 4 Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it. 5 Your capacity for allegiance to a thought system may be misplaced, but it is still a form of faith and can be redirected. I. The Message of the Crucifixion T-6.I.1. For learning purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. 2 I did not dwell on it before because of the fearful connotations you may associate with it. 3 The only emphasis laid upon it so far has been that it was not a form of punishment. 4 Nothing, however, can be explained in negative terms only. 5 There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. p91 T-6.I.2. The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. 2 Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. 3 It can be, and has been, misunderstood. 4 This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. 5 I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. 6 I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. 7 While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. 8 Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. T-6.I.3. You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified. 2 This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. 3 Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. 4 The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another. 5 This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood impossible. 6 Otherwise, I cannot serve as a model for learning. T-6.I.4. Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. 2 There is little doubt that one body can assault another, and can even destroy it. 3 Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. 4 Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. 5 To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premises and teaching them to others. 6 The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot persecuted. 7 If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely. T-6.I.5. I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me, but our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision. 2 You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if you choose. 3 When you do choose to react that way, however, you might remember that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did not share this evaluation for myself. 4 And because I did not share it, I did not strengthen it. 5 I therefore offered a different interpretation of attack, and one which I want to share with you. p92 6 If you will believe it, you will help me teach it. T-6.I.6. As I have said before, "As you teach so shall you learn." 2 If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. 3 This is not a lesson a Son of God should want to teach if he is to realize his own salvation. 4 Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and realize that it cannot assailed. 5 Do not try to protect it yourself, or you are believing that it is assailable. 6 You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. 7 You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. 8 There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. 9 Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. 10 Remember always that what you believe you will teach. 11 Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. T-6.I.7. Your resurrection is your reawakening. 2 I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. 3 God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. 4 I believed in it, and therefore accepted it as true for me. 5 Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God, but first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss. 6 My brothers slept during the so-called "agony in the garden," but I could not be angry with them because I knew I could not abandoned. T-6.I.8. I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear only one Voice, because it weakens them as teachers and as learners. 2 Yet I know they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I must build my church. 3 There is no choice in this, because only you can be the foundation of God's church. 4 A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes the church holy. 5 A church that does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. 6 I must found His church on you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. 7 Disciples are followers, and if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are unwise not to follow him. T-6.I.9. I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. 2 As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. 3 It was clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, since I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. T-6.I.10. We are still equal as learners, although we do not need to have equal experiences. 2 The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn from mine, and be reawakened by them. 3 That is their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the way, the truth and the life. p93 4 When you hear only one Voice you are never called on to sacrifice. 5 On the contrary, by being able to hear the Holy Spirit in others you can learn from their experiences, and can gain from them without experiencing them directly yourself. 6 That is because the Holy Spirit is One, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all. T-6.I.11. You are not persecuted, nor was I. 2 You are not asked to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom we share, makes this unnecessary. 3 To use my experiences constructively, however, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them. 4 My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the unjustifiable. 5 My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned it, is that no perception that is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. 6 I undertook to show this was true in an extreme case, merely because it would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptation to give in to anger and assault would not be so extreme. 7 I will with God that none of His Sons should suffer. T-6.I.12. The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its Wholeness. 2 Only this is knowledge. T-6.I.13. The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear: 2 Teach only love, for that is what you are. T-6.I.14. If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended. 2 The Apostles often misunderstood it, and for the same reason that anyone misunderstands it. 3 Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the "wrath of God" as His retaliatory weapon. 4 Nor could they speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their sense of guilt had made them angry. p94 T-6.I.15. These are some of the examples of upside-down thinking in the New Testament, although its gospel is really only the message of love. 2 If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted me as saying, "I come not to bring peace but a sword." 3 This is clearly the opposite of everything I taught. 4 Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they did, if they had really understood me. 5 I could not have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" unless I believed in betrayal. 6 The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did not. 7 The "punishment" I was said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar mistake. 8 Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. 9 Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible? T-6.I.16. As you read the teachings of the Apostles, remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand later, because they were not wholly ready to follow me at the time. 2 I do not want you to allow any fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am guiding you. 3 I do not call for martyrs but for teachers. 4 No one is punished for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners. 5 Any concept of punishment involves the projection of blame, and reinforces the idea that blame is justified. 6 The result is a lesson in blame, for all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it. 7 The crucifixion was the result of clearly opposed thought systems; the perfect symbol of the "conflict" between the ego and the Son of God. 8 This conflict seems just as real now, and its lessons must be learned now as well as then. T-6.I.17. I do not need gratitude, but you need to develop your weakened ability to be grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. 2 He does not need your appreciation, but do. 3 You cannot love what you do not appreciate, for fear makes appreciation impossible. 4 When you are afraid of what you are you do not appreciate it, and will therefore reject it. 5 As a result, you will teach rejection. T-6.I.18. The power of the Sons of God is present all the time, because they were created as creators. 2 Their influence on each other is without limit, and must be used for their joint salvation. 3 Each one must learn to teach that all forms of rejection are meaningless. 4 The separation is the notion of rejection. 5 As long as you teach this you will believe it. 6 This is not as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. p95 T-6.I.19. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Communication Link between God the Father and His separated Sons. 2 If you will listen to His Voice you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves. 3 When you perceive only this need in them, and do not respond to any other, you will have learned of me and will be as eager to share your learning as I am. II. The Alternative to Projection T-6.II.1. Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this the belief in separation. 2 The Wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the Wholeness of God's creation. 3 By this recognition it knows its Creator. 4 Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. 5 We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and that once it occurs projection becomes its main defense, or the device that keeps it going. 6 The reason, however, may not be so obvious as you think. T-6.II.2. What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. 2 You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. 3 Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. 4 By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe. T-6.II.3. Yet projection will always hurt you. 2 It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. 3 It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. 4 The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem "better" than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. 5 Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. 6 Anger without projection is impossible. 7 The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. 8 The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers. T-6.II.4. We have learned, however, that there an alternative to projection. 2 Every ability of the ego has a better use, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice. p96 3 The Holy Spirit extends and the ego projects. 4 As their goals are opposed, so is the result. T-6.II.5. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. 2 Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. 3 Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. 4 Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. 5 This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. 6 To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. 7 That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world unhappy. T-6.II.6. How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? 2 You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. 3 That is both where you are and what you are. 4 It is completely unalterable. 5 It is total inclusion. 6 You cannot change it now or ever. 7 It is forever true. 8 It is not a belief, but a Fact. 9 Anything that God created is as true as He is. 10 Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone is perfect. 11 To deny this is to deny yourself and Him, since it is impossible to accept one without the other. T-6.II.7. The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit's perception is the reflection of the perfect equality of God's knowing. 2 The ego's perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the Bridge between perception and knowledge. 3 By enabling you to use perception in a way that reflects knowledge, you will ultimately remember it. 4 The ego would prefer to believe that this memory is impossible, yet it is perception the Holy Spirit guides. 5 Your perception will end where it began. 6 Everything meets in God, because everything was created by Him and in Him. T-6.II.8. God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. 2 All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. 3 The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness 4 God created you to create. 5 You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its wholeness. T-6.II.9. Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. 2 This is as true of God's Thinking as it is of yours. 3 Because your mind is split, you can perceive as well as think. p97 4 Yet perception cannot escape the basic laws of mind. 5 You perceive from your mind and project your perceptions outward. 6 Although perception of any kind is unreal, you made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. 7 He can inspire perception and lead it toward God. 8 This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore does not want it now. T-6.II.10. The Holy Spirit uses time, but does not believe in it. 2 Coming from God He uses everything for good, but He does not believe in what is not true. 3 Since the Holy Spirit is in your mind, your mind can also believe only what is true. 4 The Holy Spirit can speak only for this, because He speaks for God. 5 He tells you to return your whole mind to God, because it has never left Him. 6 If it has never left Him, you need only perceive it as it is to be returned. 7 The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that 8 The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred. T-6.II.11. The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem difficult. 2 Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary, because what never happened cannot be difficult. 3 However, you can the idea of return both necessary and difficult. 4 Yet it is surely clear that the perfect need nothing, and you cannot experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment, because that is what you are. 5 This is the way in which you must perceive God's creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one line the Holy Spirit sees. 6 This line is the direct line of communication with God, and lets your mind converge with His. 7 There is no conflict anywhere in this perception, because it means that all perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose Mind is fixed on God. 8 Only the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict, because only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. 9 He perceives only what is true in your mind, and extends outward only to what is true in other minds. T-6.II.12. The difference between the ego's projection and the Holy Spirit's extension is very simple. 2 The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. 3 The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one. 4 Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same. 5 Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always. 6 This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because that is what He is. p98 7 The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you. 8 The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it. T-6.II.13. The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by recognizing Him impartially can you recognize Him at all. 2 The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is One. 3 No darkness abides anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. 4 This alignment with light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the light of the world. 5 Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one. III. The Relinquishment of Attack T-6.III.1. As we have already emphasized, every idea begins in the mind of the thinker. 2 Therefore, what extends from the mind is still in it, and from it extends it knows itself. 3 The word "knows" is correct here, because the Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe in your mind through His impartial perception. 4 By attacking nothing, He presents no barrier to the communication of God. 5 Therefore, being is never threatened. 6 Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. 7 The ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what is not true. 8 You have taught yourself to believe that you are not what you are. 9 You cannot teach what you have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in yourself because you are sharing it. 10 Every lesson you teach you are learning. T-6.III.2. That is why you must teach only one lesson. 2 If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. 3 You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember. 4 I said before that the message of the crucifixion was, "Teach only love, for that is what you are." 5 This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. 6 Only by teaching it can you learn it. 7 "As you teach so will you learn." 8 If that is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. 9 And what you project or extend you believe. p99 T-6.III.3. The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. 2 Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. 3 The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. 4 The perfectly safe are wholly benign. 5 They bless because they know that they are blessed. 6 Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. 7 Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. 8 No compromise is possible in this. 9 Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. 10 Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it. T-6.III.4. Since you cannot teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. 2 This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. 3 The only way to have peace is to teach peace. 4 By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. 5 Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. 6 An idea that you share you must have. 7 It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. 8 Everything you teach you are learning. 9 Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love. IV. The Only Answer T-6.IV.1. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. 2 The ego always speaks first. 3 It is capricious and does not mean its maker well. 4 It believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. 5 If it meant you well it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. 6 The ego does not regard itself as part of you. 7 Herein lies its primary error, the foundation of its whole thought system. T-6.IV.2. When God created you He made you part of Him. 2 That is why attack within the Kingdom is impossible. 3 You made the ego without love, and so it does not love you. 4 You could not remain within the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom love, you believe that you are without it. 5 This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes are separate and outside the Mind of God. p100 6 The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but one it can never answer. 7 That question, "What are you?" was the beginning of doubt. 8 The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a great many. 9 The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than obscure the question, because you have the answer and T-6.IV.3. You cannot understand the conflict until you fully understand the basic fact that the ego cannot know anything. 2 The Holy Spirit does not speak first, 3 Everyone has called upon Him for help at one time or another and in one way or another, and has been answered. 4 Since the Holy Spirit answers truly He answers for all time, which means that everyone has the answer T-6.IV.4. The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the mind that made it is against it. 2 It interprets this as a justification for attacking its maker. 3 It believes that the best defense is attack, and wants to believe it. 4 Unless you do believe it you will not side with it, and the ego feels badly in need of allies, though not of brothers. 5 Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind, the ego turns to the body as its ally, because the body is part of you. 6 This makes the body the ego's friend. 7 It is an alliance frankly based on separation. 8 If you side with this alliance you will be afraid, because you are siding with an alliance of fear. T-6.IV.5. The ego uses the body to conspire against your mind, and because the ego realizes that its "enemy" can end them both merely by recognizing they are not part of you, they join in the attack together. 2 This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. 3 The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which real, that the mind is the ego's learning device; and further, that the body is more real than the mind is. 4 No one in his right mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right mind does believe it. T-6.IV.6. Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. 2 Nothing else exists and only this is real. 3 You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake. 4 There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken. p101 5 Your dreams contain many of the ego's symbols and they have confused you. 6 Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. 7 When you wake you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you. 8 Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true. T-6.IV.7. In the Kingdom, where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. 2 There is no doubt, because the first question was never asked. 3 Having finally been wholly answered, 4 alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. 5 The time spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its eternity. 6 You are as certain as God because you are as true as He is, but what was once certain in your mind has become only the ability for certainty. T-6.IV.8. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, because abilities are potentials, not accomplishments. 2 Your abilities are useless in the presence of God's accomplishments, and also of yours. 3 Accomplishments are results that have been achieved. 4 When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless. 5 It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. 6 In fact, it is impossible. 7 Remember, however, that when you put yourself in an impossible situation you believe that the impossible possible. T-6.IV.9. Abilities must be developed before you can use them. 2 This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible for what you made. 3 In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can get you out of it. 4 You have a Guide to how to develop them, but you have no commander except yourself. 5 This leaves you in charge of the Kingdom, with both a Guide to find it and a means to keep it. 6 You have a model to follow who will strengthen your command, and never detract from it in any way. 7 You therefore retain the central place in your imagined enslavement, which in itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved. T-6.IV.10. You are in an impossible situation only because you think it is possible to be in one. 2 You be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection, and proved to you that you were wrong. 3 This would demonstrate that the perfect are inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are therefore helpless. p102 4 This is the kind of "reasoning" in which the ego engages. 5 God, Who knows that His creations are perfect, does not affront them. 6 This would be as impossible as the ego's notion that it has affronted Him. T-6.IV.11. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. 2 To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. 3 Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. 4 Fidelity to other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you made them. 5 What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? 6 Can God lose His Own certainty? 7 I have frequently said that what you teach you are. 8 Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? 9 If He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you be but afraid? 10 You would doubt your right mind, which is the only place where you can find the sanity He gave you. T-6.IV.12. God does not teach. 2 To teach is to imply a lack, which God knows is not there. 3 God is not conflicted. 4 Teaching aims at change, but God created only the changeless. 5 The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. 6 A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice. 7 It could not shatter the peace of God, but it could shatter 8 God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it. 9 Being questioned, He did not question. 10 He merely gave the Answer. 11 His Answer is your Teacher. V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit T-6.V.1. Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit knows more than you do now, but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. 2 You had already taught yourself wrongly, having believed what was not true. 3 You did not believe in your own perfection. 4 Would God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? 5 What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous. 6 Giving His joy is an ongoing process, not in time but in eternity. 7 God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. 8 So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." p103 T-6.V.2. How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? 2 You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. 3 You merely reassure them that they are safe 4 Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking, so they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. 5 And so when bad dreams come, they will themselves call on the light to dispel them. T-6.V.3. A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. 2 He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm, but what you need to learn to have joy. 3 Consider the fear and confusion a child would experience if he were told, "Do not do this because it will hurt you and make you unsafe; but if you do that instead, you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid." 4 It is surely better to use only three words: "Do only that!" 5 This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood and very easily remembered. T-6.V.4. The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom children. 2 Yet He always answers their call, and His dependability makes them more certain. 3 Children confuse fantasy and reality, and they are frightened because they do not recognize the difference. 4 The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. 5 He merely shines them away. 6 His light is always the Call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming. 7 Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever. A. To Have, Give All to All T-6.V.A.1. When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. 2 Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. 3 Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. 4 The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life. 5 If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did. 6 Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. 7 Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, . p104 T-6.V.A.2. God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. 2 The body is the symbol of what you think you are. 3 It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. 4 The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device. 5 Again as always, He reinterprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demonstration against it. 6 If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. 7 Every miracle demonstrates this. T-6.V.A.3. I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. 2 He always tells you that only the mind is real, because only the mind can be shared. 3 The body is separate, and therefore cannot be part of you. 4 To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be one body is meaningless. 5 By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless. T-6.V.A.4. To the Holy Spirit, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. 2 This is familiar enough to you by now, but it has not yet become believable. 3 Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot use it. 4 We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to let this crucial concept slip away. 5 It is a real foundation stone of the thought system I teach and want you to teach. 6 You cannot perform miracles without believing it, because it is a belief in perfect equality. 7 Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is full appreciation. 8 Nothing more and nothing less. 9 Without a range, order of difficulty is meaningless, and there must be no range in what you offer to your brother. T-6.V.A.5. The Holy Spirit, Who leads to God, translates communication into being, just as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge. 2 You do not lose what you communicate. 3 The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure and for pride. 4 The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful one indeed. 5 The Holy Spirit sees the body only as a means of communication, and because communicating is sharing it becomes communion. 6 Perhaps you think that fear as well as love can be communicated; and therefore can be shared. 7 Yet this is not so real as it may appear. 8 Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always breaks communication, making it impossible. 9 Egos do join together in temporary allegiance, but always for what each one can get 10 The Holy Spirit communicates only what each one can give to all. 11 He never takes anything back, because He wants you to keep it. p105 12 Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson: 13 To have, give all to all. T-6.V.A.6. This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for yourself. 2 It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself, but it is necessary that you turn in that direction. 3 Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in charge of the journey, where you and only you must remain. 4 This step may appear to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it, because it is the beginning step in reversing your perception and turning it right-side up. 5 This conflicts with the upside-down perception you have not yet abandoned, or the change in direction would not have been necessary. 6 Some remain at this step for a long time, experiencing very acute conflict. 7 At this point they may try to accept the conflict, rather than take the next step towards its resolution. 8 Having taken the first step, however, they will be helped. 9 Once they have chosen what they cannot complete alone, they are no longer alone. B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It T-6.V.B.1. All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. 2 They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. 3 These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. 4 What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. 5 Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. 6 An insane learner learns strange lessons. 7 What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. 8 Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. 9 This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. 10 If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. 11 But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it. T-6.V.B.2. All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that level. 2 Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. 3 It is also their last and final one. p106 4 Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. 5 Change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind fundamental. T-6.V.B.3. The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept. 2 Accordingly, the Holy Spirit's first lesson was "To have, give all to all." 3 I said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still further now. 4 At this point, the equality of and is not yet perceived. 5 Until it is, appears to be the opposite of 6 Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a contradiction, since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. 7 This means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet. 8 Further, the mind of the learner projects its own conflict, and thus does not perceive consistency in the minds of others, making him suspicious of their motivation. 9 This is the real reason why, in many respects, the first lesson is the hardest to learn. 10 Still strongly aware of the ego in yourself, and responding primarily to the ego in others, you are being taught to react to both as if what you do believe is not true. T-6.V.B.4. Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. 2 In fact, this is its only alternative since the other possibility, which would be much less acceptable to it, would obviously be that is insane. 3 The ego's judgment, here as always, is predetermined by what it is. 4 The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker. 5 Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit's Voice makes it impossible for the learner not to listen. 6 For a time, then, he is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both. T-6.V.B.5. The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. 2 If you identify with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. 3 If you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it. 4 Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for peace to help you. 5 Its lesson is not insane; the conflict is. T-6.V.B.6. There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. 2 Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. 3 The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. p107 4 As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit's Voice, and Its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made for you. 5 That is why I suggested before that you remind yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you. T-6.V.B.7. You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you can think you are. 2 It must, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God's creations are. 3 The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. 4 Therefore, His second lesson is: 5 To have peace, teach peace to learn it. T-6.V.B.8. This is still a preliminary step, since and are still not equated. 2 It is, however, more advanced than the first step, which is really only the beginning of the thought reversal. 3 The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. 4 This, then, is a step in the direction out of conflict, since it means that alternatives have been considered, and one has been chosen as more desirable. 5 Nevertheless, the term "more desirable" still implies that the desirable has degrees. 6 Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one. 7 Lack of order of difficulty in miracles has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is desired. 8 To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself created you as a creator. T-6.V.B.9. The second step, then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step toward the unified perception that reflects God's knowing. 2 As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing toward the center of your thought system, where the fundamental change will occur. 3 At the second step progress is intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first because it follows. 4 Realizing that it follow is a demonstration of a growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on. C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom T-6.V.C.1. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. 2 He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. p108 3 Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. 4 What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. 5 But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. 6 This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. 7 Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. 8 This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. 9 The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. 10 The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. 11 He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous. T-6.V.C.2. The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He does not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. 2 He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. 3 In the mind of the thinker, then, He judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. 4 This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to without judgment. 5 The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. 6 God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. 7 Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is: 8 Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. T-6.V.C.3. This is a major step toward fundamental change. 2 Yet it still has an aspect of thought reversal, since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant 3 It has advanced far from the first lesson, which is merely the beginning of the thought reversal, and also from the second, which is essentially the identification of what is more desirable. 4 This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. 5 It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable. T-6.V.C.4. While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. 2 I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. 3 This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you be. 4 It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. p109 5 This lesson is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. 6 Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. 7 Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutually exclusive. 8 As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. 9 By teaching to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. 10 This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom. T-6.V.C.5. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom. 2 You create by your true being, but what you are you must learn to remember. 3 The way to remember it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others, and goes beyond them towards real integration. 4 If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. 5 Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. 6 Since it is whole, you are teaching peace you believe in it. 7 The final step will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit has prepared you for God. 8 He is getting you ready for the translation of into by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him. T-6.V.C.6. You learn first that rests on giving, and not on getting. 2 Next you learn that you learn what you teach, and that you want to learn peace. 3 This is the condition for identifying with the Kingdom, since it is the condition the Kingdom. 4 You have believed that you are without the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. 5 It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included, and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must exclude. T-6.V.C.7. The third step is thus one of protection for your mind, allowing you to identify only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. 2 Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. 3 The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for without question. 4 As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparent to you. 5 This is why you must be vigilant on God's behalf. p110 6 The ego speaks against His creation, and therefore engenders doubt. 7 You cannot go beyond belief until you believe fully. T-6.V.C.8. To teach the whole Sonship without exception demonstrates that you perceive its wholeness, and have learned that it is one. 2 Now you must be vigilant to hold its oneness in your mind because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness and will be unable to teach it. 3 The wholeness of the Kingdom does not depend on your perception, but your awareness of its wholeness does. 4 It is only your awareness that needs protection, since being cannot be assailed. 5 Yet a real sense of being cannot be yours while you are doubtful of what you are. 6 This is why vigilance is essential. 7 Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty. 8 Certainty is of God for you. 9 Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it is necessary against illusions. T-6.V.C.9. Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. 2 Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. 3 When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. 4 By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. 5 What you made has imprisoned your will, and given you a sick mind that must be healed. 6 Your vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. 7 Once your mind is healed it radiates health, and thereby teaches healing. 8 This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. 9 Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, and those who choose to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe. T-6.V.C.10. The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe, and entails a willingness to relinquish everything else. 2 The Holy Spirit will enable you to take this step, if you follow Him. 3 Your vigilance is the sign that you Him to guide you. 4 Vigilance does require effort, but only until you learn that effort itself is unnecessary. 5 You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made because it was not true. 6 Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. 7 Only this can cancel out the need for effort, and call upon the being which you both and 8 This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and needs no protection. 9 It is in the perfect safety of God. 10 Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit. p111