Fourteen

Unless you are guiltless, you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. Therefore, you *must* be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete that knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes you understand. You made Him not, and anything you understand is not of Him. Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without *you*. You who have thrown your selves away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourselves. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare and nothing you have ever felt, apart from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever and Who knows of nothing *except* giving? The Children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father because they *know* that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to the mind which has denied it and thus denied Heaven to itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. His memory is *yours*. If you remember what *you* have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Him and *therefore* in you.

The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making them unable to communicate because each sees the other *unlike* the way he sees *himself.* God can communicate *only* to the Holy Spirit in your mind because only He shares the knowledge of what you are with God. And only the Holy Spirit can *answer* God for you, for only He knows what God *is.* Everything else that you have placed within your mind *cannot* exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God has never been. Communication with God is life. Nothing without it *is* at all. The only part of your mind that has reality is the part which links you still with God. Would you have *all* of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones who denied Him with you? *God makes this possible*. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He for you. This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is *nothing* of value here and *everything* of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit and to God through Him. He speaks of you to *you*. There *is* no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the Son is blessed in Him. Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each to share is always the same—*God's Son is guiltless.* Each one teaches the message differently and learns it differently. Yet until he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. His plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. You know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God He holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how to be happy. Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created for *you.* Who can condemn whom God has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share His shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself with active willingness to the denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is *not to understand*. The happy learners of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the right of all that God created. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it from them alone. The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or you will *ask* for guilt and *will* experience it. Protect his purity from every thought that would steal it away and keep it from his sight. Bring innocence to light in answer to the call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. So will the world of separation slip away and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son. The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which *must* have been denied to produce *need* of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned *how* to exchange his guilt for innocence nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain be his. Yet those who have failed to learn need *teaching, not* attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them. Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has *one* aim however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the single purpose of *release* from guilt to the eternal glory of God and His creation. And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven and to the peace of God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome. The power of God Himself supports this teaching and *guarantees* its limitless results. Join your own efforts to the power that *cannot* fail and *must* result in peace. No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this. You will not be exempt from the effects of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right of God's creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will inevitably learn *your* innocence. The circle of Atonement *has* no end. And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for all in everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace. Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity from which no one is excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle and attract all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it as teachers of Atonement, *not* of guilt. Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes not of us but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling you to peace. Teach peace with me and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father's power that He has given him. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. Stand not outside but join with me within. Fail not the only purpose to which my teaching calls you. Restore to God His Son as He created him by teaching him his innocence. The crucifixion has no part in the Atonement. Only the resurrection became my part in it. That is the symbol of the release from guilt by guiltlessness. Whom you perceive as guilty, you would crucify. Yet you *restore* guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is *always* the ego's aim. It sees *as guilty*, and by its condemnation, it would kill. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in His gentleness, He would release from fear and reestablish the reign of love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore becomes *your* altar, for it was rebuilt through you. And everything you give to God *is* yours. Thus He creates, and thus must *you* restore. Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption. If you bring him *into* the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him *without*, you join him there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. Refuse to accept anyone as *without* the blessing of Atonement, and bring him *into* it by blessing him. Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no one out, for this is what he seeks, along with you. Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one within the cause of peace.

The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it *is*, but for its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening *because* you do not understand its meaning. If you did, it would be clear, and you would be no longer in the dark. Nothing has *hidden* value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is *kept apart*, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it *must* be feared. The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect openness in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will *always* yield to love if it is *brought* to love, not hidden *from* it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is kept *apart* from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them. Would you *continue* to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect; neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, *being* nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance, look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure *is* fearful. But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity, *only* the light of love remains, for only this *has* meaning and *can* live in light. Everything else *must* disappear. Death yields to life simply because destruction is not *true.* The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are brought *together*, the truth of one *must* make the falsity of its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them *both* is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything, and the other is wholly without sense of *any* kind. You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for breaking your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means of reestablishing what has not been broken but *has* been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him for His most holy purpose. He *knows* you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you *think* you are. All this, and nothing else, would He separate from you. The power of decision, which you made *in place* of the power of creation, He would teach you how to use on your *behalf.* You who made it to crucify yourselves must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration. You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language you have made. It *has* no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather the *disruption* of communication. If the purpose of language *is* communication, how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through *not* communicating holds enough of love to *make* it meaningful if its interpreter is *not* its maker. You who made it are but expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you *are* in perfect communication. You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He *will* separate out all that has meaning, dropping off the rest and offering your true communication to those who would communicate as truly with you. You speak two languages at once, and this *must* lead to unintelligibility. Yet if one means nothing and the other everything, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but *interferes* with it. The Holy Spirit's function is *entirely* communication. He therefore must remove whatever interferes with it in order to *restore* it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Him, and let His gentleness teach you that in the light they are not fearful and *cannot* serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God's temple. Its gates are open wide to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him if he close not the door himself upon his Father's welcome.

What do you *want*? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as *you* are. In union, everything that is not real *must* disappear, for truth *is* union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns. Perception is the medium by which ignorance is brought to knowledge. Yet the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise it becomes the messenger of ignorance rather than a helper in the search for truth. The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. Truth *is*. It can be neither lost nor sought nor found. It is there, wherever *you* are, being *within* you. Yet it *can* be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to *you*. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you *because* you hid it and surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies hidden. Yet you cannot know this, for by hiding truth in fear, you see no reason to believe the *more* you look at fear, the *less* you see it, and the clearer what it *conceals* becomes. It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. From their point of view, it is not true. Yet it *is* true because *God* knows it. These are clearly opposite viewpoints of what the “unknowing” are. To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all but merely a belief in something that does not exist. It is only this belief that the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about themselves. They have *defined* themselves as they were not created. Their creation was not a point of view, but rather a certainty. Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain *any* conviction of reality. You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable *to* the desirable; what you do *not* want to what you *do*. You will realize that salvation must come to you this way if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both *maintained*. It has *been* recognized that if they were brought *together* their joint acceptance would become impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their *separation* seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance *must* be withdrawn from one of them. You *cannot* have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a *separate* place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them *together*, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go *because* the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness and will not *let* it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of *your* making. God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on *behalf* of truth only because you made them *against* it. His perception of them, according to His purpose, merely changes them into a call *for* what you have *attacked* with them. Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of self-destruction to means of preservation and release. His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him it is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you. Do not delay yourselves in your return to peace by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows. You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little He suggests you do, trusting Him only to the small extent of believing that if He asks it, you *can* do it. You will *see* how easily all that He asks can be accomplished. The Holy Spirit asks of you but this—bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness *open* to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. For He sees for *you*, and unless you look *with* Him, He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone but for Him with *you*. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him and look upon them *with* Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They *cannot* coexist when both of you together look on them. His judgment *must* prevail, and He will *give* it to you as you join your perception to His. Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge. You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you teaches you how to *recognize* what you see. It is the recognition that nothing you see means *anything* alone. Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning, including *yours*, comes not from double vision but from the gentle fusing of everything into *one* meaning, *one* emotion, and *one* purpose. God has one purpose which He shares with you. The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you could not wish for all the world not to accept what God would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His Love as yours. All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God. In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors which you have closed lies nothing, because nothing *can* obscure the gift of God. It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit and there undone. Whom He would save for glory *is* saved for it. He has promised the Father that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. To what He promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shared with God the promise that was given Him to share with *you.* He shares it still, for *you*. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the *one* promise given unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God *without* His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of both but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father *and* to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts to one *are* offered to the other. You know not God because you know not this. And yet you *do* know God and *also* this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided *cannot* cease. The holy meeting place of the unseparated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in *you*. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as *both* would have it be. And so it *is*. Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors, away from light's center. You may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can only be brought *together* by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which *all* separation vanishes. Unite with what you *are.* You *cannot* join with anything except reality. God's glory and His Son's belong to you in truth. They *have* no opposite, and nothing else *can* you bestow upon yourselves. There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must *meet* with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are *you*. Such *is* the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge given you by God into unknowingness. Everything God created knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son with them together. There is one link which joins them all together, holding them in the oneness out of which creation happens. The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create like Him can *never* be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation and with its One Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist beside it. Here your meager offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it was intended. To whom God gives Himself, He *is* given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar where He has placed His Own.

The Atonement does not *make* holy. You were *created* holy. It merely brings unholiness *to* holiness, or what you *made* to what you *are*. The bringing together of truth and illusion, of the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourselves. The knowledge is safe, but wherein is *your* safety apart from it? The making of time to *take the place* of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you were. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and *now*. The past which *you* remember *never* was and represents only the denial of what *always* was. Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the *opposite* of what it meets and is undone, because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It *cannot* change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what *makes* it real. This cannot *be* undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality *will* do for you. Merely by being what it is does truth release you from everything that it is *not*. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift which you refused is held by Him in you. His Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshiper placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it *is* Holiness. In the temple Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of living. For God is Life, and they *abide* in Life. \[Life is as holy as the Holiness by Which it was created.\] The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness *created* life and leaves not what It created holy as Itself. In this world you can become a spotless mirror in which the Holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven *here*. Yet no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of Himself can *be* perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations rather than in themselves. The reflection of God *needs* no interpretation. It is *clear.* Clean but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see no one can *fail* to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in him. He recognizes it because he has been taught his *need* for it but knows not where to look to find it. Let him, then, see it in *you* and *share* it with you. Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the image of the holiness that heals the world. The image of holiness which shines in your mind is not obscure and will not change. Its meaning to those who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the *same*. All bring their different problems to its healing light, but all their problems are met *only* with healing there. The response of holiness to *any* form of error is always the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. Its *one* response is healing, without regard for what is brought to it. Those who have learned to offer only healing because of the reflection of holiness in them are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection but rather the actual condition of what was but reflected to them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely *reflect* truth, for they *are* truth.

When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections which you accept into the mirror of your minds in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond *all* time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven *here* and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone *to* truth, and as they enter into it, they leave all reflections behind. In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in *is* a world of limits. In this world, it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the *one* thing you can do that transcends order, being based not on differences but on equality. Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. What *is* more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of difficulty which stamps the miracle as something that must come from elsewhere, not from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible. You have experienced lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even though they may conflict, can occur to you together and in great numbers. You are so used to this that it can cause you little surprise. Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, larger or better, wiser or more productive and valuable than others. And this is true about the thoughts which cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but *seems* to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern which never rests and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your minds. The little sanity which still remains is held together by a sense of order which *you* establish. Yet the very fact that you can *do* this and bring *any* order into chaos shows you that you are not an ego and that more than an ego *must* be in you. For the ego *is* chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, it *also* limits *you*. To order is to judge and to arrange *by* judgment. \[Therefore, it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's.\] It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis *at all* for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you shining examples to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you. The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it *is* and answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder or greater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and *not* of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and that is also why *everyone* shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal, it offers *everything* to *every* call from *anyone*. There *is* no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help. The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirit's *one* division into two categories—one of love and the other the call for love. *You* cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love or to believe that everything else is nothing but a need for love. You are too bound to form and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother *really* offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it. The ego is incapable of understanding content and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content *must* be. Otherwise, it will attack the form. You who believe you understand something of the dynamics of the mind, let me assure you that you know nothing of it at all. For of yourselves you *could* not know of it. The study of the ego is *not* the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys the study of itself and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would analyze it, approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind a lot of words which sound impressive but which lack any consistent sense when they are put *together*. This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought which arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more *join together* in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union *tells* them it is not true. It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are *not* alone and willing to remember it. Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold *is* for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do and knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is *given* meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would *find*. As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit translate His communications *through* you so *you* can understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being *for* all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation *you* would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit *show* him to you and teach you both his love and need for love. Neither his mind *nor yours* holds more than these two orders of thought. The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it *is*. But where there is *need* for love, *you* must give it because of what *you* are. Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already learned that this identity is shared. The miracle becomes the *means* of sharing it. By supplying your identity wherever it is *not* recognized, *you* will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of *all* His Love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?

Yet the essential thing is learning that *you do not know*. Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves have lost it. You still have the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your *awareness* of it that you cannot use it. Everything you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not *what* it is nor *where*. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it *must* fail you. For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond semblance of any kind. Yet all that stands between you and the power of God in you is but your learning of the false and your attempts to undo the true. Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves how to imprison the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even dream of it. Can God learn how *not* to be God? And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourselves that you can possibly prefer to keep in place of what you *have* and what you *are*? Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourselves in the past by showing you only what you are *now*. Learning *has been* accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. *Your* learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present or teach you how to undo the past. Your past *is* what you have taught yourselves. *Let it all go*. Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or anyone in its light, for the light of darkness by which you try to see can *only* obscure. Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for if you do, you contradict the light and thereby *think* you see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot *be* seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourselves unto the light in you can hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet God did not abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent from Him, *already* learned for every Child of light by Him to Whom God gave it. This lesson shines with God's glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares so gladly with His Son. Learn of His happiness, which is *yours*. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to truth and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light He will accept from you because you do not want it. And He will gladly *exchange* each one for the bright lesson He has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned *apart* from Him means anything. You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God's lesson and not yours. Unless all this is true, there *are* dark lessons in your minds which hurt and hinder you and everyone around you. The *absence* of perfect peace means but *one* thing: you *think* you do not will for God's Son what His Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this in one form or another. And each bright lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not accept and hide, teaches you that you will *with* the Father unto His Son. Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not *want*. Ask to be *taught* and do not use your experiences to confirm what *you* have learned. When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself, *I do not know what anything, **including this,** means. And so I do not know how to respond to it. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.* By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant *you* abandon it and offer it to Him. *You* cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary. And *because* you did, the means on which you can depend for miracles has been provided *for* you. God's Son can make no needs His Father will not meet if he but turn to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot compel His Son to turn to Him and remain Himself. It is impossible that God lose His Identity, for if He did, you would lose *yours*. And being yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity *is* changeless. The miracle acknowledges His changelessness by seeing His Son as he always was and not as he would make himself. The miracle brings the effects which *only* guiltlessness can bring and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness must *be*. How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That is impossible. But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it *is* impossible. It is only because you think that you can run some little part or deal with certain aspects of your lives alone that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is limited. Thus would you make *Him* undependable and use this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons from Him. And by so limiting the guidance that you would *accept*, you are unable to depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you. Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you *give* He would *withhold* from you? You have *no* problems which He cannot solve by offering you a miracle. Miracles are for *you*. And every fear or pain or trial you have *has been* undone. He has brought all of them to light, having accepted them *instead* of you and recognized they never were. There are no dark lessons He has not *already* lightened for you. The lessons you would teach yourselves He has corrected already. They do not exist in His Mind at all. For the past binds Him not and therefore binds not you. He does not see time as you do. And each miracle He offers you corrects your use of time and makes it His. He Who has freed you from the past would teach you *are* free of it. He would but have you accept His accomplishments as *yours* because He did them *for* you. And because He did, they *are* yours. He has made you free of what you made. You can deny Him, but you *cannot* call on Him in vain. He *always* gives what He has made *in place* of you. He would establish His bright teaching so firmly in your mind that no dark lessons of guilt can abide in what He has established as holy by His Presence. Thank God that He is there and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers you a miracle with every one you let Him do through you. God's Son will *always* be indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so do we learn as one in Him. God's Teacher is as like to His Creator as is His Son, and through His Teacher does God proclaim His Oneness *and* His Son's. Listen in silence, and do not raise your voice against Him. For He teaches the miracle of oneness, and before His lesson division disappears. Teach like Him here, and you will remember that you have *always* created like your Father. The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this. Those who remember always that they know nothing, but who have become willing to learn *everything*, will learn it. But whenever they trust themselves, they will *not* learn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they *already* know. Think not you understand anything until you pass the test of perfect peace, for peace and understanding go together and never can be found alone. Each brings the other *with* it, for it is the law of God they be not separate. They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absent the other *cannot* be. Only those who see they cannot know *unless* the effects of understanding are with them can really learn at all. And for this, it must be peace they *want* and nothing else. Whenever you think *you* know, peace will depart from you because you have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully realize that you know *not*, peace will return, for you will have invited Him to do so by abandoning the ego on behalf of Him. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only *this* that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of *Himself*, fill every mind that so makes room for Him. If you want peace, you must abandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher of peace will *never* abandon you. You can desert Him, but He will never reciprocate, for His faith in you *is* His understanding. It is as firm as is His faith in His Creator, and He knows that faith in His Creator *must* encompass faith in His creation. In this consistency lies His holiness, which He cannot abandon, for it is not His Will to do so. With your perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace to everyone who perceives the need for peace and who would have it. Make way for peace, and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from it peace *must* come. The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is His. You think you know Him not only because, alone, it is impossible to know Him. Yet see the mighty works that He will do through you, and you must be convinced you did them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of effects so powerful they *could* not be of you. Leave room for Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power that *nothing* will prevail against your peace. And this will be the test by which you recognize that you have understood.