Eighteen

To substitute is to *accept instead*. If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you and would accomplish *for* you. To substitute is to *choose between*, renouncing one in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution occurred is thus fragmented and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation. The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge between them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one because they are the *same*. Substitution is clearly a process in which they are perceived as different. One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything *seems* to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves substitution by definition, for it is love's replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and a fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each seems to require a different form of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems. No one is *seen complete*. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, and used as the standard for comparison for either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting out a special form of fear.

You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken many forms because it was the substitution of illusion for truth, of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship which you have ever made is part of it. You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality *had* to emerge. What else *could* come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to further substitutions. That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends *inward*, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside-down arose from this? \[*It was inevitable*.\] For truth brought to *this* could only remain within in quiet and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for such it was, and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not *afraid* of it. When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rise to frighten you, say only, “God is not fear, but love,” and it will disappear. The truth will *save* you. It has not left you to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is *outside* you. You but *believe* it is the other way; that truth is outside and error and guilt within. Your little senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have *no* substance. They fuse and merge and separate in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not be judged at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are no real differences at all. *None* of them matters. *That* they have in common and nothing else. Yet what else is *necessary* to make them all the same? Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. He brings all your insane projections and your wild substitutions which you have placed outside you to the truth. Thus He reverses the course of insanity and restores you to reason. In your relationship, where He has taken charge of everything at your request, He has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside you, nothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting have nothing in common in reality. Within yourselves you love each other with a perfect love. Here is holy ground in which no substitution can enter and where only the truth about each other can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together as you are with Him. The original error has not entered here, nor ever will. Here is the radiant truth to which the Holy Spirit has committed your relationship. Let Him bring it here, where *you* would have it be. Give Him but a little faith in each other, to help Him show you that no substitute you made for Heaven can keep you from it. In you there *is* no separation, and no substitute can keep you from each other. Your reality was God's creation and *has* no substitute. You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there. And He would never accept something else instead of you. He loves you both, equally and as one. And as He loves you, so you *are*. You are not joined together in illusions but in the Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken the holy place in which you stand together. God is with you, my brothers. Let us join in Him in peace and gratitude and accept His gift as our most holy and perfect reality, which we share in Him. Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe in your love. Heaven has entered quietly, for all illusions have been gently brought unto the truth in you and love has shined upon you, blessing your relationship with truth. God and His whole creation have entered it together. How lovely and how holy is your relationship, with the truth shining upon it! Heaven beholds it and rejoices that you have let it come to you. \[And God Himself is glad that your relationship is as it was created.\] The universe within you stands with you, together. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator. Whom God has called should hear no substitutes. Their call is but an echo of the original error which shattered Heaven. And what became of peace in those who heard? Return with me to Heaven, walking together out of this world and through another to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it. Would you still further weaken and break apart what is already broken and hopeless? Is it here that you would look for happiness? Or would you not prefer to heal what has been broken and join in making whole what has been ravaged by separation and disease? You have been called together to the most holy function that this world contains. It is the only one which has no limits and reaches out to every broken fragment of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered *you* in your holy relationship. Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted. The peace of God is given you with the glowing purpose in which you join. The holy light that brought you together must extend, as *you* accepted it.

Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this world is. It is clearly *not* the world you saw before you slept. Rather, it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have preferred. Here, you are “free” to make over whatever seemed to attack you and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the “attack.” This would not *be* your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself and therefore on you as under attack and highly vulnerable to it. Dreams are chaotic *because* they are governed by your conflicting wishes, and therefore they have no *concern* with what is true. They are the best example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world and changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking examples both of the ego's inability to tolerate reality and your willingness to *change* reality on its behalf. You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams *you* arrange everything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do *you* order. No limit on substitution is laid upon you. For a time, it seems as if the world were given you, to make it what you will. You do not realize that you are *attacking* it, trying to triumph over it and make it serve you. Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums in which you literally scream, “I want it *thus*!” And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant, the illusion of satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world which you prefer *is* terrifying. Your attempts to blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you substitute the fantasy that *reality* is fearful, not what you would *do* to it. And thus is guilt made real. Dreams show you that you *have* the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you *want* it, you *see* it. And while you see it, you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be *outside*. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions which the dream produces *must* come from you. It is the figures in the dream and what *they* do that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for *you*, for if you did, the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real *remains* with you. And what you seem to wake to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their *content* is the same. They are your protest against reality and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special relationship \[has a special place. It is the means by which you try to make your *sleeping* dreams *come true*. From this you do not awaken. The special relationship\] is your determination to keep your hold on unreality and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it. The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses them as means for waking. *You* would have used them to remain asleep. We once said that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in your special relationship. He does not destroy it nor snatch it away from you. \[But He does use it differently, as a help to make *His* purpose *real* to you.\] Your special relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an offering to everyone. Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will share with all who come within your sight. Through it, the blessing which the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that He has forgotten anyone in the purpose He has given you. And think not that He has forgotten you to whom He gave the gift. He uses everyone who calls on Him as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you who offered your relationship to Him. If you but recognized His gratitude! Or mine through His! For we are joined as in one purpose, being of one mind with Him. Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The *wish* to make it is incredible. Your relationship has become one in which the wish has been removed because its purpose has been changed from one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this because you think it may be *this* that is the dream. You are so used to choosing between dreams you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and *all* illusions. Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you have chosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your special relationship meet its conditions. In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world—the world of happy dreams from which awaking is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will joined with the Will of God. And what this will would have accomplished has never *not* been done.

You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy which seemed to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your *goal* was darkness in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever in complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God cannot destroy Himself. The light is *in* you. Darkness can cover it but *cannot* put it out. As the light comes nearer, you will rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear and sometimes to stark terror. But you *will* advance because your goal *is* the advance from fear to truth. You *know* this. The goal which you accepted *is* the goal of knowledge, for which you signified your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid, you have stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light, and it will be enough to remind you that your goal *is* light. Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on this way which you have chosen, fear would be impossible. You do not know because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A little flicker of your eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to give you confidence in yourselves, so long despised. You go toward love, still hating it and terribly afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what you have made of it. You are advancing to love's meaning and away from all illusions in which you have surrounded it. When you retreat to the illusion, your fear increases, for there is little doubt that what you think it means *is* fearful. Yet what is that to us who travel surely and very swiftly *away* from fear? You who hold each other's hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness you agreed to leave with *me*? In your relationship is this world's light. And fear *must* disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to each other. You will succeed only in frightening yourselves. The gift is given forever, for God Himself received it. You *cannot* take it back. You have accepted God. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. You do not understand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is not necessary. All that was necessary was merely the *wish* to understand. That wish was the desire to be holy. The Will of God is granted you. For you desire the only thing you ever had or ever were. Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible and will strengthen your desire to reach it. And in your desire lies its accomplishment. Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit's will. No little, faltering footsteps that you may take can separate your desire from His Will and from His strength. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take each other's. You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go, we carry God with us. In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone who would remain in darkness. Those who would see *will* see. And they will join with me in carrying their light into the darkness when the darkness in them is offered to the light and is removed forever. My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of your relationship, is *your* need for salvation. Would I not give you what you gave to me? For when you joined each other, you answered me. You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function of bringing light to darkness. The darkness in you *has* been brought to light. Carry it back to darkness from the holy instant to which you brought it. We are made whole in our desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear that you experience is really past. Time has been readjusted to help us do together what your separate pasts would hinder. You have gone past fear, for no two minds can join in the desire for love without love's joining *them*. Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is joined with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, *can* you remain in darkness? You are coming home together after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart and which led nowhere. You have found each other and will light each other's way. And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God to shine away the past and so make room for His eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.

The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the *answer*. The desire and the willingness to let it come precedes its coming. You prepare your minds for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you *cannot* do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego unto Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is *He* who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that you need do so little that enables Him to give so much. Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them, you would not *need* the holy instant. Come to it not in arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as *you* were meant to be. Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it *does* require that you be *not* content with less than greatness, which comes not of you. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be as you would *make* yourself? God did not create His dwelling-place unworthy of Him. And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be *interfering* with His Will. You do not need the strength of willingness to come from *you*, but only from *His* Will. The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God's Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to *prepare* yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness and *not* believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. *God* has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to *teach* you what they are. If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you make the *learner* different. You did not make the learner, nor *can* you make him different. Would you first make a miracle yourself and then expect one to be made *for* you? *You* merely ask the question. The answer is *given*. Seek not to answer it, but merely *receive* the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God's. Atonement cannot come to those who think that *they* must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus: *I who am host to God **am** worthy of Him. He Who established His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be. It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, But only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal. I need add nothing to His plan. But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it*. And that is all. Add more and you will merely *take away* the little that is asked. Remember you made guilt and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement *to* it and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear that you will add if you prepare *yourself* for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourselves to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part and how great is His. It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult because you insist there must be more that you need do. \[You find it difficult to *accept* the idea that you need give so *little* to receive so much.\] And it is very hard for you to realize that it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced *your* understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just *because* it asks nothing that you cannot give *right now*. Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that *is* natural and easy for you impossible. What you believe to be impossible will *be* if God so wills it, but you will remain quite unaware of it. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible and remain unwilling to give place to One Who *knows*. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is not only possible but has already *happened*. And that is why the past has gone. It *never* happened in reality. Only in your minds, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.

Prepare you *not* for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished would have no purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success. Never approach the holy instant after *you* have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is *its* function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt *before* you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is *His* function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to *let* Him remove all fear and hatred and to *be* forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding, *He* will build your part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him *you* will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone. Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can *you* plan for this? Or could you prepare *yourselves* for such a function? Yet it is possible because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose *both* belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this without the means is inconceivable. He will provide the means to *anyone* who shares His purpose. Happy dreams come true, *not* because they are dreams, but only because they are *happy*. And so they must be loving. Their message is, “Thy will be done,” and not, “I want it otherwise.” The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you *have* accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and *use* them. It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a *special* relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who *has* a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it *for* you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be. When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness *in spite* of fear to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which you would rather have. He will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining and its blessing lie in the fact that it is now impossible for either of you to experience fear alone or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary or even possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you *without* the other. And it will come to *both* at the request of either. Whichever is saner at the time when the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say: *I desire this holy instant for myself That I may share it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me. Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it **now**. And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit, That His blessing may descend on us and keep us **both** in peace*.

There is *nothing* outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is \[in that\] realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling-place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness and nothing else within. What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else *is* there to give? The belief that you could give and *get* something else, something *outside* yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and the loss of your Identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your bodies from your minds. Yet a body *cannot* be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies deceive yourselves. You hate your *minds*, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they cannot do. Minds *are* joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties of the body does separation seem to be possible. And it is *mind* that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. Its guilt, which *keeps* it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies because it is attacked, to hold the separation in the mind and let it *not know* its identity. Mind cannot attack, but it *can* make fantasies and direct the body to act them out. Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it. In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it maintains it *can* and uses what it does to hurt the body to *prove* it can. The mind cannot attack, but it *can* deceive itself. And this is all it does when it believes it has attacked the body. It can project its guilt, but it will not *lose* it through projection. And though it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions. Would you not have the instruments of separation reinterpreted as means for salvation and used for purposes of love? Would you not welcome and support the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your perception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the body. For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have no real effect at all. And what God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will. You *cannot* make His Will destructive. You can make fantasies in which your will conflicts with His, but that is all. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its attack and blaming it for what you wished it to do. It is *impossible* to act out fantasies. For it is still the *fantasies* you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. *It* does not dream of them, and they but make it a liability where it could be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your “enemy,” weak, vulnerable, and treacherous, worthy of the hate which you invest in it. How has this served you? You have *identified* with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance and the perceived source of your guilt. You have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling-place of the Son of God and turning it against him. This is the host of God that *you* have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death. This thing you made to serve your guilt stands between you and other minds. The minds *are* joined, but you do not identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You hate this prison you have made and would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it unharmed, without your guilt upon it. Yet only thus *can* you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not a prison but an illusion of *yourself*. The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is *internal*. \[It is *not* made up of different *parts* which reach each other.\] Mind reaches to *itself*. It does not go *out*. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. \[It encompasses *everything*.\] It encompasses you entirely; you within it, and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere or ever. The body is outside you, and but *seems* to surround you, shutting you off from others and keeping you apart from them \[and them from you\]. It is not there. There *is* no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself except in illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yet this could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to create differently and to have separated Himself from His Son to make this possible. He would have had to create different things and to establish different *orders* of reality, only *some* of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever and forever without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself because God placed none between Himself and you. You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are joined have begun to reach beyond the body, but *not* outside yourselves, to reach your shared Identity *together*. Could this be *outside* you? Where God is *not*? Is *He* a body, and did He create you as He is not and where He cannot be? You are surrounded only by *Him*. What limit can there be on you whom He encompasses? Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself. This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of actual *escape* from limitations. If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. It becomes part of you as you unite with it. And both become whole as neither is perceived as separate. What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness and lost your fear of union. The love that instantly replaces it *extends* to what has freed you and unites with it. And while this lasts, you are not uncertain of your Identity and would not limit it. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality but merely accepting it. You have accepted this *instead* of the body and have let yourself be one with something beyond it simply by not letting your mind be *limited* by it. This can occur regardless of the physical distance which seems to be between you and what you join, of your respective positions in space, and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated. The “something” can be anything and anywhere—a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, and even a general idea without specific reference. Yet in every case, you joined it without reservation because you love it and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending all the “laws” your body obeys and gently setting them aside. There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not attacked, but simply properly *perceived*. It does not limit you merely because you would not have it so. You are not really “lifted out” of it; it cannot *contain* you. You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the lack of awareness of the body and of the questioning whether or not all this is possible. It is possible because you *want* it. The sudden expansion of the self which takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted *for* you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a “breaking out,” but merely by a quiet “melting in.” For peace will join you there simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love and joined it where it is and where it led you in answer to its gentle call to *be* at peace.

You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this *always* means you still find sin attractive. No one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your *one* responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction. You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done—not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend *without* awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return. At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just *now*. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present. In any single instant, the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else and would be avoided. It has no attraction *now*. Its whole attraction is imaginary and therefore *must* be thought of in the past or in the future. It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless just for an instant you are willing to see *no* past or future. You cannot prepare for it *without* placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does aim at *saving* time. You are attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. \[Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised.\] Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the *future* for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy. Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of *saving time*. One instant spent *together* restores the universe to *both* of you. You *are* prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do *nothing*. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you *should* do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it *always* comes with just one happy realization: “I need do nothing.” Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. We do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because you are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for *you*. Save time for me by only this *one* preparation and practice, doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation or of struggle against temptation. To *do* anything involves the body. And if you recognize you *need* do nothing, you have withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort and escape from time. This is the way in which sin loses all attraction *right now*. For here is time denied and past and future gone. Who need do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes and there abides. He will remain when you forget and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.

It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body *is* a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was *made* to limit the unlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit *you*. Can you who see yourselves within a body know yourself as an *idea*? Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot even think of God without a body or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot *know*. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur which surrounds you. God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out and to keep you apart from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe. This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it *is* the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. The sun becomes the sunbeam's “enemy” which would devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it. Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not survive *apart* from them. And what it thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its whole existence still remains in them. Without the sun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable. Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for some things but by no means totally dependent on their one Creator for everything and needing the whole to give them any meaning, for by themselves they *do* mean nothing. Nor *have* they any life apart and by themselves. Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself *as* you. It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the whole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. It leads no separate life because its life *is* the oneness in which its being was created. Do not accept this little fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain within your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys who looks on nothing, yet who would still die to defend it? This little self is not your kingdom. Arched high above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to every part. The little aspect which you think you set apart is no exception. Love knows no bodies and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit *is* its meaning. It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. In your tiny kingdom, you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, which makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy which love would bring to it from where it comes and where it would return with you. The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was. And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with *you*. And under its beneficence, your little garden will expand and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water but has grown too weary to go on alone. Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them gently to your quiet garden and receive their blessing there. So will it grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love and leaving *you* inside. And you will recognize yourself and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven with all the love of its Creator shining upon it. The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love's answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the body and interposed no barriers which would interfere with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. *Asking* for everything, you will *receive* it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect which you tried to hide from Heaven straight *into* Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood. Be sure of this—love has entered your special relationship and entered fully at your weak request. You do not recognize that love has come because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against each other. And you will not be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother. But *together* you could no more be unaware of love than love could know you not or fail to recognize itself in you. You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired and the desert's dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you and would welcome *you*. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him. Only a little wall of dust still stands between you. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for *both* of you.

You have been told to bring the darkness to the light and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, which the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping and *needs* no guide. Yet this wild and delusional thought needs help because in its delusions it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery. This is the little part of you, you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but *you* have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who *does* surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the eternal Light. How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really is. The barren sands, the darkness and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. Its vision *is* distorted, and the messages it transmits to you who made it to *limit* your awareness *are* little and limited and so fragmented they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For *you* sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are no messages which speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that *could* speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages. Yet God can bring you there if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there. For it is not His purpose to frighten you, but only *yours*. You are severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear, but He would lead you safely through and far beyond. The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadow rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless. Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings and kept apart from what was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which must always depend on keeping it *not* seen. The body's eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light *behind* it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light. This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor which looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seems to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops which rise above it and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button's fall nor hold a feather. \[Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an *illusion* of a foundation.\] Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands hold nothing. Yet in this cloud bank, it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all there. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's make-believe. Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real. So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no more substantial. You will not bruise yourself against them in traveling through. Let your Guide *teach* you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world beyond them, still further from the light. Yet from them *to* the light their shadows cannot fall. This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you had laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and you are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by and gently replaced by purity and love. Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness *does* make lovely, but it does not create. It is the source of healing, but it is the messenger of love and not its Source. Here you are led that God Himself can take the final step unhindered, for here does nothing interfere with love, letting it be itself. A step beyond this holy place \[of forgiveness\], a step still further inward but the one *you* cannot take, transports you to something completely different. Here is the Source of light—nothing perceived, forgiven, nor transformed, but merely *known*.

This course will *lead* to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. We need remember only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learning cannot go, *will* go beyond it but in a different way. Where learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him Who is complete where He begins and where there *is* no end. It is not for us to dwell on what *cannot* be attained. There is too much to learn. The readiness for knowledge still must be attained. Love is not learned. Its meaning lies in itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is *not*. That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone. Love is not learned because there never was a time in which you knew it not. Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator, Whose acknowledgment of you and yours of Him so far transcend all learning that everything you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one meaning. Your relationship has been uprooted from the world of shadows, and its unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. From there, it calls to you to follow the course it took, lifted high above the darkness and gently placed before the gates of Heaven. The holy instant in which you were united is but the messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind you of all that lies beyond it. Yet it is through forgiveness that it will *be* remembered. And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy place of forgiveness, you will remember nothing else, and memory will be as useless as learning, for your only purpose will be creating. Yet this you cannot know until every perception has been cleansed and purified and finally removed forever. Forgiveness removes only the *untrue*, lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it safe and sure within its gentleness to the bright world of new and clean perception. There is your purpose *now*. And it is there that peace awaits you.