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5The full awareness of Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. 6The ego cannot prevail against this,36 because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred.
2The ego projects to exclude and therefore to deceive. 3The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one. 4Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is the same.
“Teach only love, for that is what you are.”
4Your only real safety lies in extending only the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others, your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. 5Once it can accept this fully, it does not see the need to protect itself. 6The protection of God can then dawn upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. 6 The perfectly safe are wholly benign. 2They bless because they know they are blessed. 3Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. 4Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack.
3But you made the ego without love, and so it does not love you.
5This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind which believes that you are separate and outside the Mind of God.
2You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection and proved to you that you were wrong. 3This would demonstrate that the perfect are inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are therefore helpless.
4That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. 5To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist.
How can you wake children better and more kindly than with a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? 2You do not inform them that the nightmares which frightened them so badly were not real, because children believe in magic. 3You merely reassure them that they are safe now. 4Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking, so that they will understand they need not be afraid of bad dreams. 5Then, when bad dreams come, they will call on the light themselves to dispel them.
The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors, because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom are children.
2Many think that this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing.
The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure, and for pride.
5To have, give all to all. 6Do only that.
2Even if you are not consistent in teaching it, you can do so often enough to enable him to learn it. 3Once he learns it, he can teach you how to become more consistently awake, and thus begin to waken himself.
5If he recognizes the direction this journey must take, one sign will be that he insists on collaboration.53
It should be clear that the recognition of the lack of order in miracles has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired.
2Now you must be vigilant to hold its oneness in your mind, because if you allow doubt to enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness and will be unable to teach it.
7I will only for God and His Kingdom.
5To create is to love.
2The ego demands reciprocal rights, because it is competitive rather than loving. 3It is always willing to make a deal, but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no deals are possible. 4To gain you must give, not bargain.
You are responsible for your belief that you were attacked.
By projecting the cause of your suffering outward, expressing anger toward it and assaulting it, and then fearing its assault in return, you are drawn into an ever-increasing cycle of seeing the outside world as doing to you what you have really done to yourself.
The point here seems to be that while others can physically attack you, they cannot actually cause you to feel annoyed, bothered, or troubled.
Because God’s equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. 2But if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has entered their minds. 3Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it.
All abilities, then, should be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who knows how to use them properly. 2He will use them only for healing, because He knows you only as whole.
2The ego always seeks to divide and separate. 3The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. 4As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of healing.
Only minds communicate.
3Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. 4Magic always sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. 5He may believe that this gift comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others do not.
2You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving that he could not have changed his mind. 3That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. 4It is only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His Mind. 5He himself must think he can, or he could not perceive himself as sick.
The mind that accepts attack cannot love.
4Love is your power, which the ego must deny.
Perceived without your part in it, God’s creation is perceived as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do attack. 2The attack must be blind, because there is nothing to attack. 3Therefore, they make up images, perceive them as unworthy, and attack them for their unworthiness.
When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. 2His need is yours. 3You need the blessing you can offer him. 4There is no way for you to have it except by giving it.
You do not need God’s blessing, because that you have forever. 2But you do need yours. 3The picture you see of yourself is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. 4You cannot love this.
4Every attack is a call for His patience, because only His patience can translate attack into blessing. 5Those who attack do not know they are blessed. 6They attack because they believe they are deprived. 7Give therefore of your abundance, and teach them theirs. 8Do not share their delusion of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.
A second fallacy is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. 2Giving it is how you keep it.
You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. 2There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment mind.
4When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence yourself, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from the attempt to project the responsibility for your own errors. 5But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. 6Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole.
6Unless you create, you are unfulfilled.
4The world goes against your nature, because it is out of accord with God’s laws. 5The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. 6This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable.
6A Son of God is happy only if he knows he is with God.
Perceiving the majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance.
5Knowledge is not the motivation factor for learning this course. 6Peace is. 7As the prerequisite for knowledge, peace must be learned.
Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. 2Yet in this war there is no opponent.
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. 2As you see him, you will see yourself. 3As you treat him, you will treat yourself. 4As you think of him, you will think of yourself. 5Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself.
Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. 2The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it.
No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal. 2That is not because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is worthy of him.
4You have attacked him, and you must have attacked yourself first.
Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. 2Since this is natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural.
5The arrest of the mind’s extension is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind’s function. 6Block this, and you have blocked health because you have blocked the mind’s joy. 7The opposite of joy is depression.
