85 If you did not feel guilty, you
could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as
unworthy of love and
deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as
separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another,
it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself and
escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to
relinquish denial but to
hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.
86 The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
87 If this
were the real world, God
would be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation and
be loving.
Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack
would be salvation, and this is the
ego's interpretation,
not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could
conceive of it. Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the
Father Who drove him out of paradise. For in that belief, the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who do
not understand Him
could believe it.
88 This world
is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son cannot
be crucified, this is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is
not guilty. He
deserves only love because he has
given only love. He cannot
be condemned because he has never condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no
need of salvation.
89 Long ago we said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wills
only this, for sharing the Father's love for His Son, He wills to remove
all guilt from his mind that he may remember his Father in peace. For peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered
only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to
deny the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son.
90 In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God
has sinned. How could you
see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was and can never be. Without guilt the ego
has no life, and God's Son
is without guilt. As you look upon yourselves and judge what you do honestly, as you have been asked to do, you may be tempted to wonder how you
can be guiltless.
91 Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in
eternity. You
have "sinned" in the past, but there
is no past. Always has
no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end, it will roll up like a long carpet which has spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty, you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it
is.
92 The journey which the Son of God has set himself is foolish indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is
not cruel, and His Son
cannot hurt himself. The retaliation he fears and which he
sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it, the Holy Spirit
knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the
end of time, where
you must be because He is
with you. He has
always undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has
always been.
93 You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has
found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being
in him, he
has found it.
When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless
now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God's Mind. God's Son will
always be as he was created. Deny
your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.
94 When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that there
is no guilt in God's Son. And
only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only
yourself, and by so doing, you cannot know that you
are God's Son. You have denied the condition of his Being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the love of his Father.
95 As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there
is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, Who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father
for you. There is no road to travel on and no time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God's Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting His purity as yours, learn of Him that it
is yours.
96 You are invulnerable
because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past
only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have done and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No one who believes this can understand what
always means. And therefore guilt
must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal
because you are eternal and always
must be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your minds to ensure the ego's continuity. For if what has been
will be punished, the ego's continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant.
97 Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality
is, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless. The future, in time, is always associated with expiation, and
only guilt could induce a sense of
need for expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God as
yours is therefore God's way of reminding you of His Son and what he is in truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless, he
is eternal.
98 You cannot dispel guilt by making it real and
then atoning for it. This is the ego's plan, which it offers
instead of dispelling it. The ego believes in atonement through
attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack
is salvation. And you who cherish guilt must
also believe it, for how else but by identifying
with the ego could you hold dear what you do not want?
99 The ego teaches you to attack yourself
because you are guilty, and this must
increase the guilt, for guilt is the
result of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there
is no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real, there
is no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, he
knows this is true. And being true for
you, you
cannot attack yourself, for without guilt, attack is impossible. You, then,
are saved because God's Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you
are invulnerable.