16 Glory be to God in the highest and to
you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already
been given. Ask for light and learn that you
are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment, you
will learn it because your will to learn it is your decision to listen to the Teacher Who
knows of light and can therefore
teach it to you. There is no limit on your learning because there is no limit on your
minds. There is no limit on His Will to teach because He was created [by unlimited Will in
order]
to teach.
Knowing His function perfectly, He wills to fulfill it perfectly, because that is His joy and
yours.
17 To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully known because it is the only function that can be fully
experienced. When this is accomplished, then, there
is no other experience. Yet the
wish for other experience will block its accomplishment because God's Will cannot be forced upon you, being an experience of total
willingness. The Holy Spirit knows how to teach this, but
you do not. That is why you need Him and why God
gave Him to you. Only
His teaching will release your will to God's, uniting it with His power and glory and establishing them as
yours. You share them as God shares them because this is the natural outcome of their being.
18 The Will of Father and of the Son are one together
by their extension. Their extension is the
result of their oneness, holding their unity together by extending their
joint will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created in union with Perfect Creator. The Father
must give fatherhood to His Son because His own Fatherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy function of extending His Fatherhood by placing
no limits upon it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you
how to do this, for you will know what it
means of God Himself.
19 When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation
to him and receiving it yourself, for I am always there with you in remembrance of
you.
20 The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is
know thyself. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him
because they are yours. The ego tries to find them in
yourself because it does not know where to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look
only at yourself, you
cannot find yourself because that is not what you
are.
21 Whenever you are with a brother, you are learning what you are because you are
teaching what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher
you are following.
He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision,
and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him because it is your responsibility to
yourself. Give him
his place in the Kingdom, and you will have
yours. The Kingdom
cannot be found alone, and you who
are the Kingdom cannot find
yourselves alone.
22 To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you
cannot listen to the ego.
Its purpose is to
defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But
you can know this, and you
will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego has made of
you. This
is your responsibility, because once you have really done this, you
will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice, you will begin to learn and understand why you have believed that when you met someone else, you had thought that he
was someone else. And every holy encounter in which
you enter fully will teach you
this is not so.
23 You can encounter
only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who
is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you
cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you
alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that
all strength is in God and
therefore in you. God wills
no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision,
including you. That is why He has given you the means for
undoing it. Through His power and glory, all your wrong decisions are undone,
completely releasing you
and your brothers from
every imprisoning thought
any part of the Sonship has accepted. Wrong decisions have no power
because they are not true. The imprisonment which they
seem to produce is no more true than
they are.
24 Power and glory belong to God alone. So do
you. God gives
whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and
everything belongs to Him. Giving of
your self is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will teach you what you
have of Him, and this will teach you what you
are in Him. You
cannot be powerless to do this because this
is your power. Glory is God's gift to you because that is what
He is. See this glory everywhere to learn what
you are.
