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When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing.

There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer.

Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard.

The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in answering your every question what to do. He knows. And He will tell you and then do it for you.

You who are tired might consider whether this is not more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping but not into this.

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Lesson 156

¹ Today's idea but states the simple truth that makes the thought of sin impossible. It promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless it does not exist. It follows surely from the basic thought so often mentioned in the text—ideas leave not their source. If this be true, how can you be apart from God? How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source?

² We are not inconsistent in the thoughts that we present in our curriculum. Truth must be true throughout if it be true. It cannot contradict itself nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. You cannot walk the world apart from God because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are, He is. There is one Life. That Life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live.

³ Yet where He is there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself because what shares His life is part of Holiness and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice, the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.

⁴ There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.

⁵ The Light in you is what the universe longs to behold. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own, and thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness itself Which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle Light all things into Its likeness and Its purity.

⁶ This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the Light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is it gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?

⁷ Yet you have wasted many, many years on just this foolish thought. The past is gone with all its fantasies. They keep you bound no longer. The approach to God is near. And in the little interval of doubt which still remains, you may perhaps lose sight of your Companion, and mistake Him for the senseless, ancient dream that now is past.

^{8 "}Who walks with me?" This question should be asked a thousand times a day, till certainty has ended doubting and established peace. Today let doubting cease. God speaks for you in answering your question with these words:

⁹ I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me.

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PART 1 ~ PART 2

VIII. The Decision

for Guiltlessness Cont'd

⁷⁹ Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son, whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. God's Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. Never forget the love of God, Who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from His loving Mind wherein he was created and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.

⁸⁰ Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all that you cannot know when all knowledge lies behind every decision which the Holy Spirit makes for you? Learn of His wisdom and His love and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and for yourself.

⁸¹ How gracious is it to decide all things through Him Whose equal love is given equally to all alike! He leaves you no one outside yourself, alone without you. And so He gives you what is yours because your Father would have you share it with Him. In everything be led by Him and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the decision. And everyone will be. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would you know this?

⁸² You taught yourselves the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him and with everything that is within Him, as it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.

⁸³ Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you and tell yourself this and only this:

⁸⁴ He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not.

⁸⁵ Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is already there.

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AUDIO: Text Ch 13, VIII, 79-85 mp3

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IX. The Way of Salvation

Par 86-92

⁸⁶ When you accept a brother's guiltlessness, you will see the Atonement in him. For by proclaiming it in him, you make it yours, and you will see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of your brother's guiltlessness shining within him while you still believe it is not there. His guiltlessness is your Atonement. Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered first to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First, there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third and nothing but the First.

⁸⁷ You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. This state, and only this, must you attain with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him. You can feel His Presence next to you but cannot know that you are one with Him. This need not be taught. Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself.

⁸⁸ When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you and stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. For what He knows not cannot be and therefore cannot be given. Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive and restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes real and visible to them that use it. On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn.

⁸⁹ You will feel guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's Mind with all of yours. Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here? You need not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. When you release them, they are gone. God will not fail nor ever has in anything.

⁹⁰ Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. He created you out of Himself but still within Him. He knows what you are. Remember that there is no second to Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son. For this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His.

⁹¹ Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided against your function in Heaven and consider carefully whether you want to make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God and for your function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God and trying to teach him guilt instead of love. Give up this frantic and insane attempt, which cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father, and awaking gladly to His love and holiness, which join together as the truth in you, making you one with Him.

⁹² When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in answering your every question what to do. He knows. And He will tell you and then do it for you. You who are tired might consider whether this is not more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping but not into this.

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AUDIO: Text Ch 13, IX, 86-92 mp3

ONLINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition

Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.”

One of his most popular books is: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.