 We continue on today with chapter 8, the journey back, the difference between imprisonment and freedom. There is a rationale for choice. Only one teacher knows what your reality is. If learning to remove the obstacles to that knowledge is the purpose of the curriculum, you must learn it of him. The ego does not know what it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you are without knowing what you are. It is expert only in confusion. It does not understand anything else. As a teacher then, the ego is totally confused and totally confusing. Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is impossible, you could still learn nothing from the ego, because the ego knows nothing. Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make anything but sense? Is this the teacher to whom a son of God should turn to find himself? The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. Only on the grounds of your own experience with his teaching should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher. Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path and facilitates the development of what you have. When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your learning because your learning will imprison you. Your will is in your nature and therefore cannot go against it. The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free because you will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. That is why the ego is the denial of free will. It is never God who coerces you because he shares his will with you. His voice teaches only in accordance with his will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson because that is what you are. The lesson is that your will and God's cannot be out of accord because they are one. This is the undoing of everything the ego tries to teach. It is not then only the direction of the curriculum that must be unconfected, but also the content. The ego tries to teach you what to oppose God's will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of the Son of God, knowing that the will of the Son is the Father's. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back. We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. It is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom, believing them to be the same. How can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they are the same, to teach you how they are different? The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God, yet He cannot conceive of God without you because it is not God's will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God's, you could know more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God His kingdom because He created you for this. When I said all power and glory are yours because the kingdom is His, this is what I meant. The will of God is without limit and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the will of God because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. You are part of Him who is all power and glory and are therefore as unlimited as He is. Who what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God's kingdom? His appeal then is merely to what the kingdom is and for its own acknowledgement of what it is. When you acknowledge this, you bring the acknowledgement automatically to everyone because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs and through theirs yours is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the kingdom in answer to the call for God. This is the natural response of every son of God to the voice for His Creator because it is the voice for His creations and for His own extension. From the workbook, Lesson 57 Today, let us review these ideas. I am not the victim of the world I see. How can I be the victim of a world that can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last. I have invented the world I see. I made up the prison in which I see myself. All I need do is recognize this and I am free. I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. The Son of God must be forever free. He is as God created him and not what I would make of him. He is where God would have him be and not where I thought to hold him prisoner. There is another way of looking at the world. Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribe to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside down and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be then that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom. I could see peace instead of this. When I see the world as a place of freedom, I realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this peace with me. My mind is part of God's. I am very holy. As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light I begin to see what my illusions about myself kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself and their oneness with me. So we continue on today the beautiful section from the text showing us the difference between imprisonment and freedom, taking us with the Holy Spirit in the direction of the Atonement, learning with the Holy Spirit to remove the obstacles to the remembrance of God, telling the difference between the two teachers in the mind, the Holy Spirit who teaches to free the mind and the ego, a belief that there is a substitute for God who teaches a curriculum of fear and doubt and confusion. There is no reason to follow the ego anymore. Learning the ego teaches makes any sense at all. Today I turn to the Holy Spirit and let the Holy Spirit direct all my decisions, every single decision. I remember that learning is joyful if it leads me along my natural path and facilitates the development of what I am and what I have always had. I cannot go against my natural desire to awaken. I will find no value in the ego and its defenses and distractions. My will is free because God's will is free and I share God's will with me. I was created by God. My happiness, my will, my joy are all the same and by following the voice for God, the Holy Spirit's lesson, I remember who I am, who I have always been, an eternal being, spirit. So today we follow up that the Holy Spirit knows the difference between pain and joy. The Holy Spirit knows the difference between imprisonment and freedom. I need the Holy Spirit for this distinction. A human being cannot make this distinction. For the mask was made to cover over the answer. The Holy Spirit is the answer. The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and his goal is God. The will of God is without limit. All power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because it created all things. By creating all things it made them part of itself. This unified experience, this perfect love, this oneness is God's kingdom. Everything runs easily and gladly through the kingdom in answer to the call for God. This is the natural response of every son of God to the voice for his Creator because it is the voice for his creations and for his own extension. Today we practice with our review lessons, the ideas that flow through our mind throughout the day. In deep prayer we are honored by each idea that sets us free from the ego and from the ego's world of linear time. We sink deeper and deeper inward as we review these ideas today once again in our mind in gratitude. I am not the victim of the world I see. I have invented the world I see. There is another way of looking at the world. I could see peace instead of this. My mind is part of God's. I am very holy.