 We continue today with Chapter 28, The Greater Joining. Accepting the Atonement for Yourself means not to give support to someone's dream of sickness and of death. It means that You share not His wish to separate and let Him turn illusions on Himself. Nor do You wish that they be turned instead on You. Thus have they no effects. And You are free of dreams of pain because You let Him be. Unless You help Him, You will suffer pain with Him because that is Your wish. And You become a figure in His dream of pain, as He in Yours. So do You and Your brother both become illusions and without identity. You could be anyone or anything depending on whose evil dream You share. You can be sure of just one thing, that You are evil, for You share in dreams of fear. There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for You will lose identity in them. You find Yourself by not accepting them as causing You and giving You effects. You stand apart from them, but not apart from Him who dreams them. Thus You separate the dreamer from the dream and join in one, but let the other go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the mind You would unite, but never with the dream. It is the dream You fear and not the mind. You see them as the same, because You think that You are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion in Yourself You do not know and cannot tell apart. Like You, Your brother thinks he is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself, for Your identity depends on his reality. Think rather of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind in which is brother to You. He is not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body, quote, hero of the dream, Your brother. It is his reality that is Your brother, as is Yours to him. Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap where Yours have joined with his. And yet between your minds there is no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from You. Therefore release him merely by Your claim on brotherhood and not on dreams of fear. Let him acknowledge who he is by not supporting his illusions by Your faith, for if You do, You will have faith in Yours. With faith in Yours, he will not be released, and You are kept in bonds to His dreams. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which You have supported in Your brother's mind. Be certain, if You do Your part, he will do his, for he will join You where You stand. Call not to him to meet You in the gap between You, or You must believe that it is Your reality as well as his. You cannot do his part, but this You do when You become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of Your own. Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced. You share confusion, and You are confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. What is the same seems different, because what is the same appears to be unlike. His dreams are Yours because You let them be, but if You took Your own away, would He be free of them, and of His own, as well? Your dreams are witnesses to His, and His attests the truth of Yours. Yet if You see there is no truth in Yours, His dreams will go, and He will understand what made the dream. The Holy Spirit is in both Your minds, and He is one because there is no gap that separates His oneness from itself. The gap between Your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. No one is sick if someone else accepts His union with Him. His desire to be sick and separated mind cannot remain without a witness or a cause. And both are gone if someone wills to be united with Him. He has dreams that He was separated from His brother, who, by sharing not His dream, has left the space between them vacant. And the Father comes to join His Son, the Holy Spirit joined. The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture healed entirely. Does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself? To each He offers His identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little broken bit that He insisted was Himself. And when He sees this picture, He will recognize Himself. If you share not your brother's evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to Himself. I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of your Holy Son. Your holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they are joined because of what is one, is in all of them. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms of the broken pieces seem to take me nothing, for the whole is in each one, and every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dreams, but join with him, and where you join his Son, the Father is. Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? Who would want to have the, quote, benefits of sickness when he has received the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot be lost. And what is not of him has no effects. What then would you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your willingness to let illusions go is all the healer of God's Son requires. He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were, and there will be no loss but only gain. And from the workbook, part two, introduction. Words will mean little now. We use them but as guides on which we do not now depend. For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain and go to inter-peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared. Now we attempt to let the exercise be merely a beginning. For we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised he will take the final step himself, and we are sure his promises are kept. We have come far along the road, and now we wait for him. We will continue spending time with him each morning and at night, as long as makes us happy. We will not consider time a matter of duration now. We use as much as we will need for the result that we desire. Nor will we forget our hourly remembrance in between, calling to God when we have need of him as we are tempted to forget our goal. We will continue with a central thought for all the days to come, and we will use that thought to introduce our times of rest and calm our minds at need. Yet we will not content ourselves with simple practicing in the remaining holy instance which conclude the year that we have given God. We say some simple words of welcome and expect our Father to reveal himself as he has promised. We have called on him, and he has promised that his son will not remain unanswered when he calls his name. Now do we come to him with but his word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for him to take the step to us that he has told us through his voice he would not fail to take when we invited him. He has not left his son in all his madness, or betrayed his trust in him, has not his faithfulness earned him the invitation that he seeks to make us happy. We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that his voice suggests, and then we wait for him to come to us. Now is the time of prophecy fulfilled. Now are all ancient promises upheld and fully kept. No step remains for time to separate from its accomplishment. For now we cannot fail. Sit silently and wait upon your Father. He has willed to come to you when you have recognized it as your will, he do so. And you could have never come this far unless you saw, however dimly, that it is your will. I am so close to you we cannot fail. Father, we give these holy times to you in gratitude to him who taught us how to leave the world of sorrow in exchange for its replacement given us by you. We look not backward now. We look ahead and fix our eyes upon the journey's end. Accept these little gifts of thanks from us as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made and take that world to be the full replacement of our own. And now we wait in silence, unafraid and certain of your coming. We have sought to find our way by following the guide you sent to us. We did not know the way, but you did not forget us. And we know that you will not forget us now. We ask that your innocent promises be kept which are your will to keep. We will with you in asking this. The Father and the Son, whose holy will created all that is, can fail in nothing. In this certainty we undertake these last few steps to you and rest in confidence upon your love which will not fail the Son who calls to you. And so we start upon the final part of this one holy year which we have spent together in the search for truth in God. Who is its one creator? We have found the way he chose for us and made the choice to follow it as he would have us go. His hand has held us up. His thoughts have lit the darkness of our minds. His love has called to us unceasingly since time began. We had a wish that God would fail to have the Son whom he created for himself. We wanted God to change himself and be what we would make of him. And we believe that our insane desires were the truth. Now we are glad that this is all undone and we no longer think illusions true. The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more and it will rise again. A moment more and we who are God's sons are safely home where he would have us be. Now is the need for practice almost done. For in this final section we will come to understand that we need only call to God and all temptations disappear. Instead of words, we need but feel his love. Instead of prayers, we need but call his name. Instead of judging, we need be but still and let all things be healed. We will accept the way God's plan will end as we receive the way it started. Now it is complete. This year has brought us to eternity. One further use for words we still retain. From time to time instructions on a theme of special relevance will intersperse our daily lessons and the periods of wordless deep experience which should come afterwards. These special thoughts should be reviewed each day. Each one of them to be continued till the next is given you. They should be slowly read and thought about a little while. Proceeding one of the holy and blessed instance in the day. We give the first of these instructions now. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin and in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God's son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the will of God. An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt although it is not true. The mind is closed and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its change so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure, less easily accessible to doubt and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal? An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is. Do nothing then and let forgiveness show you what to do. Through him who is your guide, your savior and protector, strong in hope and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is his function, given him by God. Now must you share his function and forgive whom he has saved, whose sinlessness he sees and whom he honors as the Son of God. Lesson 221, Peace to my mind, let all my thoughts be still. Father, I come to you today to seek the peace that you alone can give. I come in silence in the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind. I wait and listen for your voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear your voice in silence and uncertainty and love. Sure, you will hear my call and answer me. Now do we wait in quiet? God is here because we wait together. I am sure that he will speak to you and you will hear. Accept my confidence for it is yours. Our minds are wholly joined. We wait with one intent to hear our Father's answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find his peace, to hear him speak to us of what we are and to reveal himself unto his Son. Amen.