 We continue today with chapter 21. The fear to look within. The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within and see the sin you think is there. This you would not be fearful to admit. Fear, in association with the sin, the ego deems quite appropriate and smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel ashamed. It doubts not your belief in faith and sin. Its temples do not shake because of this. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to your desire that it be there to see. This merely seems to be the source of fear. Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule is tempered and its unknown quote enemy whom it cannot even see. It fears. Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do your eyes will light on sin and God will strike you blind. This you believe and so you do not look. Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear nor yours who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it is. Too loudly and too often. We're underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation. The ego is not certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within and saw no sin? This quote fearful question is one the ego never asked. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend. Those who have joined their brothers have detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in truth and your belief in sin has been already shaken nor are you now entirely unwilling to look within and see it not. Your liberation still is only partial, still limited and incomplete yet born within you. Not wholly mad you have been willing to look on much of your insanity and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you now the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit's purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you. And yet this part with which you now identify is not afraid to look upon itself. It knows no sin. How otherwise could it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit's purpose as its own? This part has seen your brother and recognized him perfectly since time began. And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free again as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of freedom, the acceptance of release to come to you. And now you recognize that it was not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit's purpose. And so there must be something else. Think not that this is madness, for this is your reason tells you. And it follows perfectly from what you have already learned. There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the reasoning of the sane. You have perceived the ego's madness and not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. At times it still deceives you. Get in your saner moments its ranting strikes no terror in your heart. For you have realized that all the gifts it would withdraw from you enrage at your presumptuous wish to look within you do not want. A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and catch your eye. Yet you would not sell heaven to have them. And now the ego is afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the other part hears as the sweetest music. The song it longed to hear since the first time the ego came into your mind. The ego's weakness is its strength. The song of freedom which sings the praises of another world brings to it hope of peace. For it remembers heaven and now it sees that heaven has come to earth at last from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth and earth can no longer hold what has been given heaven as its own. Look gently on your brother and remember the ego's weakness is revealed in both your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined and looks upon the ego unafraid. Little child, innocent of sin, following gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear's insane insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed. The senseless is not made meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it happily and question not what must be so. And from the workbook, Lesson 169 By Grace I Live By Grace I Am Released Grace is an aspect of the love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the unity of truth. It is the world's most lofty aspiration for it leads beyond the world entirely. It is past learning yet the goal of learning. For grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance. Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received. An altar clean and holy for the gift. Grace is acceptance of the love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. By grace alone the hate and the fear are gone. For grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains that those whose minds are lighted by the gift of grace cannot believe the world of fear is real. Grace is not learned. The final step must go beyond all learning. Grace is not the goal this course aspires to attain. Yet we prepare for grace and that an open mind can hear the call to awaken. It is not shut tight against God's voice. It has become aware that there are things it does not know and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home. We have perhaps appeared to contradict our statement that the revelation of the Father and the Son as one has been already set. But we have also said that the mind determines when that time will be and has determined it. And yet we urge you to bear witness to the Word of God to hasten the experience of truth and speed its advent into every mind that recognizes truth's effects on you. Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in his being he encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but him. We say God is and then we cease to speak for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. It has united with its source and like its source itself it merely is. We cannot speak nor write nor even think of this at all. It comes to every mind when total recognition that its will is God's has been completely given and received completely. It returns the mind into the endless present where the past and future cannot be conceived. It lies beyond salvation past all thought of time, forgiveness and the holy face of Christ. The son of God has merely disappeared into his father and his father has in him. The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state. This is beyond experience we try to hasten. Yet forgiveness taught and learned brings with it the experiences which bear witness that the time the mind itself determined to abandon all but this is now at hand. We do not hasten it in that what you will offer was concealed from him who teaches what forgiveness means. All learning was already in his mind accomplished and complete. He recognized all the time holds and gave it to all minds that each one might determine from a point where time was ended when it was released to revelation and in eternity. We have repeated several times before that you would make a journey that is done. For oneness must be here. Whatever time the mind has set for revelation is entirely irrelevant to what must be a constant state, forever as it always was, forever to remain as it is now. We merely take the part assigned long sense and fully recognized as perfectly fulfilled by him who wrote salvation script in his creator's name and in the name of his creator's son. There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can understand. When revelation of your oneness comes it will be known and fully understood. Now we have work to do where those in time can speak of things beyond and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hour still and rise and work and go to sleep by them? Suffice it then that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter, for your part is still what all the rest depends on. And as you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer, each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God. Forgiveness is the central theme that runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relationships, the course it runs directed and its outcome sure. And now we ask for grace, the final gift of salvation can bestow. Experience that grace provides will end in time for grace foreshadows heaven, yet does not replace the thought of time but for a little while. The intervals vices, it is here that miracles are laid to be returned by you from holy instance you receive through grace in your experience to all who see the light that lingers in your face. What is the face of Christ but His who went a moment into timelessness and brought a clear reflection of the unity He felt an instant back to bless the world? How could you finally attain to it forever while a part of you remains outside, unknowing, unawakened and in need of you as witness to the truth? Be grateful to return as you were glad to go an instant and accept the gifts that grace provided you. You carry them back to yourself and revelation stands not far behind. Its coming is insured. We ask for grace and for experience that comes from grace. We welcome the release it offers everyone. We do not ask for the unaskable. We do not look beyond what grace can give. For this we can give in the grace that has been given us. Our learning gold today does not exceed this prayer. Yet in the world what could be more than what we ask this day of Him who gives the grace we ask as it was given Him. By grace I live. By grace I am released. By grace I give. By grace I will release.