 We continue today with chapter 10, the denial of God. The rituals of the God of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is never permitted for depression is the sign of allegiance to Him. Depression means that you have foresworn God. Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own identity. And in this sense, the wages of sin is death. The sense is very literal. Denial of life perceives its opposite. As all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. No one can really do this, but that you think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute. Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection. And you will believe that others and not yourself have done this to you. You must receive the message you give because it is the message you want. You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them that would bring joy to you. It is the denial of the spark that brings you depression. For whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God. Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The God of sickness obviously demands the denial of health because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to you. Unless you are sick, you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly want them. Blasomy, then, is self-destructive, not God-destructive. It means that you are willing not to know yourself in order to be sick. This is the offering your God demands because having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea. He has many forms, but although he may seem to be many different things, he is but one idea, the denial of God. Sickness and death seem to enter the mind of God's son against his will. The, quote, attack on God made his son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the God of depression. This was his alternative to joy because he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created. Yet the son is helpless without the father, who alone is his help. I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over nothing. Your gods are nothing because your father did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike your creator any more than he could have created a son who was unlike him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what is. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created. Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. Yet this can be corrected, and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against him. You denied him because you loved him, knowing that if you recognized your love for him, you could not deny him. Your denial of him therefore means that you love him, and that you know he loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known, and if you must accept denial, you can accept its undoing as well. Your father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but he does call to you to return. When you think he has not answered your call, you have not answered his. He calls to you from every part of the sonship because of his love for his son. If you hear his message, he has answered you, and you will learn of him if you hear a right. The love of God is in everything he created, for his son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to him. Do not look to the God of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgement of him. When you acknowledge him, you will know that he has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in his acknowledgement of you lies your being. You are not sick, and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and his creation, from which he cannot be separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is his forever, and you are of God. Would he allow himself to suffer, and would he offer his son anything that is not acceptable to him? If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. Yet to do this, you must acknowledge him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgement of your Father is the acknowledgement of yourself as you are. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your own mind because of the power he gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free. You do not realize how much you have denied yourself and how much God in his love would not have it so. Yet he would not interfere with you because he would not know his son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack himself, and God is not insane. When you deny him, you are insane. Would you have him share your insanity? God will never cease to love his son, and his son will never cease to love him. That was the condition of his son's creation fixed forever in the mind of God. To know that is his sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave himself to you in your creation, and his gifts are eternal. Would you deny yourself to him? Out of your gifts to him, the kingdom will be restored to his son. His son removed himself from his gift by refusing to accept what had been created for him and what he had created in the name of his father. Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's son. You are not at home anywhere else or in any other condition. Do not deny yourself the joy that was created for you for the misery you have made for yourself. God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are. If God knows his children as holy sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows his children as holy without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows his children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these illusions and many other forms that blasphemy may take are refusals to accept creation as it is. If God created his son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. And as part of the sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours. Do not perceive anything God did not create, or you are denying him. His is the only fatherhood, and it is yours only because he has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like his because they are given in his name. That is why your creations are as real as his. Yet the real fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real son is to be known. You believe that the sick things you have made are your real creations because you believe that sick images you perceive are the sons of God. Only if you accept fatherhood of God will you have anything because his fatherhood gave you everything. That is why to deny him is to deny yourself. Arrogance is the denial of love because love shares an arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable, the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity, it is true in time so that while time last in your mind, there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours. And from the workbook, lesson 77, I am entitled to miracles. You are entitled to miracles because of what you are. You will receive miracles because of what God is. And you will offer miracles because you are one with God. Again, how simple is salvation? It is merely a statement of your true identity. It is this that we will celebrate today. Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself nor on any of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It is implicit in what God your Father is. It was insured in your creation and guaranteed by the laws of God. Today, we will claim the miracles which are your right, since they belong to you. You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the kingdom of God is within you and can never be lost. We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth. Today, however, we will also make sure that we will not content ourselves with less. Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself quite confidently that you are entitled to miracles. Closing your eyes, remind yourself that you are asking only for what is rightfully yours. Remind yourself also that miracles are never taken from one and given to another and that in asking for your rights, you are upholding the rights of everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God. After this brief introductory phase, wait quietly for the assurance that your request has granted. You have asked for the salvation of the world and for your own. You have requested that you be given the means by which this is accomplished. You cannot fail to be assured in this. You are but asking that the will of God be done. In doing this, you do not really ask for anything. You state a fact that cannot be denied. The Holy Spirit cannot but assure you that your request is granted. The fact that you accepted must be so. There is no room for doubt and uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is simple, a simple statement of a simple fact. You will receive the assurance that you seek. Our shorter practice periods will be frequent and will also be devoted to a reminder of a simple fact. Tell yourself often today, I am entitled to miracles. Ask for them whenever a situation arises in which they are called for. You will recognize these situations and since you are not relying on yourself to find the miracle, you are fully entitled to receive it whenever you ask. Remember too not to be satisfied with less than the perfect answer. Be quick to tell yourself, should you be tempted, I will not trade miracles for grievances. I want only what belongs to me. God has established miracles as my right. So today we accept our miracle working function. We accept it in stating I am entitled to miracles. We will no longer worship the God of sickness. We will no longer deny God the Father. Today we pull our mind away from the temporary, from the ephemeral, from all the images that flow by of time and space, past and future. We will not obey the rituals of the God of sickness. We will not blasphemy by accepting a substitute reality in place of the reality that God created for us, eternal, changeless, loving, joyful. We will not deny our own identity. We are incapable of denying our own reality as the Christ. Therefore we are incapable of projection. We accept our reality. We do not want to get rid of anything. We want to only extend that which we are, love. Today we will not see anyone or anything as sick or wrong. Today we will see no error because there is no error. Because we are who we are, a child of God, perfect creation of a loving Father. There can be no error in our identity, which means there can be no error in anything. Today we accept the love that we are. I love God. God loves me and I am as God created me. I am everywhere. I am not contained or limited in any way. I am incapable of suffering. I am incapable of error. I am entitled to miracles. This is a celebration and I will celebrate today. Today I claim that miracles are my right and the right of everyone and everything. There are no greater miracles or smaller miracles. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God. Miracles are not for some and not for others. As I extend miracles, miracles in bless everyone and everything. I will not trade miracles for grievances. I want only what belongs to me. God has established miracles as my right. I am entitled to miracles. Amen.