 We continue today with Chapter 25, Perception and Choice. To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with Perception's fundamental law. You see what you believe is there and you believe it is there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this to hold it up and offer it support. This is Perception's form adapted to this world of God's more basic law that love creates itself and nothing but itself. God's laws do not obtain directly to a world Perception rules. For such a world could not have been created by the mind to which Perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere, not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because His Son believes it is, and from His Son's belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. He could not enter His Son's insanity with Him, but He could be sure His sanity went there with Him, so He could not be lost forever in the madness of His wish. Perception rests on choosing. Knowledge does not. Knowledge has but one law because it has but one Creator. But this world has two who made it, and they do not see it as the same. To each it has a different purpose, and to each it is a perfect means to serve the goal for which it is perceived. For specialness it is the perfect frame to set it off, the perfect battleground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds in His Perception. Not one it can be fully justified. There is another maker of the world, the simultaneous corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God. Not as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes He has. Corrected error is the error's end, and thus has God protected still His Son even in error. There is another purpose in the world that error made because it has another maker who can reconcile its goal with His Creator's purpose. In His perception of the world nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness in the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind where it must be and light the body up instead of it. The lamps of heaven are not for mind to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, then must the maker of the world correct your error lest you remain in darkness where the lamps are not. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone, nor need he stay more than an instant, for he has come with heaven's help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time. The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger, turn to an event which justifies his love. He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can with equal ease and far more happiness bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy. How can a misperception be a sin? Let all your brother's errors be to you nothing except a chance for you to see the workings of the Helper given you to see the world he made instead of yours. What then is justified? What do you want? For these two questions are the same. And when you see them as the same, your choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings release from the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to offer to your peace and many chances to extend your own forgiveness. Such its purpose is to those who want to see peace and forgiveness, to send on them and offer them the light. The maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and his gentleness. It is not there in his forgiving eyes and therefore it need not be there in yours. Sin is the fixed belief perception cannot change. What has been damned is damned and damned forever, being forever unforgivable. If then it is forgiven since perception must have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. Holy Spirit too sees what he sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on his vision sin cannot encroach, for sin has been corrected by his sight. And thus it must have been an error, not a sin. For what it claimed could never be has been. Sin is attacked by punishment and so preserved. But to forgive it is to change its state from error into truth. The Son of God could never sin, but he can wish for what would hurt him. And he has the power to think he can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of himself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation? Is it your purpose that he be saved or damned? Forgetting not that what he is to you will make this choice your future. For you make it now, the instant when all time becomes a means to reach a goal. Make then your choice. But recognize that in this choice the purpose of the world you see is chosen and will be justified. And from the workbook, Lesson 193 All things are lessons God would have me learn. God does not know of learning, yet his will extends to what he does not understand in that he wills the happiness his Son inherited of him be undisturbed, eternal, and forever gaining scope eternally expanding in the joy of full creation and eternally open and wholly limitless in him. That is his will. And thus his will provides the means to guarantee that it is done. God sees no contradictions, yet his Son believes he sees them. Thus he has a need for one who can correct his erring sight and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases. God does not perceive at all, yet it is he who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of heaven shine upon it. It is he who answers what his Son would contradict and keeps his sinlessness forever safe. These are the lessons God would have you learn. His will reflects them all, and they reflect his loving-kindness to the Son he loves. Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them. The form alone is changed with different circumstances and events, with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real. They are the same in fundamental content. It is this. Forgive, and you will see this differently. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness, yet that is the content underneath the form. It is the sameness which makes learning sure because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them if one but wants to see the simple lesson there. Forgive, and you will see this differently. These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form. These are the words with which temptation ends and guilt abandoned is revered no more. These are the words which end the dream of sin and rid the mind of fear. These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world. Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real and death becomes our choice instead of life? Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage? These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness and do not forget these words apply to everything you see or any brother looks upon to miss. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson you should learn? Does pain seem real in the perception? If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned and there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs. God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself. His son does not remember who he is and God would have him not forget his love and all the gifts his love brings with it. Would you now renounce your own salvation? Would you fail to learn the simple lesson heaven's teacher sets before you that all pain may disappear and God may be remembered by his son? All things are lessons God would have you learn. He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction nor one thorn or nail to hurt his holy son in any way. He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene without a care in an eternal home which cares for him and he would have all tears be wiped away with none remaining yet unshed and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. For God has willed that laughter should replace each one and that his son be free again. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day. Let mercy come to you more quickly. Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute, or another instant. Time was made for this. Use it today for what its purpose is. Morning and night, devote what time you can to serve its proper aim and do not let the time be less than meet your deepest need. Give all you can and give a little more. For now we would rise in haste and go unto our Father's house. We have been gone too long and we would linger here no more. And as we practice let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves and kept apart from healing. Let us give them all to him who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear. Truth is his message. Truth, his teaching is. His are the lessons God would have us learn. Each hour spend a little time today and in the days to come in practicing the lesson in forgiveness in the form established for the day. And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought so that the next one is free of the one before. The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way. Let no one hour cast its shadow on the one that follows and when that one goes let everything that happened in its course go with it. Thus will you remain unbound in peace eternal in the world of time. This is the lesson God would have you learn. There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to him and to salvation of the world. To all that speaks of terror, answer thus. I will forgive and this will disappear. To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering repeat these self same words. And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate and brings the love of God the Father down to earth at last to raise it up to Heaven. God will take this final step himself. Do not deny the little steps he asks you take to him. Amen.