 Today we begin with Chapter 3, The Innocent Perception, Atonement Without Sacrifice. A further point must be perfectly clear before any residual fear still associated with miracles can disappear. The crucifixion did not establish the atonement. The resurrection did. Many sincere Christians have misunderstood this. No one who is free of the belief and scarcity could possibly make this mistake. If the crucifixion is seen from an upside down point of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged one of His sons to suffer because He was good. This particularly unfortunate interpretation which arose out of projection has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. Such anti-religious concepts enter into many religions. If the real Christian should pause and ask, how could this be? Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His own words have clearly stated is unworthy of His Son? The best defense, as always, is not to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is unwise to accept any concept if you have to invert a whole frame of reference in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a wider scale. Persecution frequently results in an attempt to, quote, justify the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless. It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because although the error itself is no harder to correct than any other, many have been unwilling to give it up in view of its prominent value as a defense. In milder forms a parent says, this hurts me more than it hurts you and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe our Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind. I was not, quote, punished because you were bad. The holy benign lesson the Atonement teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in any form. This statement, quote, vengeance's mind sayeth the Lord is a misperception by which one assigns his own, quote, evil past to God. The evil past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it and he does not maintain it. God does not believe in retribution. His mind does not create that way. He does not hold your, quote, evil deeds against you. Is it likely that he would hold them against me? Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption is and how entirely it arises from projection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors including the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden. It is also why you may believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish. Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear and frightened people can be vicious. Sacrificing in any way is a violation of my injunction that you should be merciful even as your Father in Heaven is merciful. It has been hard for many Christians to realize that this applies to themselves. Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. The result is learning failure. I have been correctly referred to as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But those who represent the Lamb as bloodstained do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolize that strength and innocence are not in conflict but naturally live in peace. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God is another way of saying the same thing. A pure mind knows the truth and this is its strength. It does not confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence with strength not with weakness. Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything because the innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect its wholeness. It cannot project. It can only honor other minds because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved to others who are like them. The Lamb takes away the sins of the world in a sense that the state of innocence or grace is one in which the meaning of the atonement is perfectly apparent. The atonement is entirely unambiguous. It is perfectly clear because it exists in light. Only the attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to those who do not choose to see. The atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil and evil does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true. The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can withstand any form of evil as light abolishes forms of darkness. The atonement is therefore the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all the other lessons I taught are true. If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons. You are released from all errors if you believe this. The innocence of God is the true state of mind of His Son. In this state, your mind knows God, for God is not symbolic. He is fact. Knowing His Son as He is, you realize that the atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift for God's altar, where nothing except perfection belongs. The understanding of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly radiant. And from the workbook, lesson number 16, I have no neutral thoughts. The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact. Thoughts are not big or little, powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false make theirs. There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought you have contributes to truth or to illusion. Either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions. You can indeed multiply nothing, but you will not extend it by doing so. Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war, either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as an important, trivial, and not worth bothering about, that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it. In applying the idea for today, search your mind for a minute or so with eyes closed, and actively seek not to overlook any, quote, little thought that may tend to elude the search. This is quite difficult until you get used to it. You will find that it is still hard for you not to make artificial distinctions. Every thought that occurs to you, regardless of the qualities that you assign to it, is a suitable subject for applying today's idea. In the practice periods, first repeat the idea to yourself, and then as each one crosses your mind, hold it in awareness while you tell yourself, this thought about blank is not a neutral thought. That thought about blank is not a neutral thought. As usual, use today's idea whenever you are aware of a particular thought that arouses uneasiness. The following form is suggested for this purpose. This thought about blank is not a neutral thought, because I have no neutral thoughts. Four or five practice periods are recommended if you find them relatively effortless. If strain is experienced, three will be enough. The lengths of the exercise period should also be reduced if there is discomfort. Lesson number sixteen. I have no neutral thoughts. So, just as in this world, computers operate on a system of ones and zeros, a binary system, the sleeping mind, the split mind is operating with two different thought systems. And this simple distinction must be made by the Holy Spirit for the mind that has forgotten its abstract eternal reality and believes it is asleep and dreaming and is now a person in a world outside of itself has forgotten that there is this simple distinction of two thought systems. One thought system creates its own likeness and the other thought system, which is false, makes its own likeness. And now we begin to see the subtlety of judgment that anything I think I think about a person, a place, a situation, in the past, in the future, all of them, every single one of those thoughts are made by falsity, by the ego. In eternity there are no persons, places or things. Eternity, the Kingdom of Heaven, is abstract love and oneness and those thoughts that come from eternity share the characteristics of eternity. They create like themselves, love creates love, harmony creates harmony, infinity creates infinity. And egoic thoughts, which have no basis and arise from nothing, make images in their likeness and are one with those images. So we've been learning, opening to the realization that these thoughts that cross awareness, these thoughts of consciousness of the past and the future of images are meaningless because they have no reality, no source. And today's idea, I have no neutral thoughts, takes away the idea that thoughts have degrees, degrees of reality, as if there's degrees of falsity or degrees of reality, as if falsity can have levels or reality could have levels. And we're focusing on the power of thought. As Jesus says, every thought you have contributes to the truth or to illusion. Either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions. And those which contribute to the truth extend forever and ever, they simply radiate love. These are real thoughts. And in this opening to mind training, first we come to an admission that we are not aware of real thoughts, that real thoughts have been covered over by meaningless thoughts and that those fill awareness, fill consciousness, even though the mind is literally blank when this seems to occur. This lesson also carries on with the awareness that each thought brings either peace or war, either love or fear, and that a neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. That's really the core meaning of today's lesson. A neutral thought is impossible. Thoughts are so powerful that they have immediate consequence to the mind. If you're thinking with God, if you're thinking with love, with truth, with source, you are immediately peaceful and loving. And if you seem to believe in anything else, any other thought at all, you are immediately in conflict. There's a war in the mind. And again, this is not a real war because God didn't create fear and war and conflict. And yet in awareness, there is not a single neutral thought ever. So this gives new meaning to Jesus' teaching in the text that you are much too tolerant of mind wandering. This gives new meaning, deeper meaning to Jesus' teaching that an untrained mind can accomplish nothing. This is showing us right here, just on lesson 16, the absolute necessity, the importance, the imperative nature of mind training. This is why each day, each moment is to be dedicated to mind training. In the world, mind training is unknown. There's reflections when people say, I'm going to my yoga class, but even in that, they usually think they're training their bodies to go to a tennis instruction or to go to do stretches, weight training, dietary disciplines, marital disciplines, fidelity, disciplines involving time management. All these things can become meaningful only if it is used for mind training. Even the last example I gave, time management. If you give time to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, this beautiful presence of love will direct time for you, all of time. If you give time over to Spirit, Spirit will use the concept of time, of moments, of hours, of days, of events. The Spirit will use it all to undo the belief in linear time and take you in deep to the acceptance of the Atonement, to a still and tranquil and quiet mind that needs to do nothing, to a state of mind in which there is no doer, nothing to be done, nothing ever done, pure stillness, the Kingdom of Heaven. So practice with me today. I have no neutral thoughts.