 We continue today with chapter 15. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I chose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together for it has no meaning if we are apart. The Holy Instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God and His unlimited power is thus restored to Him. What other gift can you offer me when only this I choose to offer you? And to see me is to see me in everyone and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you. We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me that you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it you offer it to everyone. It is in your power to make this season holy or it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary. For you made but one mistake. It seems like many but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear and nothing else. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness. To emerge informs quite different from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would remain and retain the principle that governs all of them. When you are willing to regard them not as separate but as different manifestations of the same idea and one you do not want they go together. The idea is simply this. You believe it is possible to be the host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you have and the decision you believe that you must make. You see no other alternatives for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that the salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon. Sacrifice is attack not love. If you would accept but this one idea your fear of love would vanish. Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there is sacrifice someone was pay and someone must get. And the only question that remains is how much is the price and for getting what. As host to the ego you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want and thereby purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. You are unwilling to recognize that the ego which you invited is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this since this recognition would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawns clearly you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all. That love demands sacrifice and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love which must be paid by fear. How fearful then has God become to you and how great a sacrifice to you believe his love demands. For total love would demand total sacrifice and so the ego seems to demand less of you than God. And of the two is judged as the lesser of the two evils want to be feared a little perhaps but the other to be destroyed. For you see love as destructive and your only question is who is to be destroyed you or another. You seek to answer this question in your special relationships in which you seem to be both destroyer and destroyed in part but able to be neither completely. And this you think saves you from God whose total love would completely destroy you. You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice and only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you it seems safer to project him outward and away from you and not be host to him. To him you ascribed the ego's treachery inviting it to take his place to protect you from him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness but always to make the sacrifice complete. You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. You must choose between total freedom and total bondage for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make. And yet it is the recognition of the decision just as it is that makes a decision so easy. Salvation is simple being of God and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God. And from the workbook lesson 124 let me remember I am one with God. Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe. Protection guaranteed in all we do. Power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing with the thought that God himself goes everywhere with us. How holy are our minds and everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. How easily do errors disappear and death give place to everlasting life. Our shining footprints point the way to truth for God is our companion as we walk the world a little while. And those who come to follow us will recognize the way because the light we carry stays behind yet still remains with us as we walk on. What we receive is our eternal gift to those who follow after and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. And God who loves us with the equal love in which we were created smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave. Today we will not doubt his love for us nor question his protection and his care. No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of his presence. We are one with him today in recognition and in remembrance. We feel him in our hearts. Our minds contain his thoughts. Our eyes behold his loveliness in all we look upon. Today we see only the loving and the lovable. We see it in appearances of pain and pain gives way to peace. We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves. No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone. In times gone by, in times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. Their thoughts are timeless and apart from distance, as apart from time. We join in this awareness as we say that we are one with God. For in these words we say as well that we are saved and healed, that we can save and heal accordingly. We have accepted and we now would give. For we would keep the gifts our Father gave. Today we would experience ourselves as one with Him so that the world may share our recognition of reality. In our experience the world is freed. As we deny our separation from our Father, it is healed along with us. Peace be to you today. Secure your peace by practicing awareness. You are one with your Creator as He is with you. Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the thought that you are one with God. This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. We will trust God's voice to speak as He sees fit today. Certain He will not fail. Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest. Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happens. You may not be ready to accept the game today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you. Nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. This half an hour will be framed in gold with every minute set like a diamond. Set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. And you will see Christ's face upon it in reflection of your own. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass. This holy half an hour will hold out to you to look upon yourself. When you are ready, you will find it there within your mind and waiting to be found. You will remember then the thought to which you gave this half an hour, thankfully, where no time was ever better spent. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will look into this glass and understand the sinless light you see belongs to you. The loveliness you look on is your own. Count this half hour as your gift to God. In certainty that his return will be a sense of love you cannot understand. A joy too deep for you to comprehend. A sight too holy for the body's eyes to see. And yet you can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see. Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today by hourly repeating to yourself. Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and myself in everlasting holiness and peace. Amen.