 We continue with chapter 14, your function in the Atonement. When you accept a brother's guiltlessness, you will see the Atonement in him. For by proclaiming it in him, you make it yours, and you will see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of your brother's guiltlessness shining within him while you still believe it is not there. His guiltlessness is your Atonement. Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered first to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first in time means nothing. But the first in eternity is God the Father, who is both first and one. Beyond the first there is no other, for there is no order, no second, or third, and nothing but the first. You who belong to the first cause created by Him, likened to Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. This state, and only this, must you attain with God beside you, for until you do you will still think that you are separate from Him. You can perhaps feel His presence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. This cannot be taught. Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself. When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He always has done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be given. Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask rather to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. On earth, this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn. You will feel guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's mind with all of yours. Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here? You need not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers, neither did He make them. When you realize them, they are gone. God will not fail nor ever has in anything. Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. He created you out of Himself, but still within Him. He knows what you are. Remember that there is no second to Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect love. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son for this small gift of appreciation for His love. God will Himself exchange your gift for His. Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided against your function in heaven and then consider carefully whether you want to make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One who speaks for God and for your function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God and trying to teach Him guilt instead of love? Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father and of waking gladly to His love and holiness that join together as the truth in you, making you one with Him. When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do. He knows and He will tell you and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep for you can bring your guilt into sleeping but not into this. Unless you are guiltless, you cannot know God whose will is that you know Him. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. You cannot be known without His Son whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son is guilty is denial of the Father so complete that knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen and learn how impossible this is, do not endow Him with attributes you understand. You made Him not and anything you understand is not of Him. Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourself away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourself. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of one who gives forever and who knows of nothing except giving? The children of heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to the minds that have denied it and thus denied heaven to itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit who remembers this for you merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. His memory is yours. If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Him and therefore in you. The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making both unable to communicate because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself. God can communicate only to the Holy Spirit in your mind because only He shares the knowledge of what you are with God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for only He knows what God is. Everything else you have placed within your mind cannot exist for what is not in communication with the mind of God has never been. Communication with God is life. Nothing without it is at all. And from the workbook, lesson 108, to give and receive are one in truth. Vision depends upon today's idea. The light is in it, for it reconciles all seeming opposites. And what is light except the resolution born of peace of all your conflicts and mistaken thoughts into one concept which is wholly true? Even that one will disappear because the thought behind it will appear instead to take its place. And now you are at peace forever, for the dream is over then. True light that makes true vision possible is not the light of the body's eyes behold. It is the state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. And thus what is the same is seen as one, but what is not the same remains unnoticed for it is not there. This is the light that shows no opposites, and vision being healed has power to heal. This is the light that brings your peace of mind to other minds to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves. This is the light that heals because it brings single perception based upon one frame of reference from which one meaning comes. Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one thought whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in the second place. Here it is understood that both occur together, that the thought remain complete. And it is this understanding is the basis on which all opposites are reconciled because they are perceived from the same frame of reference which unifies this thought. One thought completely unified will serve to unify all thought. This is the same as saying one correction will suffice for all correction or that to forgive one brother wholly is enough to bring salvation to all minds. For these are but some special cases of one law which holds for every kind of learning if it be directed by the one who knows the truth. To learn that giving and receiving are the same has special usefulness because it can be tried so easily and seen as true. And when this special case has proved it always works in every circumstance where it is tried, the thought behind it can be generalized to other areas of doubt and double vision. And from there it will extend and finally arrive at the one thought which underlies them all. Today we practice with the special case of giving and receiving. We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss. To give is to receive. Today we will attempt to offer peace to everyone and see how quickly peace returns to us. Light is tranquility and in that peace is vision given us and we can see. So we begin the practice periods with the instruction for today and say, To give and to receive are one in truth. I will receive what I am giving now. Then close your eyes and for five minutes think of what you would hold out to everyone to have it yours. You might say, for instance, to everyone I offer quietness, to everyone I offer peace of mind, to everyone I offer gentleness. Say each one slowly and then pause a while expecting to receive the gift you gave. And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it. You will find you have exact return for that is what you asked. It might be helpful too to think of one to whom to give your gifts. He represents the others and through him you give to all. Our very simple lesson for today will teach you much. Effect and cause will be far better understood from this time on. And we will make much faster progress now. Think of the exercises for today as quick advances in your learning made still faster and more sure each time you say, to give and to receive are one in truth. Today we experience teaching for truth. Today we experience our function in the atonement, our function as accepting atonement, as accepting guiltlessness, guiltlessness in our self and everything that we perceive. God is first. The first in time means nothing but the first in eternity is God the Father who is both first and one. Beyond the first there is no other for there is no order, no second or third and nothing but the first. Today we happily realize that I belong to the first cause. There is no second cause. Error cannot be. I am as God created me. I am like the Father, Spirit and nothing else exists. Therefore nothing else matters. Today I would meet the conditions of this remembering. Today I will remember holiness. Today I will go before all decisions that have ever seemed to be. Today I accept my function as deciding against what I want. In recognition that I do not know, I leave all decisions to the one who speaks for God. Today I give up the frantic and insane attempt to decide apart from God. Today I would let the Holy Spirit make all decisions for me for God. Today I remember the beautiful teachings of the awakened one Jesus Christ. He says, when you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Today I recline in this idea as if I am being carried down a quiet path in summer. Today I will listen and make no decisions by myself. Vision depends on the workbook lesson for today. The light is in it for it reconciles all seeming opposites to give and to receive our one in truth. In this I experience vision being healed and having the power to heal. This is the light that heals because it brings a single perception that thine eye be single. Today I give as I would receive. I learn that giving and receiving are the same. To give and to receive are one in truth. I will receive what I am giving now. To everyone I offer heaven. To everyone I offer joy. To everyone I offer happiness. To everyone I offer eternity. To give and to receive are one in truth.