 We continue on today from chapter 9, the two evaluations. God's will is your salvation. Would He not have you given the means to find it? If He wills you to have it, He must have made it possible and easy to obtain. Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because the lay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers? Consider then that in this joint will you are all united and in this only. There may be disagreement on anything else, but not on this. This then is where peace abides, and you abide in peace when you decide so. Yet you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to peace. The reason is very simple and so obvious that it is often overlooked. The ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all he perceives, he looks with love on you. His evaluation of you is based on his knowledge of what you are, and so he evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your mind because he is. The ego is also in your mind because you have accepted it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are and wholly mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty and it could never go beyond it because it can never be certain. You then have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your mind and they cannot both be true. You do not yet realize how completely different these evaluations are because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. He is not deceived by anything you do because he never forgets what you are. The ego is deceived by everything you do, especially when you respond to the Holy Spirit because at times its confusion increases. The ego is therefore particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly because it has evaluated you as unloving and you are going against its judgment. The ego will attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness since its uncertainty is increased and it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean except that you are agreeing with the ego's evaluation of what you are? If you choose to see yourself as unloving, you will not be happy. You are condemning yourself and must therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced and must maintain for its existence? Can you escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact? You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it. Look back for the point of where sanity exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your littleness within the system that dictated this choice, the lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there and you do not ask, who granted it? The question is meaningless within the ego's thought system because it would open the whole thought system to question. I have said that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know and this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness therefore is to deny all knowledge and keep the ego's whole thought system intact. You cannot retain part of the thought system because it can be questioned only at its foundation and this must be questioned from beyond it because within it its foundation does stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought system merely because he knows its foundation is not true. Therefore nothing that arises from it means anything. He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, he knows it to be true. If it does not, he knows that it is meaningless. Whenever you question your value, say, God Himself is incomplete without me. Remember this when the ego speaks and you will not hear it. The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose then what you want in these terms and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for him. You do not want anything else. Return your part of him and he will give you all of himself in exchange for the return of what belongs to him and renders him complete. And from the workbook, Lesson 71, Only God's plan for salvation will work. You may not realize that the ego has set up a plan for salvation in opposition to God's. It is this plan in which you believe. Since it is the opposite of God's, you also believe that to accept God's plan in place of the ego's is to be damned. This sounds preposterous, of course. Yet after we have considered just what the ego's plan is, perhaps you will realize that however preposterous it may seem, you do believe in it. The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains that if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declaration and an assertion in which you believe that says, If this were different, I would be saved. The change of mind necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything. Accept yourself. The role assigned to your own mind in this plan then is simply to determine what, other than itself, must change if you are to be saved. According to this insane plan, any perceived source of salvation is acceptable, provided that it will not work. This ensures that the fruitless search will continue for the illusion persists that although this hope has always failed, there is still grounds for hope in other places and in other things. Another person will yet serve better. Another situation will yet offer success. Such is the ego's plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in strict accord with the ego's basic doctrine. Seek, but do not find. For what could be more surely guaranteeing that you will not find salvation than to channelize all your efforts in searching for it where it is not? God's plan for salvation works simply because by following His direction you seek for salvation where it is. But if you are to succeed as God promises you will, you must be willing to seek there only. Otherwise your purpose is divided and you will attempt to follow two plans for salvation that are diametrically opposed in all ways. The result can only bring confusion, misery, and a deep sense of failure and despair. How can you escape all this? Very simply, the idea for today is the answer. Only God's plan for salvation will work. There can be no real conflict about this because there is no possible alternative to God's plan that will save you. His is the only plan that is certain in its outcome. His is the only plan that must succeed. Let us practice recognizing this certainty today. And let us rejoice that there is an answer to what seems to be a conflict with no resolution possible. All things are possible to God. Salvation must be yours because of His plan, which cannot fail. Begin the two longer practice periods for today by thinking about today's idea and realizing that it contains two parts, each making equal contribution to the whole. God's plan for your salvation will work and other plans will not. Do not allow yourself to become depressed or angry at the second part. It is inherent in the first. And in the first is your full release from all your own insane attempts and mad proposals to free yourself. They have led to depression and anger, but God's plan will succeed. It will lead to release and joy. Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice periods to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically, What would you have me do? Where would you have me go? What would you have me say? And to whom? Give Him full charge of the rest of the practice period and let Him tell you what needs to be done by you in His plan for your salvation. He will answer in proportion to your willingness to hear His voice. Refuse not to hear. The very fact that you are doing the exercises proves that you have some willingness to listen. This is enough to establish your claim to God's answer. In the shorter practice periods, tell yourself often that God's plan for salvation and only His will work. Be alert to all temptation to hold grievances today and respond to them with this form of today's idea. Holding grievances is the opposite of God's plan for salvation and only His plan will work. Try to remember today's idea some six or seven times an hour. There could be no better way to spend a half minute or less than to remember the source of your salvation and to see it where it is. Only God's plan for salvation will work. Today, we ask for the Holy Spirit's evaluation of our self, of the world. We would not follow the ego's dark and depressing view of our self in the world but would open our hearts to love, to happiness and to joy. Today, we look for God's plan in our mind right now. We make no attempt to project it onto other people, other places, other situations, other circumstances. Our perceived life in this world will never get better or worse because we have a choice to make right now that sees the world anew, that sees the world with the Holy Spirit that beholds the perfection of all things in this moment right now. We will not evaluate ourselves in a judgmental way. We will open to accept ourselves as whole and complete. We see that this choice, this atonement brings correction to everything and everyone. We will not seek outside our self for this correction nor will we avoid and delay making the decision today. We will look for salvation in our mind for within us We will find what we have always searched for, what we have deeply always wanted. We will find within our self, within our mind, the peace of God, the peace of Heaven, the deep sincerity today. We say, only God's plan for salvation will work.