 We continue today with Chapter 9. If you would know yourself, perceive what He is not and you cannot know what you are because you see Him falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared and that is sharing is its reality. You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them or that you can correct them without a guide to correction. And if you do not follow this guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you. The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which has given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him, you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego's judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit. The ego too has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego's plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation to which the ego always leads you. The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it. This is where the ego is forced to appeal to mysteries, insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were because they speak of ideas that are eternal. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear, nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects everywhere and in all respects, he teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it. Follow the Holy Spirit's teaching in forgiveness then because forgiveness is his function and he knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what I meant when I said that miracles are natural and when they do not occur something has gone wrong. Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is. The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that all functions belong to it even though it has no idea what they are. This is more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion that makes the ego likely to attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is exactly what the ego does. It is unpredictable in its responses because it has no idea of what it perceives. If you have no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you expect to react? You might ask yourself regardless of how you may account for the reaction, whether its unpredictability places the ego in a sound position as your guide. Let me repeat that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself, nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane. You realize it because I realize it and you have judged it by the same standard I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed time and its days are numbered. Do not fear the last judgment but welcome it and do not wait for the ego's time is borrowed from your eternity. This is the second coming that was made for you as the first was created. The second coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful? What can be fearful but fantasy and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right and I assure you that God is right. Be glad then that you have been wrong but this was only because you did not know who you were. Had you known you could no more have been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen only in fantasy when you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful but no one calls them true. Children may believe them and so for a while the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The second coming is the awareness of reality not its return. Behold my child reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awareness heals because it is the awareness of truth. And from the workbook lesson 68. Love holds no grievances. You who were created by love like itself can hold no grievances and know yourself. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death. Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your mind. It seems to split you off from your source and make you unlike him. It makes you believe that he is like what you think you have become for no one can conceive of his creator as unlike himself. Shut off from yourself which remains aware of his likeness to his creator. Your self seems to sleep while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake. Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh yes, for he who holds grievances denies he was created by love and his creator has become fearful to him in his dream of hate. Who can dream of hatred and not fear God? It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image and it is certain that God created him like himself and defined them as part of him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are as it is certain that those who forgive will remember. Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this or so? Perhaps you do not think you can let your grievances go. That, however, is simply a matter of motivation. Today we will try to find out how you would feel without them. If you succeed even by ever so little, there will never be a problem in motivation ever again. Begin today's extended practice period by searching your mind for those against whom you hold what you regard as major grievances. Some of these will be quite easy to find. Then think of the seemingly minor grievances you hold against those you like and even think you love. It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort. This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself. Determine now to see all these people as friends. Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn, as you do so, I would see you as my friend that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself. Spend the remainder of the practice period trying to think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything. Safe in a world that protects you and loves you and that you love in return. Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up. Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way. At the end of the practice period, tell yourself, Love holds no grievances. When I let all my grievances go, I will know I am perfectly safe. This short practice period should include a quick application of today's idea in this form. Whenever any thought of a grievance rises against anyone, physically present or not, Love holds no grievances. Let me not betray myself. In addition, repeat the idea several times an hour in this form. Love holds no grievances. I would wake to myself by laying all my grievances aside and awakening in Him. Love holds no grievances. So today we release all grievances from the mind as we open our mind to accept the atonement, to accept the correction. We realize we cannot know anything about perception if we are to accept the correction the Holy Spirit offers. Because the Holy Spirit overlooks error from the beginning and the ego tells us we can see the error clearly and then overlook it. This ego attempt at correction will never work. We can only learn true correction from our guide, the Holy Spirit. This way of undoing errors in perception is not of us but it is for us. Grievances are gone as I accept the atonement for myself. The atonement is a lesson in sharing. This is the natural use of my skills and abilities. The Holy Spirit reinterprets the ability to attack into the ability to share. The Holy Spirit translates what the ego made into what God created. I release all grievances today. I will not condemn myself or my Creator any longer. I will not attempt to redefine God as something other than love. I will not attempt to define myself as anything other than love. I allow everyone to come to mind that I have held grievance against and then I forgive. I give you my Holy Brother, my Holy Sister back to the Holy Spirit. I give you back to God. I give you back to love. I cannot know you as a body. I cannot know you in a person. I cannot know you as existing in linear time and space. I only know you as the Christ, my very self. The self that God created as one in eternal love. I remember this today as I repeat the lesson that God has given me. Love holds no grievances. Amen.