 We continue today with chapter 19, the unreality of sin. The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error. Sin will be repeated because of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin is denied the acting out. But while the guilt remains attractive, the mind will suffer and not let go of the idea of sin. For guilt still calls to it and the mind hears it and yearns for it, making itself a willing captive to its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that cannot be corrected and yet will be forever desirable. As an essential part of what the ego thinks you are, you will always want it. And only an adventure with a mind unlike your own could stamp it out through fear. The ego does not think it is possible that love, not fear, is really called upon by sin and always answers. For the ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment. Yet punishment is but another form of guilt's protection for what is deserving punishment must have been really done. Punishment is always the great preserver of sin, treating it with respect and honoring its enormity for what you think is real you want and will not let it go. An error, on the other hand, is not attractive. What you see clearly as a mistake you want corrected. Sometimes sin can be repeated over and over with obviously distressing results, but without the loss of its appeal. And suddenly you change its status from sin to a mistake. Now you will not repeat it, you will merely stop and let it go, unless the guilt remains. For then you will but change the form of sin, granting that it was an error, but keeping it uncorrectable. This is not really change in your perception, for it is sin that calls for punishment, not error. The Holy Spirit cannot punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes and would correct them all as God entrusted Him to do. But sin He knows not, nor can He recognize mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is meaningless to Him. Mistakes are for correction, and they call for nothing else. What calls for punishment must call for nothing. Every mistake must be a call for love. What then is sin? What could it be but a mistake you would keep hidden, a call for help that you would keep unheard and thus unanswered? In time the Holy Spirit clearly sees the Son of God can make mistakes. On this you share His vision. Yet you do not share His recognition of the difference between time and eternity. And when correction is completed, time is eternity. The Holy Spirit can teach you how to look on time differently and see beyond it, but not while you believe in sin. An error, yes, for this can be corrected by the mind. But sin is the belief that your perception is unchangeable and that the mind must accept as true what it is told through it. If it does not obey, the mind is judged insane. The only power that could change perception is thus kept impotent, held to the body by fear of changed perception, which its teacher who is one with it would bring. When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this. If sin is real, both God and you are not. If creation is extension, the Creator must have extended himself and it is impossible that what is part of him is totally unlike the rest. If sin is real, God must be at war with himself. He must be split and torn between good and evil, partly sane and partially insane. For he must have created what wills to destroy him and has the power to do so. Is it not easier to believe that you have been mistaken than to believe in this? While you believe that your reality or your brothers is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that bodies can unite, you will find guilt attractive and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies limit mind leads to a perception of the world in which the proof of separation seems to be everywhere and God and his creation seem to be split apart and overthrown. For sin would prove what God created wholly could not prevail against it nor remain itself before the power of sin. Sin is perceived as mightier than God before which God himself must bow and offer his creation to its conqueror. Is this humility or madness? If sin is real, it must forever be beyond the hope of healing. For there would be a power beyond God's capable of making another will that could attack his will and overcome it and give his son a will apart from his and stronger. And each part of God's fragmented creation would have a different will opposed to his and an eternal opposition to him and to each other. Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now, the goal of proving this is impossible. Heaven has smiled upon it and the belief in sin has been uprooted in its smile of love. You see it still because you do not realize that its foundation has gone. Its source has been removed and so it cannot be but cherished a while before it vanishes. Only the habit of looking for it still remains. And yet you look with Heaven's smile upon your lips and Heaven's blessing on your sight. You will not see sin long for in the new perception the mind corrects it when it seems to be seen and it becomes invisible. Errors are quickly recognized and quickly given to correction to be healed, not hidden. You will be healed of sin and all its ravages, the instant that you give it no power over your brother. And you will help each other overcome mistakes by joyously releasing one another from the belief in sin. In the holy instant you will see the smile of Heaven shining on both of you and you will shine upon each other in glad acknowledgement of the grace that has been given you. For sin will not prevail against the union Heaven has smiled upon. Your perception was healed in the holy instant Heaven gave you. Forget what you have seen and raise your eyes and faith to what you now can see. The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your sight for you who were sightless have been given vision and you can see. Look not for what has been removed but for the glory that has been restored for you to see. Look upon your redeemer and behold what he would show you in your brother and let not sin arise again to blind your eyes. For sin would keep you separate but your redeemer would have you look upon your brother as yourself. Your relationship is now a temple of healing, a place where all the weary ones can come and rest. Here is the rest that waits for all after the journey and it is brought nearer to all by your relationship. And from the workbook, Lesson 152 The power of decision is my own. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects the state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you and it is only here salvation is. You may believe that this position is extreme and too inclusive to be true yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This cannot be too often said and thought about for if what is not true is true as well as what is true then part of truth is false and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true and what is false is false. This is the simplest of distinctions yet the most obscure but not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely your own and thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false and that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations and conditions of the body and the mind in all awareness and in all response. This is the all inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood and the false kept separate from the truth as what it is. Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see as arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can he know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and the lonely and the mind that lives within a body that must die? You but accuse him of insanity to think he made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. It only madness makes a world like this. To think that God made chaos contradicts his will invented opposites to truth and suffers death to triumph over life, all this is arrogance. Humility would see at once all these things are not of him. And can you see what God created not? To think you can is merely to believe and perceive what God will not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this? Let us today be truly humble and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son. Today we practice true humility abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. Only the ego can be arrogant. But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness, and its eternal wholeness, all encompassing God's perfect gift, gift to His beloved Son. We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are, and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love. The power of decision is our own and we accept of Him that which we are and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God's Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived and in humility the radiance of God's Son, His gentleness, His perfect sinlessness, His Father's love, His right to heaven and release from hell are joyously accepted as our own. Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true. We think of truth alone as we arise and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this. The power of decision is my own. This day I will accept myself as what my Father's will created me to be. Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask for our self that He reveal Himself to us. And He who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God as it was meant to be. In patience we wait for Him throughout the day and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to yourself. God's voice will answer for He speaks for you and for your Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions and God's Son for your illusions of yourself. Amen.