 We continue on today with Chapter 4. This need not be. If you cannot hear the voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings, and your behavior. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego and you do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you. I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior. But I have also said and many times that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then no, this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created and our perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly. And then change your mind to think with God's. This may seem hard to do but it is much easier than trying to think against it. Your mind is one with God's. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother. And see in both the glorious creations of a glorious father. When you are sad, know this need not be. Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions and then decide otherwise. When you are anxious realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego and know this need not be. You can be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them. When you feel guilty remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God but you have not. Leave the quote sins of the ego to me. That is what atonement is for. But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt the atonement cannot release you. While you feel guilty your ego is in command because only the ego can experience guilt. This need not be. Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego and do not be deceived by it. It offers you nothing. When you have given up this voluntary dispiriting you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. Yet you are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself. This need not be. The habit of engaging with God in his creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. The problem is not one of concentration. It is the belief that no one including yourself is worth consistent effort. Side with me consistently against this deception and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back. That this heartened are useless to themselves and to me but only the ego can be disheartened. Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to glen yourself and how many of them you have refused? There is no limit to the power of a son of God but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. Do not settle for anything less than this and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal. Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment and step away from them. Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings for this is the one right use of judgment. Judgment like any other defense can be used to attack or protect, to hurt or to heal. The ego should be brought to judgment and found wanting there. Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist. Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it. You are a mirror of truth in which God himself shines in perfect light. To the ego's dark glass you need but say, I will not look there because I know these images are not true. Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace knowing that this and only this must be. His mind shone on you in your creation and brought your mind into being. His mind still shines on you and must shine through you. Your ego cannot prevent him from shining on you but it can prevent you from letting him shine through you. The first coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation. For Christ is the Son of God. The second coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego's rule and the healing of the mind. I was created like you in the first and I have called you to join with me in the second. I am in charge of the second coming and my judgment which is used only for protection cannot be wrong because it never attacks. Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your ego. Do not mistake it for humility. Your ego is trying to convince you that it is real and I am not because if I am real I am no more real than you are. That knowledge and I assure you that it is knowledge means that Christ has come into your mind and healed it. I do not attack your ego. I do work with your higher mind. I am the home of the Holy Spirit whether you are asleep or awake just as your ego does with your lower mind which is its home. I am your vigilance in this because you are too confused to recognize your own hope. I am not mistaken. Your mind will elect to join with mine and together we are invincible. You and your brother will yet come together in my name and your sanity will be restored. I raise the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God created. Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dispirited or to destabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles. You do. I have called and you will answer. I understand that miracles are natural because they are expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer and as inevitable. And from the workbook lesson number 26, my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. It is surely obvious that if you can be attacked you are not invulnerable. You see attack as a real threat. That is because you believe that you can really attack. And what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. It is this law that will ultimately save you, but you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interests rather than against them. Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are. Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other. The idea for today introduces the thought that you always attack yourself first. If attack thoughts must entail the belief that you are vulnerable, their effect is to weaken you in your own eyes. Thus they have attacked your perception of yourself. And because you believe in them, you can no longer believe in yourself. A false image of yourself has come to take the place of what you are. Practice with today's idea will help you to understand that vulnerability or invulnerability is the result of your own thoughts. Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so. Six practice periods are required in applying today's idea. A full two minutes should be attempted for each of them, although the time may be reduced to a minute if the discomfort is too great. Do not reduce it further. The practice period should begin with repeating the idea for today, then closing your eyes and reviewing the unresolved questions whose outcomes are causing you concern. The concern may take the form of depression, worry, anger, a sense of imposition, fear, foreboding, or preoccupation. Any problem is yet unsettled that tends to recur in your thoughts during the day is a suitable subject. You will not be able to use very many for any one practice period because a longer time than usual should be spent with each one. Today's idea should be applied as follows. First, name the situation I am concerned about blank. Then go over every possible outcome that has occurred to you in that connection in which has caused you concern, referring to each one quite specifically saying, I am afraid blank will happen. If you are doing the exercises properly, you should have some five or six distressing possibilities available for each situation you use and quite possibly more. It is much more helpful to cover a few situations thoroughly than to touch on a larger number. As the list of anticipated outcomes for each situation continues, you will probably find some of them, especially those that occur to you toward the end, less acceptable to you. Try however to treat them all alike to whatever extent you can. After you have named each outcome of which you are afraid, tell yourself that thought is an attack thought upon myself. Conclude each practice period by repeating today's idea to yourself once more. So today's lesson number 26 is bringing all our focus and all of our attention back to the mind. We are coming to realize beyond a shadow of doubt with certainty that the only sense of invulnerability, the only sense of fear, must come from attack thoughts. This is truly seeing that there is no cause of upset in the world. There is nothing upsetting about the world. If we believe in attack, we must see that this attack is confined to attack thoughts in the mind. And this is another version of seeing that there is no world apart from mind, that the problem is attack thoughts and the solution is forgiveness, is release of attack thoughts, regardless of the form. And if I believe that it is possible to attack, then the effects must be placed on my mind. And Jesus tells us, it is this law that will ultimately save you, but you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interest rather than against them. And he's referring to the power of the mind. He's referring to what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. Now attack thoughts will be projected. Remember that all thoughts are either extended or projected. Thoughts of love are extended. Attack thoughts are projected. And when they seem to be projected, you will fear attack. And this fear brings about this sense of vulnerability. They make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are. It begins to dawn that attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. You can't be innocent if you believe in attack thoughts. You can't be happy, joyful, peaceful, loving if you believe in attack thoughts. It's a convincing job by the Holy Spirit to show you that attack thoughts are impossible. That attack is not a possible idea that God did not create attack. When you believe in attack thoughts, you will always attack yourself first. They always have the effect of weakening you in your own eyes. Attacking your perception of yourself and everything that you perceive. And you can't know yourself when you believe in attack thoughts. Because a false image of yourself has come to take the place of what you are. So, we are claiming responsibility for state of mind as we understand that vulnerability or invulnerability is the result of your own thoughts. He makes that clear in saying nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And most importantly, nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so. That you cannot be vulnerable as a son of God, as a child of the living God. You cannot be vulnerable. So, our focus today will be to watch our mind, search our mind for unresolved conflicts, situations that arise. And to look closely at all possible outcomes. All distressing possibilities available for each situation. And to open to the realization that all of these distressing possibilities, all of these upsetting outcomes that are imagined are simply attack thoughts. And we can go through, he says, and name each outcome of which you are afraid. And then tell yourself, that thought is an attack upon myself. So today, let's not brush off any situations or outcomes or distressing possibilities that cross our mind. Today, let's be truly all-inclusive with whatever thoughts are rising in our mind. Today, let's see all attack thoughts as the same. There aren't really subjects and objects in attack thoughts. Therefore, there can't be differences between subjects and objects, between victimizers and victims. Today, we realize that all attack thoughts are the same. There is no difference in degree or direction. They cannot be differentiated from one another. They all are the same, equally impossible, as we remind ourselves of the lesson of the day. My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.