 We continue today with chapter 22, Salvation and the Holy Relationship. Introduction. Take pity on yourself so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God has joined have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. No two can look on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place at time. Sin is strictly an individual perception seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different error and one the other cannot understand. Brother, it is the same made by the same and forgiven for its maker in the same way. The holiness of your relationship forgives you and your brother on doing the effects of what you both believed and saw. And with their going is the need for sin gone with them. Who has need for sin? Only the lonely and alone who see their brothers different from themselves. It is this difference seen but not real that makes the need for sin not real but seem, seem justified. And all this would be real if sin were so. For an unholy relationship is based on differences where each one thinks the other has what he has not. They come together each to complete himself and rob the other. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers unlike themselves living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof that shelters neither in the same room and yet a world apart. A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion he would extend it by joining with another whole as himself. He sees no difference between these selves for differences are only of the body. Therefore he looks on nothing he would take. He denies not his own reality because it is the truth. Just under heaven does he stand but close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has heavens holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like heaven be? Think what a holy relationship can teach. Here is the belief in differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. Reason now can lead you and your brother to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend as you extended when you joined. It must reach out beyond itself as you reached out beyond the body to let yourselves be joined. And now the sameness that you saw extends and finally removes all sense of differences so that sameness that lies beneath them all becomes apparent. Here is the golden circle where you recognize the Son of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can never end. The message of the holy relationship. Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one he loves, then you and your creator have a different will. Yet if you are his will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. You can indeed believe this and you do. And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in your self-arise, it is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off for only that seems certain. Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of you. But still the strange idea, which it does accurately describe, you think is you. Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. To whom would seeing such as this send back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes that look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show you? The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would understand. The brain interprets to the body of which it is a part. But what it says, you cannot understand. You have listened to it and long and hard you tried to understand its messages. You have not realized it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach you. You have received no messages at all, you understand. For you have listened to what can never communicate at all. Think then what happens. Denying what you are and firm in faith that you are something else. This quote something else that you have made to be yourself becomes your sight. Yet it must be the something else that sees. And as not you explains its sight to you. Your vision would of course render this quite unnecessary. Yet if your eyes are closed and you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you it cannot be true because you do not understand it. God has no secrets. He does not lead you through a world of misery waiting to tell you at the journey's end why he did this to you. What could be secret from God's will? Yet you believe that you have secrets. What could your secrets be except another quote will that is your own apart from his? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be hidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed. Let not your fear of sin protect it from correction for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one emotion that you made whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion of secrecy of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness. Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to lead you through the world it made for you. Your sight was given you along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you for everyone sees only what he thinks he is and what your sight would show you you will understand because it is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand. Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand this course alone is open to your understanding and can be understood. This is your language. You do not understand it yet only because your whole communication is like a baby's. The sounds a baby makes and what he hears are highly unreliable meaning different things to him at different times. Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he sees are stable yet but what he hears and does not understand will be his native tongue through which he will communicate with those around him and they with him and the strange shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his comforters and he will recognize his home and see them there with him. So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has replaced is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant is your vision returned to you and he will speak the language you can understand. He is not nurtured by the something else you thought was you. He was not given there nor was received by anything except yourself. No two brothers can unite except through Christ whose vision sees them one. Think what is given you my holy brother. This child will teach you what to do not to understand and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue. He will need no interpreter to you for it was you who taught him what he knows because you knew it. He could not come to anyone but you never to quote something else. Where Christ has entered no one is alone for never could he find a home in separate ones. Yet must he be reborn into his ancient home so seeming new and yet as old as he a tiny newcomer dependent on the holiness of your holy relationship to let him live. Be certain God did not entrust his son to the unworthy. Nothing but what is part of him is worthy of being joined nor is it possible that anything not part of him can join. Communication must have been restored to those who join for this they could not do through bodies. What then has joined them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen in each other through a vision not of the body and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one. Rather in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his self could be reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him such he believed because it was the truth. Here is the first direct perception that you can make. You make it through awareness older than perception and yet reborn in just an instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that instant brought the recognition that the something else you thought was you is an illusion. And truth came instantly to show you where yourself must be. It is denial of illusions that calls on truth for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully. Grateful it is one with you who joined to let it enter. Christ comes to what is like himself the same not different for he is always drawn unto himself. What is as like him as a holy relationship and what draws you together draws him to you. Here are his sweetness and his gentle innocence protected from attack and here can he return in confidence for faith in one another is always faith in him. You are indeed correct in looking on each other as his chosen home for here you will well with him and with his father. This is your father's will for you and yours with his and who is drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as both are drawn to every holy relationship the home prepared for them as earth is turned to heaven. And from the workbook Lesson 174 God is but love and therefore so am I into his presence would I enter now God is but love and therefore so am I today I learned to give as I receive God is but love and therefore so am I Amen