 We continue today with chapter 14, the decision for guiltlessness. The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning. This is so essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns easily because his thoughts are free. Yet this entails a recognition that guilt is interference, not salvation, and serves no useful function at all. Perhaps you are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of guilt and do not look upon it as having value in itself. You believe that guilt and guiltlessness are both of value, each representing an escape from what the other does not offer you. You do not want either alone, for without both you do not see yourself as whole and therefore happy, that you are whole only in your guiltlessness and only in your guiltlessness can you be happy. There is no conflict here. To wish for guilt in any way, in any form, will lose appreciation of the value of your guiltlessness and push it from your sight. There is no compromise that you can make with guilt and escape the pain that only guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here as creating is being in heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to attract you, remember that if you yield to it, you are deciding against your happiness and will not learn how to be happy. Say therefore to yourself, gently, but with conviction born of the love of God and of his Son, what I experience I will make manifest. If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear. I choose to testify to my acceptance of the Atonement, not to its rejection. I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and sharing it. Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father. Each day, each hour, and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit, the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide between is fixed because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion and there is no overlap between them because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy. The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom and joy. It is not a cause but an effect. It is the natural result of choosing right, a testing to your happiness that comes from choosing to be free of guilt. Everyone you offer healing to returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether he does this or does it not will make no difference. You will think he does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty. The cost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear. No penalty is ever asked of God's Son except by himself and of himself. Every chance given him to heal is another opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love. If he refuses it, he binds himself to darkness because he did not choose to free his brother and enter light with him. By giving power to nothing, he throws away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power and by not dispelling darkness, he became afraid of darkness and of light. The joy of learning that darkness has no power over the Son of God is the happy lesson the Holy Spirit teaches and would have you teach with him. It is his joy to teach it as it will be yours. The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this. Guiltlessness is invulnerability. Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to everyone. Teach him that whatever he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed shows him that he is guiltless. He can do nothing that can hurt you by refusing to allow him to think he can. You teach him that the atonement which you have accepted for yourself is also his. There is nothing to forgive. No one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is wholly without cause and being without cause cannot exist. God is the only cause and guilt is not of him. Teach no one he has hurt you for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God has power over you. The causeless cannot be. Do not attest to it and do not foster belief in it in mind. Remember always that mind is one and cause is one. You will learn communication with this oneness only when you learn to deny the causeless and accept the cause of God as yours. The power that God has given to his Son is his and nothing else can his Son see or choose to look upon without imposing on himself the penalty of guilt in place of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him. Whenever you choose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively and the decision will be wrong. It will hurt you because of the concept of decision that led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself alone. No thought of God's Son can be separate or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the whole Sonship directed in and out and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept the Atonement are invulnerable but those who believe they are guilty will respond to guilt and think it is salvation and will not refuse to see it inside with it and they will fail to understand the simple fact that what they do not want must hurt them. All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is good yet will was given them because it is holy and will bring them to them all that they need. Coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is nothing their will fails to provide that offers them anything of value yet because they do not understand their will the Holy Spirit quietly understands it for them and gives them what they want without effort, strain or the impossible burden of deciding what they want and need alone. It will never happen that you must make decisions for yourself. You are not bereft of help and help that knows the answer. Would you be content with little which is all that you alone can offer yourself when he who gives you everything will simply offer it to you? He will never ask what have you done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourself. Instead accept his answer for he knows that you are worthy of everything. God wills for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God. He so freely and so gladly offers you. He offers you but God gave him for you. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of it. God knows you are. Would you deny the truth of God's decision and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself in place of his calm and unswerving value of his son? Nothing can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that he created for it is Holy Pure. Do not decide against it for being of him it must be true. Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan God set for its atonement relinquishing its own. You know not of salvation for you do not understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies but ask the Holy Spirit everything and leave all decisions to his gentle counsel. The one who knows the plan of God that God would have you follow can teach you what it is. Only his wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what salvation is and what you would be saved from the Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other quote enemy and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only friend. He is the strong protector of the innocence that sets you free and it is his decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let him therefore be the only guide that you would follow to salvation. He knows the way and leads you gladly on it. With him you will not fail to learn that what God wills for you is your will. Without his guidance you will think you know alone and will decide against your peace as surely as you decided that salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of him to whom God gave it for you. He has not forgotten it. Forget him not and he will make every decision for you for your salvation and the peace of God in you. Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son whom he created holy for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against him and you will feel guilty for this imagined crime which no one in this world or heaven could possibly commit. The Holy Spirit teaches only that the quote sin of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in him who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your choice but not your reality. Never forget the love of God who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that he could ever let his Son drop from the loving mind wherein he was created and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever. Say to the Holy Spirit only decide for me and it is done for his decisions are reflections of what God knows about you and in this light error of any kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all you cannot know when all knowledge lies behind every decision the Holy Spirit makes for you? Learn of his wisdom and his love and teach his answer to everyone who struggles in the dark for you decide for them and for yourself how gracious it is to decide all things through him whose equal love is given equally to all alike. He leaves you no one outside you and so he gives you what is yours because your father would have you share it with him in everything be led by him and do not reconsider trust him to answer quickly surely and with love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the decision and everyone will be. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would you know this? You taught yourself the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your creator yet you remain in close communication with him and with everything that is within him as it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through his loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose. Whenever you are in doubt what you should do think of his presence in you and tell yourself this and only this he leadeth me and knows the way which I know not yet he will never keep me from what he would have me learn and so I trust him to communicate to me all that he knows for me then let him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness which is already there and from the workbook Lesson 107 Truth will correct all errors in my mind What can correct illusions but the truth and what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear they merely vanish leaving not a trace by which to be remembered they are gone because without belief they have no life and so they disappear to nothingness returning whence they came from dust to dust they come and go for only truth remains Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? How it would feel? Try to remember when there was a time perhaps a minute maybe even less when nothing came to interrupt your peace when you were certain you were loved and safe then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a hundred times and then be multiplied another hundred more and now you have a hint not more than just the faintest intimation of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come without illusions there could be no fear no doubt and no attack when truth has come all pain is over for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind truth occupies your mind completely liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral they have no place because the truth has come and they are nowhere they cannot be found for truth is everywhere forever now when truth has come it does not stay a while to disappear or change to something else it does not shift an altar in its form nor come and go and go and come again it stays exactly as it always was to be depended on in every need and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts and gender they will merely blow away when the truth corrects errors in your mind when truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it steadily and sure here is the gift of healing for the truth needs no defense and therefore no attack is possible illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected but the truth stands far beyond illusions and cannot be brought to them to turn them into truth truth does not come and go nor shift nor change in this appearance now and then in that evading capture and escaping grasp it does not hide it stands in open light in obvious accessibility it is impossible that anyone could seek it truly and would not succeed today belongs to truth give truth it's due and it will give you yours you were not meant to suffer and to die your father wills these dreams to be gone let truth correct them all we do not ask for what we do not have we merely ask for what belongs to us that we may recognize it as our own today we practice on the happy note of certainty that has been born of truth the shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion are not our approach today we are a certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and think we do not doubt we walk with truth today and count on it to enter all exercises that we do this day begin by asking him who goes with you upon this undertaking that he be in your awareness with him you are not made of flesh and blood and bone but were created by the self same thought which gave the gift of life to him as well he is your brother and so like to you your father knows that you are both the same it is your self you ask to go with you and how could he be absent where you go where you are truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart from him you speak to him today and make your pledge to let his function be fulfilled through you to share his function is to share his joy his confidence is with you as you say truth will correct all errors in my mind and I will rest in him who is my self then let him lead you gently to the truth which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly and yet you will be glad to look again upon this world for you will bring with you the promise of the changes that goes with you will carry to the world they will increase with every gift you give of five small minutes and the errors that surround the world will be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind do not forget your function for today each time you tell yourself with confidence truth will correct all errors in my mind you speak for all the world and him who would release the world as he would set you free truth will correct all errors in my mind today is a day of prayer today is a day to decide for guiltlessness today I would be a happy learner and not feel guilty about learning today I would learn the one lesson of forgiveness that I am capable of learning and release all attempts at conflicting goals at other learning outcomes peace of mind I would learn an experience today today I remember the power of the mind I come with conviction and remember what I experience I will make manifest if I am guiltless I have nothing to fear I choose to testify to my acceptance of the atonement not to its rejection I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest let me bring peace to God's son from his father today we practice this day each hour each minute even every second there can be no compromise between truth and illusion today I see there is no overlap between them today that guiltlessness is my freedom today I see that guiltlessness is my happiness today I see that guiltlessness is my invulnerability today I would accept the atonement for myself and set all the captives free in the mind accepting myself as the holy son of God I practice with sincerity with honesty with openness truth will correct all errors in my mind truth will correct all errors in my mind and I will rest in him who is myself peace be to my mind peace be to all the world truth will correct all errors in my mind Amen