 Let me continue today with Chapter 15, The Holy Instant, The Needless Sacrifice. Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship and always obscured by it is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no other love that can satisfy you because there is no other love. This is the only love that is fully given and fully returned. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the basis for any relationship in which the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks is special. The ego establishes relationships only to get something and it would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt. It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger. For the ego believes that anger makes friends. This is not its statement, but it is its purpose. For the ego really believes that it can get and keep by making guilty. This is its one attraction, an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all except that no one recognizes it. For the ego always seems to attract through love and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt. The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly and by withdrawing your investment in it to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here. We said before that the ego attempts to maintain an increased guilt but in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. The ego wishes no one well, yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels therefore that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief. That the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become. It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt and it is this chain the Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God who cannot make himself host to the ego. In the name of his release and in the name of him who would release him, let us look more closely at the relationships the ego contrives and let the Holy Spirit judge them truly. For it is certain that if you will look at them, you will offer them gladly to him. What he can make of them you do not know but you will become willing to find out if you are willing first to perceive what you have made of them. In one way or another, every relationship the ego makes is based on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. The, quote, sacrifice which it regards as purification is actually the root of its bitter resentment. For it would prefer to attack directly and avoid delaying what it really wants. Yet the ego acknowledges, quote, reality as it sees it and recognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. Yet to make guilty is direct attack, although it does not seem to be. For the guilty expect attack and having asked for it, they are attracted to it. In such insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do want. For each one thinks that he has sacrificed something to the other and hates him for it. Yet this is what he thinks he wants. He is not in love with the other at all. He merely believes he is in love with sacrifice. And for this sacrifice, which he demands of himself, he demands that the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself as well. Forgiveness becomes impossible for the ego believes that to forgive another is to lose him. It is only by attack without forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt that holds all its relationships together. Yet they only seem to be together. For relationships to the ego mean only that bodies are together. It is always this that the ego demands and it does not object where the mind goes or what it thinks. For this seems unimportant. As long as the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego, the mind is private and only the body can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern except as they bring the body of another closer or farther. And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as good or bad. What makes another guilty and holds him through guilt is quote good. What releases him from guilt is quote bad because he would no longer believe that bodies communicate and so he would be quote gone. Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would quote bless all unions. And those who are united at its altar accept suffering and sacrifice as the price of union. In their angry alliances born of the fear of loneliness and yet dedicated to the continuance of loneliness, each seeks relief from guilt by increasing it and the other. For each believes that this decreases guilt in him. The other seems always to be attacking and wounding him perhaps in little ways, perhaps quote unconsciously, yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury of those joined at the ego's altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For what the ego really wants you do not realize. Whenever you are angry you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship which the ego has blessed. For anger is its blessing. Anger takes many forms but it cannot long to see those who will learn that love brings no guilt at all and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty and this attempt is the only basis the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remain attractive to you. Yet remember this, to be with the body is not communication and if you think it is you will feel guilty about communication and will be afraid to hear the Holy Spirit recognizing in his voice your own need to communicate. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear and how can he communicate with you while you believe that to communicate is to make yourself lonely. It is clearly insane to believe that by communicating you will be abandoned and yet many do believe it. For they think their minds must be kept private or they will lose them but if their bodies are together their minds remain their own. The way of union of bodies thus becomes the way in which they would keep minds apart for bodies cannot forgive, they can only do as the minds direct. The illusion of the autonomy of the body and its ability to overcome loneliness is but the working out of the ego's plan to establish its own autonomy. As long as you believe that to be with the body is companionship you will be compelled to attempt to keep your brother in his body held there by guilt and you will see safety and guilt and danger in communication. For the ego will always teach that loneliness is solved by guilt and that communication is the cause of loneliness and despite the evident insanity of this lesson many have learned it. Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt it is the Holy Spirit's teaching function to instruct those who believe in communication to be damnation that communication is salvation and he will do so for the power of God in him and you is joined in a real relationship so holy and so strong that it can overcome even this without fear. It is through the Holy Instance that what seems impossible is accomplished making it evident that it is not impossible in the Holy Instant guilt holds no attraction since communication has been restored and guilt whose only purpose is to disrupt communication has no function here. Here there is no concealment and no private thoughts the willingness to communicate attracts communication to it and overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness here for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your completion in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. In the protection of your wholeness all are invited and made welcome and you understand that your completion is God's whose only need is to have you be complete for your completion makes you His in your awareness and here it is that you experience yourself as you were created and as you are from the workbook Lesson 121 Forgiveness is the key to happiness here is the answer to your search for peace here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace here are all questions answered here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last the unforgiving mind is full of fear and offers love no room to be itself no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world the unforgiving mind is sad without the hope of respite and release from pain it suffers and abides in misery peering about in darkness seeing not yet certain of the danger looking there the unforgiving mind is torn with doubt confused about itself in all it sees afraid and angry weak and blustering afraid to go ahead afraid to stay afraid to waken or to go to sleep afraid of every sound yet more afraid of stillness terrified of darkness yet more terrified at the approach of light what can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation what can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real the unforgiving mind sees no mistakes but only sins it looks upon the world with its sightless eyes and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life it wants to live yet wishes it were dead it wants forgiveness yet it sees no hope it wants escape yet conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere the unforgiving mind is in despair without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair it thinks it cannot change for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct it does not ask because it thinks it knows it does not question certain it is right forgiveness is acquired it is not inherent in the mind which cannot sin as sin is an idea you taught yourself forgiveness must be learned by you as well but from a teacher other than yourself who represents the other self in you through him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made and let it disappear thus you return your mind as one to him who is yourself and who can never sin each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself each one awaits the release from hell through you and turns to you imploringly for heaven here and now it has no hope but you become its hope and as its hope do you become your own the unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell and as you teach salvation you will learn yet all your teaching and all your learning will not be of you but of the teacher who was giving you to show the way to you today we practice learning to forgive if you are willing you can learn today to take the key to happiness and use it on your own behalf we will devote 10 minutes in the morning and at night another 10 to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness too the unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one whom you think of as an enemy and one whom you consider as a friend and as you learn to see them both as one we will extend the lesson to yourself and see that their escape included yours begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like who seems to irritate you or to cause regret in you if you should meet him one you actively despise or merely try to overlook it does not matter what the form your anger takes you probably have chosen him already he will do now close your eyes and see him in your mind and look at him a while try to perceive some light in him somewhere a little gleam which you had never noticed try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of him look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it and then try to let this light extend until it covers him and makes the picture beautiful and good look at this changed perception for a while and turn your mind to one you call a friend try to transfer the light you learn to see around your former enemy to him perceive him now as more than friend to you for in that light his holiness shows you your savior saved, saving, healed, and whole then let him offer you the light you see in him and let your enemy and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave now are you one with them and they with you now have you been forgiven by yourself do not forget throughout the day the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind with yours among them every hour tell yourself forgiveness is the key to happiness I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible, and full of sin and I know that I am the perfect son of God Amen