 We continue today with Chapter 17, Shadows of the Past. To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering based not on your selection. For the shadow figures you would make immortal are, quote, enemies of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what He did not do. The shadow figures are witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate He did what He did not. Because you bring them, you will hear them. And you who keep them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind and what their purpose is. They represent the evil that you think was done to you. You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself. They speak so clearly for the separation that no one not obsessed with keeping separation could hear them. They offer you the, quote, reasons why you should enter into unholy alliances to support the ego's goals and make your relationships the witness to its power. It is these shadow figures that would make the ego holy in your sight and teach you what you do to keep it safe is really love. The shadow figures always speak for vengeance and all relationships into which they enter are totally insane. Without exception these relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other and of yourself. This is why you see in both what is not there and make of both the slaves of vengeance and why whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you and seems to go by the name of love no matter how distorted the associations by which you arrive at the connection may be. And finally, why all such relationships become attempts at union through the body for only bodies can be seen as means for vengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident. Your own experience has taught you this, but what you may not realize are all the reasons that go to make the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks to reinforce itself as holiness does by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself. In the unholy relationship it is not the body of the other with which union is attempted, but the bodies of those who are not there. For even the body of the other, already a severely limited perception of him, is not the central focus as it is or in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance and what can be most readily associated with those on whom vengeance is really sought is centered on and separated off as being the only parts of value. Every step taken in the making, the maintaining and the breaking off of the unholy relationship is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures enter more and more and the one in whom they seem to be decreases in importance. Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship, for time is cruel in the ego's hands as it is kind when used for gentleness. The attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questioned almost at once. Once it is formed, doubt must enter in because its purpose is impossible. The, quote, ideal of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the reality of the other does not enter at all to, quote, spoil the dream. And the less the other really brings to the relationship, the, quote, better it becomes. Thus the attempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the union was sought, for it was formed to get him out of it and join with fantasies and uninterrupted, quote, bliss. How can the Holy Spirit bring his interpretation of the body as a means of communication into relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? What forgiveness is enables him to do so? If all but the loving thoughts have been forgotten, what remains is eternal, and the transformed past is made like the present. No longer does the past conflict with now, this continuity extends the present by increasing its reality and its value in your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark of beauty hidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship where hatred is remembered, yet there to come alive as the relationship is given to him, who gives it life and beauty. That is why atonement centers on the past, which is the source of separation and where it must be undone, for separation must be corrected where it was made. The ego seeks to, quote, resolve its problems, not at their source, but where they were not made, and thus it seeks to guarantee there will be no solution. The Holy Spirit wants only to make his resolutions complete and perfect, and so he seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there undoes it. And with each step in his undoing is the separation more and more undone, and union brought closer. He is not at all confused by any, quote, reasons for separation. All he perceives in separation is that it must be undone. Let him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships and show it to you. Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again, and you will let this spark transform the relationship so you can see it more and more, for you will want it more and more and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you, and you will learn to seek for and establish the conditions in which this beauty can be seen. All this you will do gladly if you but let him hold the spark before you to light your way and make it clear to you. God's Son is one whom God has joined as one the ego cannot put us under. The spark of holiness must be safe, however hidden it may be, in every relationship, for the creator of the one relationship has left no part of it without himself. This is the only part of the relationship the Holy Spirit sees, because he knows that only this is true. You have made the relationship unreal and therefore unholy by seeing it where it is not and as it is not. Give the past to him who can change your mind about it for you, but first be sure you fully realize what you have made the past to represent and why. The past becomes the justification for entering into a continuing unholy alliance with the ego against the present, for the present is forgiveness. Therefore the relationships the unholy alliance dictates are not perceived nor felt as now, yet the frame of reference to which the present is referred for meaning is an illusion of the past. In which those elements that fit the purpose of the unholy alliance are retained and all the rest let go. And what is thus let go is all the truth the past could ever offer to the present as witness for its reality. What is kept but witnesses to the reality of dreams. It is still up to you to choose to join with truth or with illusion. But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which one you choose you will endow with beauty in reality because the choice depends on which you value more. The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery. It is all the same for you can never choose except between God and the ego. Thought systems are but true or false and all their attributes come simply from what they are. Only the thoughts of God are true and all that follows from them comes from what they are and is as true as is the holy source from which they come. My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships and step between you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you and let me bring reality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me and let not the holy purpose of atonement be lost to you in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in such dreams are cherished, have excluded me. Let me enter in the name of God and bring you peace that you may offer peace to me from the workbook. Lesson 135. If I defend myself, I am attacked. Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real and that his own defense could save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense. It gives illusions full reality and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgement of an inherent weakness, a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety, yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight? What you defend and how and against what? Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life. What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host. Yet it is not the body that can fear or be a thing of fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated health structures of defense, no health inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend this life or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe. And you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling. So unsafe it must be guarded with your very life. Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this? The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams. The quote self that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense need merely be perceived as quite apart from you and it becomes a healthy serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done? Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. You will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile and apart from other minds and separate from its source. These are the thoughts in need of healing and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only real defense. Is this where you look for its defense? You offer a protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal but merely take away the hope of healing for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful. A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself or anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone. A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body and its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted that this is true, then is it healed and lets the body go? Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be the means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured, for everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail. It is perhaps not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, where the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense. The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for at rest on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course. The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all for present confidence directs the way. Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed, for it is your reality that is the quote threat which your defenses would attack, obscure and take apart and crucify. What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens, all events past, present and to come are gently planned by one whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood his plan, for he would never offer pain to you, but your defenses does not let you see his loving blessings shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, he led you gently to eternal life. Your present trust in him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow and with joy that constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant set in time but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal. Without defenses you become a light which heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own and it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan begun when time was born. Your followers will join their light with yours and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy and gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses which availed them nothing and could only terrify. We will anticipate that time today with present confidence for this is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty. For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning and from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly as we say if I defend myself I am attacked but in defenselessness I will be strong and I will learn what my defenses hide. Nothing but that. If there are plans to make you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the answer comes to you at last. All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the light and joy of simple trust you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are. He has remembered you. Today we will remember him. For this is Easter time in your salvation and you rise again from what was seeing, seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the light of hope reborn in you. For now you come without defense to learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little magical plans or magical beliefs can still have value when you have received your function from the voice for God himself. Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you cannot conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today and all the world will take this giant stride and celebrate your Easter time with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning and acknowledge it with this. This is my Easter time and I would keep it holy. I will not defend myself because the Son of God needs no defense against the truth of his reality. Amen.