1. You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. 2The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. 3Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt, from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful. 4You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of “sources,” provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.
2. Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. 2No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. 3For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. 4What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! 5And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. 6They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. 7If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. 8For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. 9No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. 10It is not shared, and so it is not real.
3. In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. 2Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. 3You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. 4It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. 5Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. 6They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. 7Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.
4. When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. 2The past is not in you. 3Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. 4Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. 5Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to “solve” the past, and still to see them as they really are? 6Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. 7You wanted not salvation in the past. 8Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?
5. Determine, then, to be not as you were. 2Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. 3A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. 4When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. 5For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.
6. As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. 2The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. 3For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. 4The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. 5If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. 6The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.
7. The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. 2What He has saved you from is gone. 3Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. 4The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. 5He has seen separation, but knows of union. 6He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. 7He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. 8Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.
8. Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. 2As yet it is not now. 3The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. 4When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. 5And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. 6The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
9. You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father’s Love. 2And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him. 3Yet it is forever true. 4In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. 5Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. 6Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. 7The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. 8Nothing can keep from you what Christ would have you see. 9His Will is like His Father’s, and He offers mercy to every child of God, as He would have you do.
10. Release from guilt as you would be released. 2There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. 3And as His Son loves Him. 4There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. 5You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. 6You cannot be as you believed you were. 7Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. 8And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. 9He would remove only illusions. 10All else He would have you see. 11And in Christ’s vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God’s Son.
11. You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you love them all and equally. 2Love is not special. 3If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal. 4You can love only as God loves. 5Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. 6Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. 7No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. 8If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon himself. 9To him I say:
10Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. 11In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him.
12. No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. 2His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. 3Let us look upon him together and love him. 4For in love of him is your guiltlessness. 5But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. 6I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.
13. Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. 2The difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. 3I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. 4My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give my Father. 5My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. 6I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that is of God.
14. Praise be to you who make the Father one with His Own Son. 2Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think of it. 3Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never more be what it was. 4Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. 5See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of you. 6United in this praise we stand before the gates of Heaven where we will surely enter in our sinlessness. 7God loves you. 8Could I, then, lack faith in you and love Him perfectly?