1. We have already learned that everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. 2You may have taught well, and yet you may not have learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching. 3If you will consider what you have taught, and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to realize that your Teacher came from beyond your thought system. 4Therefore He could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue. 5He must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system, and one with nothing in common with yours. 6For certainly what He has taught, and what you have taught through Him, have nothing in common with what you taught before He came. 7And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared to be replaced by joy.
2. You may have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. 2I said earlier, “By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves.” 3For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching. 4The ego’s teaching produces immediate results, because its decisions are immediately accepted as your choice. 5And this acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. 6Cause and effect are very clear in the ego’s thought system, because all your learning has been directed toward establishing the relationship between them. 7And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? 8Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses, and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and its effects.
3. Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you that you do not perceive the Sonship as one? 2And does it not also show you that you do not regard yourself as one? 3For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly without conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be outside of you. 4You could never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it. 5And it must be that what you taught came from yourself. 6Yet this Self you clearly do not know, and do not recognize It even though It functions. 7What functions must be there. 8And it is only if you deny what It has done that you could possibly deny Its Presence.
4. This is a course in how to know yourself. 2You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you. 3You have been very careful to avoid the obvious, and not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. 4Yet within you is everything you taught. 5What can it be that has not learned it? 6It must be this part that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in truth. 7And it is this part that you have taken in that is not you. 8What you accept into your mind does not really change it. 9Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. 10And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved by separating yourself from the illusion and not from truth.
5. Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is part of you. 2Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. 3He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. 4For God’s Answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to take away. 5He protected both your creations and you together, keeping one with you what you would exclude. 6And they will take the place of what you took in to replace them. 7They are quite real, as part of the Self you do not know. 8They communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer gladly to your teaching of yourself, who is their home. 9You who are host to God are also host to them. 10For nothing real has ever left the mind of its creator. 11And what is not real was never there.
6. You are not two selves in conflict. 2What is beyond God? 3If you who hold Him and whom He holds are the universe, all else must be outside, where nothing is. 4You have taught this, and from far off in the universe, yet not beyond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. 5Their gratitude has joined with yours and God’s to strengthen your faith in what you taught. 6For what you taught is true. 7Alone, you stand outside your teaching and apart from it. 8But with them you must learn that you but taught yourself, and learned from the conviction you shared with them.
7. This year you will begin to learn, and make learning commensurate with teaching. 2You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. 3Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. 4For the joy of teaching is in the learner, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude, and shares it with him. 5As you learn, your gratitude to your Self, Who teaches you what He is, will grow and help you honor Him. 6And you will learn His power and strength and purity, and love Him as His Father does. 7His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal. 8All this is you, and nothing outside of this is you.
8. To your most holy Self all praise is due for what you are, and for what He is Who created you as you are. 2Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between his selves. 3Each one builds this bridge, which carries him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it. 4His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven, and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined within it. 5And so the one who would cross over is literally transported there.
9. Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted firmly on it. 2Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across. 3For you will come where you would be, and where your Self awaits you.