1. The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his “sins” are but his own imagining. 2His reality is forever sinless. 3He need not be forgiven but awakened. 4In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. 5Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. 6It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. 7Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. 8Fantasies change reality. 9That is their purpose. 10They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different.
2. It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. 2This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. 3Yet by distorting it and devoting it to “evil,” it also makes it unreal. 4You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things of you. 5What you use in fantasy you deny to truth. 6Yet what you give to truth to use for you is safe from fantasy.
3. When you maintain that there must be an order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would withhold from truth. 2You believe truth cannot deal with them only because you would keep them from truth. 3Very simply, your lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from your wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy. 4If you but realized what this must do to your appreciation of the whole! 5What you reserve for yourself, you take away from Him Who would release you. 6Unless you give it back, it is inevitable that your perspective on reality be warped and uncorrected.
4. As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion of an order of difficulty in miracles remain with you. 2For you have established this order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher, and some to another. 3And so you learn to deal with part of the truth in one way, and in another way the other part. 4To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering it meaningless. 5Orders of reality is a perspective without understanding; a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all.
5. Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions? 2Truth has no meaning in illusion. 3The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. 4When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. 5But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them. 6Reserve not one idea aside from truth, or you establish orders of reality that must imprison you. 7There is no order in reality, because everything there is true.
6. Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. 2Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all. 3Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. 4He will accomplish it; not you. 5But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. 6And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. 7As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. 8And you will see forgiveness where you have given it.