1. You can do anything I ask. 2I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing and universal. 3There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear. 4When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. 5Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. 6You believe in what you value. 7If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly. 8Your understanding will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace. 9That is why the Bible speaks of “the peace of God which passeth understanding.” 10This peace is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. 11It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. 12This is the proper use of denial. 13It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. 14It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.
2. True denial is a powerful protective device. 2You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. 3This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction. 4Your right mind depends on it. 5Denial of error is a strong defense of truth, but denial of truth results in miscreation, the projections of the ego. 6In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will. 7When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth.
3. You can defend truth as well as error. 2The means are easier to understand after the value of the goal is firmly established. 3It is a question of what it is for. 4Everyone defends his treasure, and will do so automatically. 5The real questions are, what do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? 6Once you have learned to consider these questions and to bring them into all your actions, you will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. 7The means are available whenever you ask. 8You can, however, save time if you do not protract this step unduly. 9The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably.
4. The Atonement is the only defense that cannot be used destructively because it is not a device you made. 2The Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement began. 3The principle was love and the Atonement was an act of love. 4Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief in space and time did not exist. 5It was only after the separation that the Atonement and the conditions necessary for its fulfillment were planned. 6Then a defense so splendid was needed that it could not be misused, although it could be refused. 7Refusal could not, however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of other defenses. 8The Atonement thus becomes the only defense that is not a two-edged sword. 9It can only heal.
5. The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete. 2The Atonement is the final lesson. 3Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. 4The ability to learn has no value when change is no longer necessary. 5The eternally creative have nothing to learn. 6You can learn to improve your perceptions, and can become a better and better learner. 7This will bring you into closer and closer accord with the Sonship; but the Sonship itself is a perfect creation and perfection is not a matter of degree. 8Only while there is a belief in differences is learning meaningful.
6. Evolution is a process in which you seem to proceed from one degree to the next. 2You correct your previous missteps by stepping forward. 3This process is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because you return as you go forward. 4The Atonement is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead. 5It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return. 6In this sense the Atonement saves time, but like the miracle it serves, does not abolish it. 7As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. 8But the Atonement as a completed plan has a unique relationship to time. 9Until the Atonement is complete, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands at time’s end. 10At that point the bridge of return has been built.
7. The Atonement is a total commitment. 2You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another. 3It is hard to believe a defense that cannot attack is the best defense. 4This is what is meant by “the meek shall inherit the earth.” 5They will literally take it over because of their strength. 6A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because it has two edges, and can be turned against you very unexpectedly. 7This possibility cannot be controlled except by miracles. 8The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to your real protection, and as you become more and more secure you assume your natural talent of protecting others, knowing yourself as both a brother and a Son.