1. Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? 2For both you cannot have. 3Which do you value? 4Which is your goal? 5For one you see as means; the other, end. 6And one must serve the other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own. 7Means serve the end, and as the end is reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. 8No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. 9Yet he will seek for it where he believes it is and can be found. 10He will believe it possible of mind or body, and he will make the other serve his choice as means to find it.
2. Where freedom of the body has been chosen, the mind is used as means whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body’s freedom. 2Yet freedom of the body has no meaning, and so the mind is dedicated to serve illusions. 3This is a situation so contradictory and so impossible that anyone who chooses this has no idea of what is valuable. 4Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot be described, the Holy Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the outcome as He is sure of His Creator’s Love. 5He knows this mad decision was made by one as dear to His Creator as love is to itself.
3. Be not disturbed at all to think how He can change the role of means and end so easily in what God loves, and would have free forever. 2But be you rather grateful that you can be the means to serve His end. 3This is the only service that leads to freedom. 4To serve this end the body must be perceived as sinless, because the goal is sinlessness. 5The lack of contradiction makes the soft transition from means to end as easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before forgiving eyes. 6You will be sanctified by your brother, using your body only to serve the sinless. 7And it will be impossible for you to hate what serves whom you would heal.
4. This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. 2Be thankful that it serves yours not at all. 3Nothing entrusted to it can be misused, and nothing given it but will be used. 4This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. 5Neither you nor your brother alone can serve at all. 6Only in your joint will does healing lie. 7For here your healing is, and here will you accept Atonement. 8And in your healing is the Sonship healed because your will and your brother’s are joined.
5. Before a holy relationship there is no sin. 2The form of error is no longer seen, and reason, joined with love, looks quietly on all confusion, observing merely, “This was a mistake.” 3And then the same Atonement you accepted in your relationship corrects the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. 4How blessed are you who let this gift be given! 5Each part of Heaven that you bring is given you. 6And every empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the eternal light you bring, shines now on you. 7The means of sinlessness can know no fear because they carry only love with them.
6. Child of peace, the light has come to you. 2The light you bring you do not recognize, and yet you will remember. 3Who can deny himself the vision that he brings to others? 4And who would fail to recognize a gift he let be laid in Heaven through himself? 5The gentle service that you give the Holy Spirit is service to yourself. 6You who are now His means must love all that He loves. 7And what you bring is your remembrance of everything that is eternal. 8No trace of anything in time can long remain in a mind that serves the timeless. 9And no illusion can disturb the peace of a relationship that has become the means of peace.
7. When you have looked upon your brother with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you cannot overlook? 2What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it? 3And what illusion could there be you will not recognize as a mistake; a shadow through which you walk completely undismayed? 4God would let nothing interfere with those whose wills are His, and they will recognize their wills are His, because they serve His Will. 5And serve it willingly. 6And could remembrance of what they are be long delayed?
8. You will see your value through your brother’s eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place of the attacker who he thought was there. 2Through this releasing is the world released. 3This is your part in bringing peace. 4For you have asked what is your function here, and have been answered. 5Seek not to change it, nor to substitute another goal. 6This one was given you, and only this. 7Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with gifts you give your brother, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him. 8He will bestow them where they are received and welcomed. 9He will use every one of them for peace. 10Nor will one little smile or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone.
9. What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your Father loves with charity? 2Extension of forgiveness is the Holy Spirit’s function. 3Leave this to Him. 4Let your concern be only that you give to Him that which can be extended. 5Save no dark secrets that He cannot use, but offer Him the tiny gifts He can extend forever. 6He will take each one and make of it a potent force for peace. 7He will withhold no blessing from it, nor limit it in any way. 8He will join to it all the power that God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source of healing for everyone. 9Each little gift you offer to your brother lights up the world. 10Be not concerned with darkness; look away from it and toward your brother. 11And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each quiet smile of faith and confidence with which you bless your brother.
10. On your learning depends the welfare of the world. 2And it is only arrogance that would deny the power of your will. 3Think you the Will of God is powerless? 4Is this humility? 5You do not see what this belief has done. 6You see yourself as vulnerable, frail and easily destroyed, and at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. 7Let us look straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavy anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, immovable and solid as a rock. 8While this remains, so will it seem to be.
11. Who can attack the Son of God and not attack his Father? 2How can God’s Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed unless his Father is? 3You do not see that every sin and every condemnation that you perceive and justify is an attack upon your Father. 4And that is why it has not happened, nor could be real. 5You do not see that this is your attempt because you think the Father and the Son are separate. 6And you must think that They are separate, because of fear. 7For it seems safer to attack another or yourself than to attack the great Creator of the universe, Whose power you know.
12. If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. 2But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. 3It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. 4The only way it could be justified is if you and your brother were separate from the other, and all were separate from your Creator. 5For only then would it be possible to attack a part of the creation without the whole, the Son without the Father; and to attack another without yourself, or hurt yourself without the other feeling pain. 6And this belief you want. 7Yet wherein lies its value, except in the desire to attack in safety? 8Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. 9It is impossible. 10And this is so because the universe is one. 11You would not choose attack on its reality if it were not essential to attack to see it separated from its maker. 12And thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful.
13. Only the different can attack. 2So you conclude because you can attack, you and your brother must be different. 3Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. 4Because you and your brother are not different, you cannot attack. 5Either position is a logical conclusion. 6Either could be maintained, but never both. 7The only question to be answered in order to decide which must be true is whether you and your brother are different. 8From the position of what you understand you seem to be, and therefore can attack. 9Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and more in line with your experience. 10And therefore it is necessary that you have other experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what is natural and true.
14. This is the function of your holy relationship. 2For what one thinks, the other will experience with him. 3What can this mean except your mind and your brother’s are one? 4Look not with fear upon this happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. 5For when you have accepted it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. 6From loving minds there is no separation. 7And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. 8Joy is unlimited, because each shining thought of love extends its being and creates more of itself. 9There is no difference anywhere in it, for every thought is like itself.
15. The light that joins you and your brother shines throughout the universe, and because it joins you and him, so it makes you and him one with your Creator. 2And in Him is all creation joined. 3Would you regret you cannot fear alone, when your relationship can also teach the power of love is there, which makes all fear impossible? 4Do not attempt to keep a little of the ego with this gift. 5For it was given you to be used, and not obscured. 6What teaches you that you cannot separate denies the ego. 7Let truth decide if you and your brother be different or the same, and teach you which is true.