Guiltlessness

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Guiltlessness

These are just the lecture notes, not a transcript

It’s my fault that I’m not yet awake.  It’s my fault that I don’t always listen for HS Guidance.  It’s my fault that I’m not like Jesus Christ.  It’s my fault that I still have all kinds of problems.  It’s my fault that I’m not good at healing and not all that good at forgiving.  It’s my fault that I’m still not like David Hoffmeister.  I’m still stuck in the belief in separation.  I’m not good enough.  There’s something wrong with me.  

What happens if we think we’re separate from God?  Well, all manner of illusions appear:  Oneness splinters into separation, good mutates into evil, entirety degrades into fragmentation, totality collapses into lack, completeness turns into disintegration, wholeness declines into disease, love twists into hate, harmony flips into disharmony, joy alternates with sadness, perfection gives way to endless flaws, purity becomes debauchery, grace is obscured by cynicism, innocence is bludgeoned by guilt, absoluteness becomes partial and relative, peace is swallowed up by war, infinity lapses into limitation, abundance declines into poverty, omnipresence becomes local and small, omniscience shrivels into ignorance, awareness becomes unconscious, omnipotence deflates into impotence, omniaction declines into lethargy and eternality turns into mortality --- and all because of the tiny mad idea of wanting to go off on our own. 

T-23.III.1.3 Attack in any form is equally destructive. 4 Its purpose does not change. 5 Its sole intent is murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel? 6 He may deny he is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks. 7 Yet he will suffer, and will look on his intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still. 8 For no one thinks of murder and escapes the guilt the thought entails. 9 If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes?

T-27.VIII.6. 2 Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. 3 In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. 4 Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. 5 It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which <means> there is no time.

T-27.VIII.7. A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. 2 The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. 3 Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. 4 The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you. 5 It brings its vengeance, not your own. 6 It keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the sinful things the body does within its dream. 7 You have no power to make the body stop its evil deeds because you did not make it, and cannot control its actions nor its purpose nor its fate.

T-27.VIII.8. The world but demonstrates an ancient Truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. 2 But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you <want> the guilt to rest on them. 3 How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting go! 4 It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause. 5 Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. 6 Yet they but follow. 7 And it is their cause that follows nothing and is but a jest.

T-27.VIII.9. In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. 2 How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? 3 He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. 4 <You> judge effects, but <He> has judged their cause. 5 And by His judgment are effects removed. 6 Perhaps you come in tears. 7 But hear Him say, "My brother, holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur." 8 And you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's joined with His.

W-pII.4.4. A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. 2 And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. 3 The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. 4 But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.

T-19.IV.C.3. From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. 2 Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven? 3 One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. 4 He knows of neither sin nor its results.

T-5.V.2. 9 Guilt is more than merely not of God. 10 It is the symbol of attack on God. 11 This is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. 12 This is the belief from which all guilt really stems.

T-5.V.3.5 If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. 6 Whenever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. 7 The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. 8 However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane.

T-5.VII.5.5 If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you.

T-10.V.12. If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. 2 If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. 3 If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. 4 All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is. 5 If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. 6 And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.

T-11.VI.10. God's Son <is> saved. 2 Bring only this awareness to the Sonship, and you will have a part in the redemption as valuable as mine. 3 For your part must be like mine if you learn it of me. 4 If you believe that yours is limited, you are limiting mine. 5 There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their oneness. 6 The whole power of God is in every part of Him,

T-12.VII.14. The ego is not a traitor to God, to Whom treachery is impossible. 2 But it is a traitor to you who believe that you have been treacherous to your Father. 3 That is why the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit's teaching. 4 For as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve death.

T-13.in.2. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. 2 The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. 3 Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. 4 For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death.

T-13.I.1. Earlier, I said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. 2 The Holy Spirit wants only this, for sharing the Father's Love for His Son, He seeks to remove all guilt from his mind that he may remember his Father in peace. 3 Peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered only in peace. 4 Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other. 5 Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son.

T-13.I.2. 4 For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. 5 Without guilt the ego has no life, and God's Son <is> without guilt.

T-13.I.5. You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. 6 For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God's Mind.

T-13.I.11. The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty, and this must increase the guilt, for guilt is the result of attack. 2 In the ego's teaching, then, there is no escape from guilt. 3 For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real there <is> no way to overcome it. 4 The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. 5 As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, He knows that this is true. 6 And being true for you, you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt attack is impossible. 7 You, then, are saved because God's Son is guiltless. 8 And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable.

T-13.IX.7. Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. 2 And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. 3 You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. 4 You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. 5 <The thing you fear is gone.> 6 If you would look within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.

T-13.X.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. 2 The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. 3 For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. 4 The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. 5 If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. 6 The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

T-13.X.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. 2 What He has saved you from is gone. 3 Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. 4 The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. 5 He has seen separation, but knows of union.

T-13.X.8.3 The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. 4 When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. 5 And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. 6 The 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.

T-13.X.11.10 Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. 11 In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him. T-13.X.12. No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. 2 His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. 3 Let us look upon him together and love him. 4 For in love of him is your guiltlessness. 5 But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. 6 I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.

T-13.XI.5. You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon himself. 2 It is impossible that this mission fail. 3 Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment. 4 Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit's Voice may be, whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God's Will <is> done. 5 You will find the peace in which He has established you, because He does not change His Mind. 6 He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.

T-13.XI.7. Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you from it, or it from you. 2 Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. 3 They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. 4 The Holy Spirit will restore your sanity because insanity is not the Will of God. 5 If that suffices Him, it is enough for you. 6 You will not keep what God would have removed, because it breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate. 7 His Voice <will> be heard.

T-14.III.7. The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: Guiltlessness is invulnerability. 2 Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to everyone. 3 Teach him that, whatever he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed shows him that he is guiltless. 4 He can do nothing that can hurt you, and by refusing to allow him to think he can, you teach him that the Atonement, which you have accepted for yourself, is also his. 5 There is nothing to forgive. 6 No one can hurt the Son of God. 7 His guilt is wholly without cause, and being without cause, cannot exist.

T-14.III.13.4 The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt. 5 You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only Friend. 6 He is the strong protector of the innocence that sets you free. 7 And it is His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind.

T-14.III.15. Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. 2 And you <will> feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. 3 The Holy Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. 4 What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. 5 Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. 6 Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. 7 Never forget the Love of God, Who has remembered you. 8 For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from the loving Mind wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.

T-14.IV.2. You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. 2 The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. 3 This state, and only this, must you attain, with God beside you. 4 For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him. 5 You can perhaps feel His Presence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. 6 This cannot be taught. 7 Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself.

T-14.V.2. Everyone has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each one is always the same; <God's Son is guiltless.> 2 Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. 3 Yet until he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled in him.

T-14.V.3.3 There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share His shining innocence. 4 Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. 5 Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in all its forms.

T-19.II.2. Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks. 2 To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. 3 Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. 4 It assumes the Son of God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what God created not. 5 Thus is creation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. 6 Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the ego's grandiosity. 7 For by it God Himself is changed, and rendered incomplete.

T-19.II.3. The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself. 2 But he <cannot> sin. 3 There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty. 4 That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. 5 Yet for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is impossible.

T-19.II.4. A major tenet in the ego's insane religion is that sin is not error but Truth, and it is innocence that would deceive. 2 Purity is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. 3 And it is this doctrine that replaces the reality of the Son of God as his Father created him, and willed that he be forever. 4 Is this humility? 5 Or is it, rather, an attempt to wrest creation away from Truth, and keep it separate?

T-19.II.5. Any attempt to reinterpret sin as error is always indefensible to the ego. 2 The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to its thought system, and quite unapproachable except with reverence and awe. 3 It is the most "holy" concept in the ego's system; lovely and powerful, wholly true, and necessarily protected with every defense at its disposal.