If you did not feel guilty you COULD not attack, for condemnation is the
root of attack. It is the judgement of one mind by another as UNWORTHY
of love and DESERVING of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the
mind that judges perceives itself as SEPARATE from the mind being
judged, believing that by punishing another IT will escape punishment.
All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself and
ESCAPE THE PENALTY OF DENIAL. It is not an attempt to RELINQUISH denial,
but to HOLD ON to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to
you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.

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. The world
you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look
carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this
world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern
it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in
pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow
and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and
its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they
desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the
most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid
in the ground and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought
that God is cruel.

If this WERE the real world God WOULD be cruel. For no father could
subject his children to this as the price of salvation and
BE loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. If it did, attack
WOULD be salvation, and this is the EGO’S interpretation, NOT God’s.
Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could
CONCEIVE of it. Adam’s “sin” could have touched none of you had you not
believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of paradise. For in
that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who
do NOT understand Him COULD believe it.

This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son. And until you
realize that God’s Son cannot BE crucified, this is the world you will
see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that
God’s Son is NOT GUILTY. He DESERVES only love because he has GIVEN only
love. He cannot BE condemned because he has never condemned. The
Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that,
never having sinned, he has no NEED of salvation.

Long ago we 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. The Holy Spirit wills ONLY this, for
sharing the Father’s Love for His Son, He wills to remove ALL guilt from
his mind that he may remember his Father in peace. For peace and guilt
are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered ONLY in peace. Love
and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to DENY the other. Guilt
hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness
of God’s Son.

In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned.
How could you SEE him, then? By making him invisible, the world of
retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you
hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego
never was and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God’s
Son IS without guilt. As you look upon yourselves and judge what you do
honestly, as you have been asked to do, you may be tempted to wonder how
you CAN be guiltless. Yet consider this:

You are not guiltless in time, but in ETERNITY. You HAVE “sinned” in the
past, but there IS no past. Always has NO direction. Time seems to go in
one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long
carpet which has spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As
long as you believe the Son of God is guilty
you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And
the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it IS.

The journey which the Son of God has set himself is foolish indeed, but
the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The
Father is NOT cruel, and His Son CANNOT hurt himself. The retaliation he
fears and which he SEES will never touch him, for although he believes
in it the Holy Spirit KNOWS it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the
END of time, where YOU must be because He is WITH you. He has ALWAYS
undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission,
given Him by God. And what God gives has ALWAYS been.

You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always
sought his guiltlessness, and he has FOUND it. For everyone is seeking
to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is
not denied him. Being IN him, he HAS found it. WHEN he finds it is only
a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is
guiltless NOW, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever
in God’s Mind. God’s Son will ALWAYS be as he was created. Deny YOUR
world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of
his Father, and protects him forever.

When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize
that there IS no guilt in God’s Son. And ONLY as you look upon him as
guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a
belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place
of unity. You can condemn only YOURSELF, and by so doing you cannot know
that you ARE God’s Son. You have denied the condition of his Being, which
is his perfect blamelessness. Out of Love he was created, and in Love he
abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always
extended the Love of his Father.

As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will
realize that there IS no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God,
who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father FOR you. There is no
road to travel on, and no time to travel through. For God waits not for
His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it
has always been. Let the holiness of God’s Son shine away the cloud of
guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his
purity as yours, learn of him that it IS yours.

You are invulnerable BECAUSE you are guiltless. You can hold on to the
past ONLY through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished
for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time,
proceeding from past to future. No-one who believes this can understand
what ALWAYS means. And therefore guilt MUST deprive you of the
appreciation of eternity. You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and
always MUST be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in
your minds to ensure the ego’s continuity. For if what has been WILL be
punished, the ego’s continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your
continuity is God’s, not the ego’s. And immortality is the opposite of
time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant.

Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality IS, for by
accepting your guiltlessness you learn that the past has never been, and
so the future is needless. The future, in time, is always associated
with expiation, and ONLY guilt could induce a sense of NEED for
expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God as YOURS is
therefore God’s way of reminding you of His Son, and what he is in
truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless he IS
eternal.

You cannot dispel guilt by making it real and THEN atoning for it. This
is the ego’s plan, which it offers INSTEAD of dispelling it. The ego
believes in atonement through ATTACK, being fully committed to the
insane notion that attack IS salvation. And you who cherish guilt must
ALSO believe it, for how else but by identifying WITH the ego could you
hold dear what you do not want?

The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this
must INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego’s
teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt
real, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit
dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been.
As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, He KNOWS this is true. And
being true for YOU you CANNOT attack yourself, for without guilt attack
is impossible. You, then, ARE saved because God’s Son is guiltless. And
being wholly pure, you ARE invulnerable.