Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the interference in
your motivation for learning is exactly the same as that which
interferes with ALL your thinking. The happy learner cannot FEEL GUILTY
about learning. This is so essential to learning that it should never be
forgotten. The guiltless learner learns so easily because his thoughts
are free. Yet this entails the recognition that guilt is INTERFERENCE,
NOT salvation, and serves no useful function at all.

You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of
guilt, and do not look upon it as having value IN ITSELF. You believe
that guilt and guiltlessness are BOTH of value, each representing an
escape from what the other does not offer you. You do not want either
alone, for without both you do not see yourselves as whole and therefore
happy. Yet you are whole ONLY in your guiltlessness, and only in your
guiltlessness CAN you be happy. There IS no conflict here. To wish for
guilt in ANY way, in ANY form, will lose appreciation of the value of
your guiltlessness, and push it from your sight.

There is no compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape the pain
which ONLY guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is
Being in Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt SEEMS to attract you,
remember that, if you yield to it, you are deciding AGAINST your
happiness, and will not learn HOW to be happy. Say, therefore, to
yourself, gently, but with the conviction born of the love of God and of
His Son,

“What I experience I will make manifest. If I am guiltless I have
nothing to fear.

I choose to testify to my ACCEPTANCE of the Atonement, NOT for its
rejection.

I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and SHARING
it.

Let me bring peace to God’s Son from his Father.”

Each day, each hour and minute, even every second, you are deciding
between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the
Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the
decision for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours.
What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives
except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because
they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled and CANNOT both be
true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy.

The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom and
joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of
choosing right, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to
be free of guilt. Everyone you offer healing to returns it. Everyone you
attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether he
does this or does it not will make no difference; you will THINK he
does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this
penalty. The cost of giving IS receiving. Either it is a penalty from
which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.

No penalty is ever asked of God’s Son except BY himself and OF himself.
Every chance given him to heal is another opportunity to replace
darkness with light and fear with love. If he refuses it, he
binds himself to darkness because he did not choose to free his brother,
and enter light with him. By GIVING power to nothing, he threw away the
joyous opportunity to learn that nothing HAS no power. And by NOT
dispelling darkness he became afraid of darkness AND of light. The joy
of learning that darkness has no power over the Son of God is the happy
lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, and would have YOU teach with Him. It is
HIS joy to teach it, as it will be YOURS.

The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: Guiltlessness IS
invulnerability. Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to
everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your
perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed shows him HE is
guiltless. 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. There IS nothing to forgive. No-one
can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is wholly without cause, and being
without cause CANNOT exist.

God is the ONLY Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt
you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God HAS power
over you. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE. Do not attest to it, and do not
foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always that MIND is one and
CAUSE is one. You will learn communication with this oneness ONLY when
you learn to DENY the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as YOURS.
The power that God has given to His Son IS his, and nothing else can His
Son see or choose to look upon without imposing on himself the penalty
of guilt IN PLACE of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly
offer him.

Whenever you decide to make decisions for yourself, you are thinking
destructively, and the decision WILL be wrong. It will hurt you because
of the concept of decision which led to it. It is not true that you can
make decisions BY yourself or FOR yourself alone. No thought of God’s
Son CAN be separate or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made
for the WHOLE Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a
constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept
the Atonement ARE invulnerable. But those who
believe they are guilty WILL respond to guilt, because they think it is
salvation, and will not refuse to see it and side with it. And they will
fail to understand the simple fact that what they do not want MUST hurt
them.

All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is
GOOD. Yet will was given them BECAUSE it is holy, and will bring to them
ALL that they need, coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits.
There is nothing their wills will not provide that offers them ANYTHING
of value. Yet because they do not understand their will, the Holy Spirit
quietly understands it FOR them, and GIVES them what they will without
effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding what they want and
need alone.

It will never happen that you will have to make decisions for yourself.
You are not bereft of help, and Help that KNOWS the answer. Would you be
content with little, which is all that you alone can offer yourself,
when He Who gives you everything will simply OFFER it to you? He will
never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask
it not therefore of yourselves. Instead, accept His answer, for He KNOWS
that you are worthy of everything God wills for you. Do not try to
escape the gift of God which He so freely and so gladly offers you. He
offers you but what God gave Him FOR you. You need not decide whether or
not you are deserving of it. God knows you ARE.

Would you deny the truth of God’s decision, and place your pitiful
appraisal of yourself in place of His calm and unswerving value of His
Son? NOTHING can shake God’s conviction of the perfect purity of
everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure. Do not decide against
it, for being of Him it MUST be true. Peace abides in every mind that
quietly accepts the plan which God has set for his Atonement,
relinquishing his OWN. You know not of salvation, for you do not
understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but
ask of the Holy Spirit everything, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle
counsel.

The One Who knows the plan of God which God would have you follow can
teach you what it IS. Only HIS wisdom is capable of guiding you to
follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you
would define what salvation IS, and what you
would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit knows that ALL salvation is escape
from guilt. 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. He is the strong protector of your innocence which sets you
free. And it is HIS decision to undo everything that would obscure your
innocence from your unclouded mind.

Let Him, therefore, be the ONLY Guide that you would follow to
salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him you
will not fail to learn what God wills for you IS your will. WITHOUT His
guidance you will think you know alone, and will decide AGAINST your
peace as surely as you made the wrong decision in ever thinking that
salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God gave it for
you. He has not forgotten it. Forget Him not, and He will make every
decision for you, for your salvation and the peace of God in you.

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. And you WILL
feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no-one in this world or
Heaven could possibly commit. God’s Spirit teaches only that the “sin”
of self-replacement on the throne of God is NOT a source of guilt. What
cannot happen can have NO effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him
Who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your
choice, but NOT your reality. Never forget the Love of God, Who HAS
remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His
Son drop from His Loving Mind wherein he was created, and where his
abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.

Say to the Holy Spirit only, “Decide for me,” and it is done. For His
decisions are reflections of what God KNOWS about you, and in this light
error of ANY kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so
frantically to anticipate all that you CANNOT know when all knowledge
lies behind every decision which the Holy Spirit makes FOR you? Learn of
His wisdom and His love, and teach His answer to everyone who struggles
in the dark. For you decide for them AND for yourself.

How gracious is it to decide all things through Him Whose equal love is
given equally to all alike! He leaves you no-one
OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours
because your Father would have you share it with Him. In everything be
led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely,
and with love for everyone who will be touched in any way by the
decision. And everyone WILL be. Would you take unto yourself the sole
responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone? Would
you KNOW this?

You taught yourselves the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with
your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with
everything that is within Him, as it is within yourself. UNLEARN
isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy
communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.

Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in
you, and tell yourself this, and ONLY this:

“He leadeth me, and knows the way, which I know not.
Yet He will never KEEP from me what He would have me LEARN. And so I
trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows FOR me.”

Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness which
is ALREADY there.