Yet the essential thing is learning that YOU DO NOT KNOW. Knowledge is
power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for
yourselves have lost it. You still have the power, but you have
interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it that you cannot
use it. Everything you have taught yourselves has made your power more
and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is nor WHERE. You have made
a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it MUST fail
you. For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond semblance
of any kind. Yet all that stands between you and the power of God in you
is but your learning of the false, and your attempts to undo the true.

Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are
not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves how to imprison
the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest
sleep, could even dream of it. Can God learn how NOT to be God? And can
His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you
taught yourselves that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what
you HAVE and what you ARE?

Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you
have taught yourselves in the past by showing you only what you are NOW.
Learning HAS BEEN accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning
is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present by
giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. YOUR learning gives the
present no meaning at all. Nothing you have ever learned can help you
understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. Your past IS
what you have taught yourselves. LET IT ALL GO. Do not attempt to
understand any event, or anything, or anyone in its light, for the light
of darkness by which you try to see can ONLY obscure.

Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding,
for if you do you contradict the light, and thereby THINK you see the
darkness. Yet darkness cannot BE seen, for it is nothing more than a
condition in which seeing becomes impossible. You who have not yet
brought all of the darkness you have taught yourselves unto the light in
you can hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet God did not
abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent from Him, ALREADY
learned for every Child of light by Him to Whom God gave it. This lesson
shines with God’s glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares so
gladly with His Son.

Learn of His happiness, which is YOURS. But to accomplish this, all your
dark lessons must be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down
by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you
bring to Him Who teaches light He will accept from you, because you do
not want it. And He will gladly EXCHANGE each one for the bright lesson
He has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned
APART from Him means anything.

You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you
learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all
those who meet, or even think of you, share in your perfect peace, then
you can be sure that you have learned God’s lesson, and not yours.
Unless all this is true there ARE dark lessons in your minds which hurt
and hinder you, and everyone around you. The ABSENCE of perfect peace
means but ONE thing:You THINK you do not will for God’s Son what His
Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this, in one form or
another. And each bright lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace
the dark ones you do not accept and hide, teaches you that you will WITH
the Father unto His Son.

Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different
from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your
part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned
you do not WANT. Ask to be TAUGHT, and do not use your experiences to
confirm what YOU have learned.

When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in any way, say to yourself,

“I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do not
know how to respond to it.
And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me
now.”

By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the
Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take His
rightful place in your awareness the instant YOU abandon it, and offer
it to Him.

YOU cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them
necessary. And BECAUSE you did, the means on which you can depend for
miracles has been provided FOR you. God’s Son can make no needs His
Father will not meet, if he but turn to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot
compel His Son to turn to Him, and remain Himself. It is impossible that
God lose His Identity, for if He did, you would lose YOURS. And being
yours, He cannot change Himself, for your Identity IS changeless. The
miracle acknowledges His changelessness by seeing His Son as he always
was, and not as he would make himself. The miracle brings the effects
which ONLY guiltlessness can bring, and thus establishes the fact that
guiltlessness must BE.

How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain,
establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That is impossible. But be
sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it IS impossible. It is
only because you think that you can run some little part, or deal with
certain aspects of your lives alone, that the guidance of the Holy
Spirit is limited. Thus would you make HIM undependable, and use this
fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons
from Him. And by so limiting the guidance that you would ACCEPT, you are
unable to depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you.

Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you GIVE He would
WITHHOLD from you? You have NO problems which He cannot solve by
offering you a miracle. Miracles are for YOU. And every fear or pain or
trial you have HAS BEEN undone. He has brought all of them to light,
having accepted them INSTEAD of you,
and recognized they never were. There are no dark lessons He has not
ALREADY lightened for you. The lessons you would teach yourselves He has
corrected already. They do not exist in His Mind at all. For the past
binds Him not, and therefore binds not you. He does not see time as you
do. And each miracle He offers you corrects your use of time, and makes
it His.

He Who has freed you from the past would teach you ARE free of it. He
would but have you accept His accomplishments as YOURS because He did
them FOR you. And because He did, they ARE yours. He has made you free
of what you made. You can deny Him, but you CANNOT call on Him in vain.
He ALWAYS gives what He has made IN PLACE of you. He would establish His
bright teaching so firmly in your mind that no dark lessons of guilt can
abide in what He has established as holy by His Presence. Thank God that
He is there and works through you. And all His works are yours. He
offers you a miracle with every one you let Him do through you.

God’s Son will ALWAYS be indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so
do we learn as one in Him. God’s Teacher is as like to His Creator as is
His Son, and through His Teacher does God proclaim His Oneness AND His
Son’s. Listen in silence, and do not raise your voice against Him. For
He teaches the miracle of oneness, and before His lesson division
disappears. Teach like Him here, and you will remember that you have
ALWAYS created like your Father. The miracle of creation has never
ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is the Will
of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this.

Those who remember always that they know nothing, but who have become
willing to learn EVERYTHING, will learn it. But whenever they trust
themselves, they will NOT learn. They have destroyed their motivation
for learning by thinking they ALREADY know. Think not you understand
anything until you pass the test of perfect peace, for peace and
understanding go together, and never can be found alone. Each brings the
other WITH it, for it is the law of God they be not separate. They are
cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absent the other
CANNOT be.

Only those who see they cannot know UNLESS the effects of understanding
are with them can really learn at all. And for this, it
must be peace they WANT, and nothing else. Whenever you think YOU know,
peace will depart from you because you have abandoned the Teacher of
Peace. Whenever you fully realize that you know NOT peace will return,
for you will have invited Him to do so by abandoning the ego on behalf
of Him. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only THIS that you
need do. The Holy Spirit will, of HIMSELF, fill every mind that so makes
room for Him.

If you want peace you must abandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher of
peace will NEVER abandon you. You can desert Him, but He will never
reciprocate, for His faith in you IS His understanding. It is as firm as
is His faith in His Creator, and He knows that faith in His Creator MUST
encompass faith in His creation. In this consistency lies His holiness,
which He cannot abandon, for it is not His Will to do so. With your
perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace to everyone who
perceives the need for peace, and who would have it. Make way for peace,
and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from it peace MUST
come.

The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it
is His. You think you know Him not only because, alone, it is impossible
to know Him. Yet see the mighty works that He will do through you, and
you must be convinced you did them through Him. It is impossible to deny
the Source of effects so powerful they COULD not be of you. Leave room
for Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power that NOTHING
will prevail against your peace. And this will be the test by which you
recognize that you have understood.