The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will
correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look
within, and see the sin you think is there. This you would not be fearful
to admit. Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite appropriate,
and smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel ashamed. It
doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not shake
because of this. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to your
desire that it BE there to see. This merely seems to be the source of
fear.

Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule IS tempered, and
its unknown “enemy,” Whom it cannot even see, it fears. Loudly the ego
tells you not to look inward, for if you do your eyes will light on sin,
and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not
look. Yet this is not the ego’s hidden fear, nor yours who serve it.
Loudly indeed the ego claims it is; TOO loudly and TOO often. For
underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not
certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet
another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble.

What if you looked within and saw NO sin? This “fearful” question is one
the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego’s
whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is
your friend. Those who have joined their brothers HAVE detached
themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy
relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in TRUTH.
And your belief in sin has been ALREADY shaken, nor are you now entirely
unwilling to look within and see it not.

Your liberation still is only partial; still limited and incomplete, yet
born within you. Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much
of your insanity, and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving
inward, past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you
now, the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit’s purpose was accepted by
the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did YOU. And yet
this part, with which you now identify, is not afraid to look upon
itself. It KNOWS no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to
see the Holy Spirit’s purpose as its own?

This part has seen your brother, and recognized him perfectly since time
began. And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free again,
as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of freedom; the
acceptance of release to come to you. And now you recognize that it was
not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and so there MUST be
something else. Think not that THIS is madness. For this your REASON
tells you, and it follows perfectly from what you have already learned.

There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the
reasoning of the SANE. You have perceived the ego’s madness, and not been
made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. At
times it still deceives you. Yet in your saner moments, its ranting
strikes no terror in your hearts. For you have realized that all the
gifts it would withdraw from you, in rage at your “presumptuous” wish to
look within, you do not WANT. A few remaining trinkets still seem to
shine and catch your eye. Yet you would not “sell” Heaven to have them.

And now the ego IS afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the other part
hears as the sweetest music; the song it longed to hear since first the
ego came into your minds. The ego’s weakness is its strength. The song of
freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to it hope of
peace. For it REMEMBERS Heaven, and now it sees that Heaven has come to
earth at last, from which the ego’s rule has kept it out so long. Heaven
has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. And
earth can hold no longer what has been given Heaven as its own.

Look gently on each other, and remember the ego’s weakness is revealed
in both your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and
looks upon the ego unafraid. Little children, innocent of sin, follow in
gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear’s insane
insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What
matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made
meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it
happily, and question not what must be so.