It IS in your power, in TIME, to delay the perfect union of the Father
and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt DOES stand
between them. Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But
here, it is the Holy Spirit’s function to use them both, though not as
the ego uses them. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth
into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach
you, and let me celebrate YOUR birth through Him. The only gift I can
accept of you is the gift I GAVE to you. Release ME as I will YOUR
release. The time of Christ we celebrate TOGETHER, for it has no meaning
if we are apart.

The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating
instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is
thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I
will to offer YOU? And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer
everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice
as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn
NOW that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on
giving. And by this limitation you have limited
acceptance of the gift I offer YOU.

We who are one CANNOT give separately. When you are willing to accept
OUR relationship as real, guilt will hold NO attraction for you. For in
our union you will accept ALL of our brothers. The gift of union is the
only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that YOU may have it.
The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom,
offered to everyone. And by YOUR acceptance of it, you have OFFERED it
to everyone. It IS in your power to make this season holy, for it is in
your power to make the time of Christ be NOW.

It is possible to do this all at once because there is but ONE shift in
perception that is necessary, for you made but ONE mistake. It seems
like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms,
it is ALWAYS the same idea. What is not love is ALWAYS fear, and nothing
else. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous
routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge
in forms quite different from what it is. Yet it IS necessary to examine
each one as long as you would retain the PRINCIPLE which governs all of
them. When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as
different manifestations of the SAME idea, and one you do not WANT, they
go together. The idea is simply this; you believe that it is possible to
be host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you
have, and the decision which you believe that you must make.

You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that
sacrifice gets NOTHING. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system
that salvation APART from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion
of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love
WITHOUT sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is
ATTACK, not love. If you would accept but this ONE idea, your fear of
love would vanish. Guilt CANNOT last when the idea of sacrifice has been
removed. For if there is sacrifice, as you are convinced, someone must
pay and someone must get. And the only question which remains to be
decided is HOW MUCH is the price for getting WHAT.

As host to the ego, you believe that you can give ALL your guilt away
WHATEVER you think, and purchase peace. And the payment
does not seem to be YOURS. While it is obvious that the ego DOES demand
payment, it never seems to be demanding it of YOU. For you are unwilling
to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to
those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive
this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when this
recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by ANY form the ego
takes to protect itself from your sight.

Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides
behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore
inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the PRICE of love,
which must be paid BY fear. How fearful, then, has God become to you,
and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total
love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less
of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils,
one to be feared a little, but the other to be destroyed. For you see
love as DESTRUCTIVE, and your only question is who is to be destroyed,
you or another? You seek to answer this question in your special
relationships, in which you are both destroyer and destroyed in part,
but with the idea of being able to be neither completely. And this you
think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you.

You think that everyone OUTSIDE yourself demands your sacrifice, but you
do not see that ONLY you demand sacrifice, and ONLY of yourself. Yet the
demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you CANNOT accept
it where it is. But the REAL price of not accepting this has been so
great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God
would demand total sacrifice of you, you thought it safer to project Him
outward and AWAY from you, and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed
the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place to PROTECT you from
Him. And you do not recognize that it is what YOU invited in that would
destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you. No partial
sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but
SEEMS to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.

You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps
no bargains, and would leave you nothing. You will have to choose
between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are
no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises in the
attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision which must be made. And
yet it is the recognition of the decision, JUST AS IT IS, that makes the
decision so easy! Salvation is simple being of God, and therefore very
easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it OUTSIDE
yourself. In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for
sacrifice and the peace of God.