Chapter 28.

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

I. The Present Memory

T-28.I.1. The miracle does nothing. 2 All it does is to undo. 3 And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. 4 It does not add, but merely takes away. 5 And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. 6 This world was over long ago. 7 The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. 8 The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. 9 Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.

T-28.I.2. All the effects of guilt are here no more. 2 For guilt is over. 3 In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. 4 Why would you cling to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? 5 Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. 6 It is perception of the past as if it were occurring now, and still were there to see. 7 Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. 8 And like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the means for something else. 9 It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be.

T-28.I.3. Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. 2 It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something must be done. 3 It is an unselective memory, that is not used to interfere with truth. 4 All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him, without the content and the purposes for which they have been made. 5 They are but skills without an application. 6 They await their use. 7 They have no dedication and no aim.

T-28.I.4. The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is there. 2 Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. 3 You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember <now.> 4 The limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as those you let the world impose on you. 5 There is no link of memory to the past. 6 If you would have it there, then there it is. p589 7 But only your desire made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.

T-28.I.5. The Holy Spirit's use of memory is quite apart from time. 2 He does not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. 3 Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do. 4 It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. 5 Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. 6 And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient hate, and gives you pictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving, this is what you asked its message be and that it is. 7 Committed to its vaults, the history of all the body's past is hidden there. 8 All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive, the present dead, are stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to you, and lived again. 9 And thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away their cause.

T-28.I.6. Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. 2 It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself. 3 Time neither takes away nor can restore. 4 And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but a consequence in which no change can be made possible because its cause has gone. 5 Yet change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last. 6 No change can be made in the present if its cause is past. 7 Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now.

T-28.I.7. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. 2 And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one? 3 When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. 4 And so you cannot understand what they are for. 5 Let not the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be. 6 Be glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. 7 And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted <now,> with consequences <here.> 8 They will surprise you with their loveliness. 9 The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so ancient that It far exceeds the span of memory which your perception sees.

T-28.I.8. This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would forget. 2 It is not past because He let It not be unremembered. 3 It has never changed, because there never was a time in which He did not keep It safely in your mind. 4 Its consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that you remembered not their Cause. 5 Yet was It never absent from your mind, for it was not your Father's Will that He be unremembered by His Son.

T-28.I.9. What <you> remember never was. 2 It came from causelessness which you confused with cause. p590 3 It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequences that were causeless and could never be effects. 4 The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. 5 Never changed from what It is. 6 And you are Its Effect, as changeless and as perfect as Itself. 7 Its memory does not lie in the past, nor waits the future. 8 It is not revealed in miracles. 9 They but remind you that It has not gone. 10 When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied.

T-28.I.10. You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot understand it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son. 2 You would deny Him His Effects, yet have They never been denied. 3 There was no time in which His Son could be condemned for what was causeless and against His Will. 4 What your remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. 5 He has not done the thing you fear. 6 No more have you. 7 And so your innocence has not been lost. 8 You need no healing to be healed. 9 In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.

T-28.I.11. The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. 2 It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. 3 And they will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind which caused all minds to be. 4 Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant's stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. 5 Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards.

T-28.I.12. He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him. 2 For in that instant is God's memory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. 3 How gladly does He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! 4 And His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not be deprived of His Effects. p591 5 The instant's silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide. 6 For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid.

T-28.I.13. How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the memory away! 2 Its own remembering has gone. 3 There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace. 4 The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. 5 And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. 6 The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to shut them out.

T-28.I.14. Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign Effects. 2 Now does he understand what he has made is causeless, having no effects at all. 3 He has done nothing. 4 And in seeing this, he understands he never had a need for doing anything, and never did. 5 His Cause <is> Its Effects. 6 There never was a cause beside It that could generate a different past or future. 7 Its Effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and past the world of sin entirely.

T-28.I.15. What has been lost, to see the causeless not? 2 And where is sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place of loss? 3 What better way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to reach beyond? 4 For God has closed it with Himself. 5 His memory has not gone by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he can glimpse another shore that he can never reach. 6 His Father wills that he be lifted up and gently carried over. 7 He has built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport His Son across it. 8 Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills. 9 Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.

II. Reversing Effect and Cause

T-28.II.1. Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. 2 The cause a cause is <made> by its effects; the Father <is> a Father by His Son. 3 Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. 4 Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he has given Him. 5 It is <because> he is God's Son that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. 6 The circle of creation has no end. 7 Its starting and its ending are the same. 8 But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end.

T-28.II.2. Fatherhood <is> creation. 2 Love must be extended. 3 Purity is not confined. p592 4 It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. 5 Thus is purity not of the body. 6 Nor can it be found where limitation is. 7 The body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself. 8 Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and where all healing is. 9 Where, then, is healing? 10 Only where its cause is given its effects. 11 For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and make it be a cause.

T-28.II.3. Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause, and not allow himself to be his Father's Son. 2 For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he is Love's Effect, and must be cause because of what he is. 3 The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has but <one> Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen. 6 A mind within a body and a world of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your "creations," you the "other" mind, creating with effects unlike yourself. 7 And as their "father," you must be like them.

T-28.II.4. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone else's dream. 2 The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. 3 It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. 4 Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? 5 A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you.

T-28.II.5. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. 2 Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least: that you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. 3 But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. 4 It is but an effect that <you> have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. 5 In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. p593 6 But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. 7 These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. 8 It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.

T-28.II.6. This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. 2 No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found and understood. 3 What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? 4 Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. 5 You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real effects. 6 For that would change its cause, and it is this you cannot do. 7 The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not know he sleeps. 8 He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.

T-28.II.7. The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. 2 This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. 3 No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up. 4 The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. 5 He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. 6 And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. 7 Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it at another's hands. 8 As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their cause. 9 He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused. 10 The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. 11 What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. 12 And so it never was.

T-28.II.8. The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His Effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator. 2 In the dream, the dreamer made himself. 3 But what he made has turned against him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. 4 And as he hated his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. 5 His body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives he has given it have they adopted as their own. 6 And hate it for the vengeance it would offer them. 7 It is their vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream. 8 Effect and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect. p594

T-28.II.9. This is the separation's final step, with which salvation, which proceeds to go the other way, begins. 2 This final step is an effect of what has gone before, appearing as a cause. 3 The miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. 4 For this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared. 5 Nor will the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call to fear.

T-28.II.10. Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is clear. 2 It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its effects are what you want. 3 In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. 4 Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. 5 And you can accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects. 6 Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be feared. 7 And so they are not sick.

T-28.II.11. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. 2 But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. 3 And where effects are gone, there is no cause. 4 Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. 5 Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. 6 The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. 7 The lesson is the <mind> was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.

T-28.II.12. This world is full of miracles. 2 They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. 3 They are the dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. 4 They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. 5 The body is released because the mind acknowledges "this is not done to me, but <I> am doing this." 6 And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. 7 Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone. p595

III. The Agreement to Join

T-28.III.1. What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. 2 For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led you down. 3 The miracle alone is your concern at present. 4 Here is where we must begin. 5 And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. 6 When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. 7 Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. 8 For it is your support that strengthens it.

T-28.III.2. No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. 2 And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. 3 If you withhold agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. 4 Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from separate points of view. 5 Uniting with a brother's mind prevents the cause of sickness and perceived effects. 6 Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.

T-28.III.3. The miracle does nothing just <because> the minds are joined, and cannot separate. 2 Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. 3 Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own dream by sharing it with him. 4 He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. 5 Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. 6 Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you want above all things that seem to glisten in the dream.

T-28.III.4. The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world of dreams. 2 The gap <is> little. 3 Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. 4 And thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. 5 The purpose of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. 6 For it was made to keep you separated, in a body which you see as if it were the cause of pain. p596

T-28.III.5. The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. 2 Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. 3 And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. 4 Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? 5 Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow?

T-28.III.6. God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. 2 The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, for He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. 3 Let its effects be gone and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. 4 The miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come and bridge His Son's returning to Himself.

T-28.III.7. Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. 2 The door is open, not to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the shining of a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like silver. 3 They have nothing left behind the open door. 4 What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? 5 And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?

T-28.III.8. Be not afraid, my child, but let your world be gently lit by miracles. 2 And where the little gap was seen to stand between you and your brother, join him there. 3 And so sickness will now be seen without a cause. 4 The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never sinned. 5 The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never was. 6 And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self. 7 The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there. 8 And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you.

T-28.III.9. This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown. 2 For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. 3 The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. p597 4 And no one is deprived or can deprive. 5 Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, and shares it equally with him. 6 And in Their sharing there can be no gap in which abundance falters and grows thin. 7 Here can the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. 8 For love has set its table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.

IV. The Greater Joining

T-28.IV.1. Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to someone's dream of sickness and of death. 2 It means that you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. 3 Nor do you wish that they be turned, instead, on you. 4 Thus have they no effects. 5 And you are free of dreams of pain because you let him be. 6 Unless you help him, you will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. 7 And you become a figure in his dream of pain, as he in yours. 8 So do you and your brother both become illusions, and without identity. 9 You could be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil dream you share. 10 You can be sure of just one thing; that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear.

T-28.IV.2. There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. 2 Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. 3 You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. 4 You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. 5 Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one, but let the other go. 6 The dream is but illusion in the mind. 7 And with the mind you would unite, but never with the dream. 8 It is the dream you fear, and not the mind. 9 You see them as the same, because you think that <you> are but a dream. 10 And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and cannot tell apart.

T-28.IV.3. Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. 2 Share not in his illusion of himself, for your Identity depends on his reality. 3 Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. 4 He is not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. 5 It is his reality that is your brother, as is yours to him. 6 Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. 7 His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. p598

T-28.IV.4. And yet, between your minds there is no gap. 2 To join his dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from you. 3 Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and not on dreams of fear. 4 Let him acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in yours. 5 With faith in yours, he will not be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dreams. 6 And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in your brother's mind.

T-28.IV.5. Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you where you stand. 2 Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you must believe that it is your reality as well as his. 3 You cannot do his part, but this you <do> when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of your own. 4 Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. 5 Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced.

T-28.IV.6. You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. 2 What is the same seems different, because what is the same appears to be unlike. 3 His dreams are yours because you let them be. 4 But if you took your own away would he be free of them, and of his own as well. 5 Your dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. 6 Yet if you see there is no truth in yours, his dreams will go, and he will understand what made the dream.

T-28.IV.7. The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. 2 The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. 3 No one is sick if someone else accepts his union with him. 4 His desire to be a sick and separated mind can not remain without a witness or a cause. 5 And both are gone if someone wills to be united with him. 6 He has dreams that he was separated from his brother who, by sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant. 7 And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.

T-28.IV.8. The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the pieces into place again. 2 This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself. 3 To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. p599 4 And when he sees this picture he will recognize himself. 5 If you share not your brother's evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. 6 And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.

T-28.IV.9. I thank You, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. 2 Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. 3 And they are joined because what is in one is in them all. 4 How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son! 5 The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. 6 For the whole is in each one. 7 And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part.

T-28.IV.10. Join not your brother's dreams but join with him, and where you join His Son the Father is. 2 Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? 3 Who would want to have the "benefits" of sickness when he has received the simple happiness of health? 4 What God has given cannot be a loss, and what is not of Him has no effects. 5 What, then, would you perceive within the gap? 6 The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. 7 But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. 8 Your willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. 9 He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. 10 And there will be no loss, but only gain.

V. The Alternate to Dreams of Fear

T-28.V.1. What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? 2 Of a splitting <off> and separating <from>? 3 A gap that is perceived between you and your brother, and what is now seen as health? 4 And so the good is seen to be outside; the evil, in. 5 And thus is sickness separating off the self from good, and keeping evil in. 6 God is the Alternate to dreams of fear. 7 Who shares in them can never share in Him. 8 But who withdraws his mind from sharing them <is> sharing Him. 9 There is no other choice. 10 Except you share it, nothing can exist. 11 And you exist because God shared His Will with you, that His creation might create. p600

T-28.V.2. It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. 2 Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. 3 The fear is gone from them because you did not give them your support. 4 Where fear has gone there love must come, because there are but these alternatives. 5 Where one appears, the other disappears. 6 And which you share becomes the only one you have. 7 You have the one that you accept, because it is the only one you wish to have.

T-28.V.3. You share no evil dreams if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is not the dream he made. 2 And so he cannot be a part of yours, from which you both are free. 3 Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the evil dream, and thus releases him. 4 Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you are the dream you share. 5 And fearing it, you will not want to know your own Identity, because you think that It is fearful. 6 And you will deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a something you are not. 7 You will make war upon your Self, which seems to be your enemy; and will attack your brother, as a part of what you hate. 8 There is no compromise. 9 You are your Self or an illusion. 10 What can be between illusion and the truth? 11 A middle ground, where you can be a thing that is not you, must be a dream and cannot be the truth.

T-28.V.4. You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be the place where all your safety lies, and where your Self is safely hidden by what you have made. 2 Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. 3 Here are the sounds it hears; the voices that its ears were made to hear. 4 Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. 5 It cannot see nor hear. 6 It does not know what seeing <is>; what listening is <for.> 7 It is as little able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know. 8 Its eyes are blind; its ears are deaf. 9 It can not think, and so it cannot have effects.

T-28.V.5. What is there God created to be sick? 2 And what that He created not can be? 3 Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. 4 They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sound. 5 Yet are there other sounds and other sights that <can> be seen and heard and understood. 6 For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. p601 7 It is not they that hear and see, but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. 8 Let not the body's ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that you imagined, and let them persuade their maker his imaginings are real.

T-28.V.6. Creation proves reality because it shares the function all creation shares. 2 It is not made of little bits of glass, a piece of wood, a thread or two, perhaps, all put together to attest its truth. 3 Reality does not depend on this. 4 There is no gap that separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. 5 Truth has left no room for them in any place or time. 6 For it fills every place and every time, and makes them wholly indivisible.

T-28.V.7. You who believe there is a little gap between you and your brother, do not see that it is here you are as prisoners in a world perceived to be existing here. 2 The world you see does not exist, because the place where you perceive it is not real. 3 The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. 4 Yet in the gap is nothing. 5 And there are no awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. 6 Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of recognizing love.

VI. The Secret Vows

T-28.VI.1. Who punishes the body is insane. 2 For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. 3 It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. 4 It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. 5 It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. 6 It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. 7 It does not wonder what it is. 8 And so it has no need to be competitive. 9 It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. 10 It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

T-28.VI.2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. 2 It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. 3 It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. p602 4 It is not born and does not die. 5 It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. 6 And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. 7 It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. 8 It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. 9 It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.

T-28.VI.3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. 2 You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. 3 And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. 4 You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. 5 And you despise its acts, but not your own. 6 It sees and acts for <you.> 7 It hears your voice. 8 And it is frail and little by your wish. 9 It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. 10 Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.

T-28.VI.4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. 2 You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. 3 This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. 4 This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. 5 No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. 6 Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. 7 Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

T-28.VI.5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. 2 It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. 3 Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. 4 Whoever says, "There is no gap between my mind and yours" has kept God's promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. 5 And by his healing is his brother healed.

T-28.VI.6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. 2 And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. 3 God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. 4 In his creation did his Father say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. 5 Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me." 6 His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," though in that promise he was born. p603 7 Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. 8 His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. 9 And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.

VII. The Ark of Safety

T-28.VII.1. God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. 2 For there is no lack in him. 3 An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. 4 And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. 5 A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of Either, Who have promised to be One. 6 God's promise is a promise to Himself, and there is no one who could be untrue to what He wills as part of what He is. 7 The promise that there is no gap between Himself and what He is cannot be false. 8 What will can come between what must be One, and in Whose Wholeness there can be no gap?

T-28.VII.2. The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you because it is a part of God Himself. 2 Are you not sick, if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the Call to healing and the Call to heal? 3 Your savior waits for healing, and the world waits with him. 4 Nor are you apart from it. 5 For healing will be one or not at all, its oneness being where the healing is. 6 What could correct for separation but its opposite? 7 There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. 8 You accept it wholly or accept it not. 9 What is unseparated must be joined. 10 And what is joined cannot be separate.

T-28.VII.3. Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you are as one. 2 There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split between the two. 3 A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some promise of relief. 4 Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? 5 The body can be made a home like this, because it lacks foundation in the truth. 6 And yet, because it does, it can be seen as not your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.

T-28.VII.4. With <this> as purpose is the body healed. 2 It is not used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. p604 3 Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. 4 It serves to help the healing of God's Son, and for this purpose it cannot be sick. 5 It will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that it not be sick. 6 All miracles are based upon this choice, and given you the instant it is made. 7 No forms of sickness are immune, because the choice cannot be made in terms of form. 8 The choice of sickness seems to be of form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. 9 And you are sick or well, accordingly.

T-28.VII.5. But never you alone. 2 This world is but the dream that you can be alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. 3 To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. 4 This seems to prove that you must be apart. 5 Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. 6 Yet faithlessness is sickness. 7 It is like the house set upon straw. 8 It seems to be quite solid and substantial in itself. 9 Yet its stability cannot be judged apart from its foundation. 10 If it rests on straw, there is no need to bar the door and lock the windows and make fast the bolts. 11 The wind will topple it, and rain will come and carry it into oblivion.

T-28.VII.6. What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for danger and for fear? 2 Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, not in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? 3 What can be safe that rests upon a shadow? 4 Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a feather's weight?

T-28.VII.7. Your home is built upon your brother's health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. 2 No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. 3 The winds will blow upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with no effect. 4 The world will wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within itself alone. 5 It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise that His Son is safe forever in Himself. 6 What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? 7 From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto his home. 8 And with this holy purpose is it made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father's Will with you. p605

Chapter 29.

THE AWAKENING

I. The Closing of the Gap

T-29.I.1. There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. 2 There is nothing to be feared. 3 There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. 4 The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal love is quite impossible. 5 For it would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. 6 All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. 7 How could you trust Him, then? 8 For He must be deceptive in His Love. 9 Be wary, then; let Him not come too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through which you can escape if there be need for you to flee.

T-29.I.2. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. 2 For love <is> treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. 3 No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. 4 Certain it is he knows not what love means. 5 He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. 6 This is the consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and their hope.

T-29.I.3. The fear of God! 2 The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has not yet gone. 3 The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. 4 You had decided that your brother is your enemy. 5 Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. 6 But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again into an enemy. 7 Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you approached, did he but instantly withdraw. 8 A cautious friendship, and limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty that you had made with him. 9 Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact. 10 And violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed. p606

T-29.I.4. The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two separate bodies. 2 And this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. 3 It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer, and separate till you and he elect to meet again. 4 And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and thereby signify a meeting place to join. 5 But always is it possible for you and him to go your separate ways. 6 Conditional upon the "right" to separate will you and he agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which do protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. 7 The body saves you, for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives to you the time in which to build again your separate self, which you truly believe diminishes as you and your brother meet.

T-29.I.5. The body could not separate your mind from your brother's unless you wanted it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you and him. 2 Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself. 3 And herein lies its power over you. 4 For now you think that it determines when your brother and you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with your brother's mind. 5 And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. 6 It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. 7 And its "inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do, and keep your purpose limited and weak.

T-29.I.6. The body will accommodate to this, if you would have it so. 2 It will allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred in between. 3 And it will take command of when to "love," and when to shrink more safely into fear. 4 It will be sick because you do not know what loving means. 5 And so you must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose not your own.

T-29.I.7. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. 2 But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. 3 For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. 4 Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. 5 You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that love go away, and leave you quietly alone in "peace." p607

T-29.I.8. The body, innocent of goals, is your excuse for variable goals you hold, and force the body to maintain. 2 You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength <or> weakness. 3 Would you know that nothing stands between you and your brother? 4 Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? 5 There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. 6 There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. 7 And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, "God is Love."

T-29.I.9. Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. 2 Nothing more than that, and nothing less. 3 Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? 4 What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? 5 Would you allow the body to say "no" to Heaven's calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? 6 Yet can your self be lost by being found?

II. The Coming of the Guest

T-29.II.1. Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that you are free? 2 Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? 3 Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? 4 Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? 5 Until you realize you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. 6 And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. 7 Yet though you do not see them, they are there. 8 Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in.

T-29.II.2. You have accepted healing's cause, and so it must be you are healed. 2 And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. 3 The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. 4 Nor is it, in itself, a cause. 5 But where its cause is must it be. 6 Now is it caused, though not as yet perceived. 7 And its effects are there, though not yet seen. 8 Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace. p608

T-29.II.3. It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. 2 It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. 3 For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. 4 Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wherever they are not. 5 Why are you not rejoicing? 6 You are free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. 7 No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the effects of love.

T-29.II.4. Your Guest <has> come. 2 You asked Him, and He came. 3 You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. 4 And yet His gifts came with Him. 5 He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. 6 He needs your help in giving them to all who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. 7 They will be healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid.

T-29.II.5. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have received. 2 Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you invited Him to be. 3 There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. 4 And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. 5 For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. 6 You cannot see your Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. 7 And when you look on them, you will believe His Presence must be there. 8 For what you now can do could not be done without the love and grace His Presence holds.

T-29.II.6. Such is the promise of the living God; His Son have life and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. 2 What you have given "life" is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive apart from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. 3 Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. 4 Its basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. 5 Yet what is that except the state confusion really means? 6 Stability to those who are confused is meaningless, and shift and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.

T-29.II.7. The body does not change. 2 It represents the larger dream that change is possible. p609 3 To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. 4 There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. 5 Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. 6 And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. 7 The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. 8 Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body is.

T-29.II.8. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. 2 Its nothingness is guarantee that it can <not> be sick. 3 In your demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. 4 For it asks that God be less than all He really is. 5 What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? 6 For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. 7 He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is lessened by the loss of you. 8 And what is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him.

T-29.II.9. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. 2 And so it seems to be a thing with power in itself. 3 As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. 4 And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. 5 And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not more than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that it is nothing. 6 Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee.

T-29.II.10. As "something" is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. 2 It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. 3 For if He be the sum of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and His completion is its nothingness. 4 Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto death. 5 He lives in God, and it is this that makes him savior unto you, and only this. 6 His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death. 7 For what is yours cannot be more or less than what is his. p610

III. God's Witnesses

T-29.III.1. Condemn your savior not because he thinks he is a body. 2 For beyond his dreams is his reality. 3 But he must learn he is a savior first, before he can remember what he is. 4 And he must save who would be saved. 5 On saving you depends his happiness. 6 For who is savior but the one who gives salvation? 7 Thus he learns it must be his to give. 8 Unless he gives he will not know he has, for giving is the proof of having. 9 Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. 10 For who could give unless he has, and who could lose by giving what must be increased thereby?

T-29.III.2. Think you the Father lost Himself when He created you? 2 Was He made weak because He shared His Love? 3 Was He made incomplete by your perfection? 4 Or are you the proof that He is perfect and complete? 5 Deny Him not His witness in the dream His Son prefers to his reality. 6 He must be savior from the dream he made, that he be free of it. 7 He must see someone else as not a body, one with him without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live.

T-29.III.3. Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God still shines. 2 You cannot wake yourself. 3 Yet you can let yourself be wakened. 4 You can overlook your brother's dreams. 5 So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams. 6 And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. 7 Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. 8 The darkness cannot choose that it remain. 9 The coming of the light means it is gone. 10 In glory will you see your brother then, and understand what really fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart. 11 There, in its place, God's witness has set forth the gentle way of kindness to God's Son. 12 Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. 13 By your gift of freedom is it given unto you.

T-29.III.4. Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend. 2 On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness may be lifted from your mind. 3 When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved. 4 For it was in your face he saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he walks through darkness to the everlasting light. p611

T-29.III.5. How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your savior in the midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. 2 See how eagerly he comes, and steps aside from heavy shadows that have hidden him, and shines on you in gratitude and love. 3 He is himself, but not himself alone. 4 And as his Father lost not part of him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter still because you gave your light to him, to save him from the dark. 5 And now the light in you must be as bright as shines in him. 6 This is the spark that shines within the dream; that you can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will rest on you. 7 And in his glad salvation you are saved.

IV. Dream Roles

T-29.IV.1. Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? 2 They are dreams <because> they are not true. 3 Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream, but only on awaking. 4 Could it be some dreams are kept, and others wakened from? 5 The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to awaken from them. 6 Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. 7 You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. 8 And dreaming goes with only one of these.

T-29.IV.2. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. 2 For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. 3 The fear is seen within, without, or both. 4 Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. 5 But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. 6 Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something else. 7 The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. 8 You would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way.

T-29.IV.3. In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to function unfulfilled as you perceive the function. 2 It can be in you or someone else, but where it is perceived it will be there it is attacked. p612 3 Depression or assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. 4 The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear that is their core. 5 And it is this the miracle perceives, and not the wrappings in which it is bound.

T-29.IV.4. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? 2 And does not this become the "reason" your attack is justified? 3 The dreams you think you like are those in which the functions you have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. 4 It does not matter if they be fulfilled or merely wanted. 5 It is the idea that they exist from which the fears arise. 6 Dreams are not wanted more or less. 7 They are desired or not. 8 And each one represents some function that you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing <should> represent, and <should> achieve for you. 9 If it succeeds you think you like the dream. 10 If it should fail you think the dream is sad. 11 But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering.

T-29.IV.5. How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave the "proper" role to every figure which the dream contains. 2 No one can fail but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but of this. 3 The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear. 4 The coverings may not appear to change, but what they mean has changed because they cover something else. 5 Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for. 6 A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the function of the dream. 7 And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy.

T-29.IV.6. What is your brother for? 2 You do not know, because your function is obscure to you. 3 Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. 4 And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. 5 He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the function of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the function given Him. 6 Because He loves the dreamer, not the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. 7 For at its center is His Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love. p613

V. The Changeless Dwelling Place

T-29.V.1. There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. 2 There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. 3 There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. 4 Where Both abide are They remembered, Both. 5 And where They are is Heaven and is peace.

T-29.V.2. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. 2 For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. 3 The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. 4 The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within.

T-29.V.3. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the Son of God, and would behold him waken and be glad. 2 He is a part of you and you of him, because he is his Father's Son, and not for any purpose you may see in him. 3 Nothing is asked of you but to accept the changeless and eternal that abide in him, for your Identity is there. 4 The peace in you can but be found in him. 5 And every thought of love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening to peace eternal and to endless joy.

T-29.V.4. This sacred Son of God is like yourself; the mirror of his Father's Love for you, the soft reminder of his Father's Love by which he was created and which still abides in him as it abides in you. 2 Be very still and hear God's Voice in him, and let It tell you what his function is. 3 He was created that you might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's completion, which created you.

T-29.V.5. There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. 2 Behold His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as his own. 3 Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your peace. 4 The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet come the happy dreams in which your hands are joined in innocence. 5 These are not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. 6 They hold no sword, for they have left their hold on every vain illusion of the world. 7 And being empty they receive, instead, a brother's hand in which completion lies. p614

T-29.V.6. If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. 2 For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God's Son unto his Father's house. 3 Would you not want to be a friend to him, created by his Father as His home? 4 If God esteems him worthy of Himself, would you attack him with the hands of hate? 5 Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself, and hope to find its peace? 6 Your brother thinks he holds the hand of death. 7 Believe him not. 8 But learn, instead, how blessed are you who can release him, just by offering him yours.

T-29.V.7. A dream is given you in which he is your savior, not your enemy in hate. 2 A dream is given you in which you have forgiven him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you share with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. 3 Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? 4 Because unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for hate, and will continue in death's services. 5 Each form it takes in some way calls for death. 6 And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die.

T-29.V.8. Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from use by Him Who sees a different function for a dream. 2 When dreams are shared they lose the function of attack and separation, even though it was for this that every dream was made. 3 Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is not where changelessness is found. 4 Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. 5 Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world outside yourself. 6 And leading finally beyond all dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life.

VI. Forgiveness and the End of Time

T-29.VI.1. How willing are you to forgive your brother? 2 How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? 3 These questions are the same, in different form. 4 Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. p615 5 This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead of this.

T-29.VI.2. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! 2 You make a bargain that you cannot keep. 3 The Son of Life cannot be killed. 4 He is immortal as his Father. 5 What he is cannot be changed. 6 He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one. 7 What <seems> eternal all will have an end. 8 The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. 9 All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. 10 Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is. 11 God's Son can never change by what men made of him. 12 He will be as he was and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of his birth and death. 13 Forgiveness will not change him. 14 Yet time waits upon forgiveness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use.

T-29.VI.3. Nothing survives its purpose. 2 If it be conceived to die, then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. 3 Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be. 4 Think not that you can set a goal unlike God's purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. 5 You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. 6 But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see another purpose there.

T-29.VI.4. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. 2 You were not born to die. 3 You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. 4 All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one. 5 Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. 6 Its purpose ended, it is gone. 7 And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. 8 Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. 9 There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. 10 Life's function cannot be to die. 11 It must be life's extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.

T-29.VI.5. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body only if you think that it was made to crucify God's Son. 2 For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. p616 3 Let <this> be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. 4 For nothing here but is defined as what you see it for.

T-29.VI.6. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God's Son! 2 How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! 3 And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! 4 Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it <is> a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.

VII. Seek Not Outside Yourself

T-29.VII.1. Seek not outside yourself. 2 For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. 3 Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. 4 Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. 5 There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings. 6 Seek not outside yourself. 7 For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. 8 What if it is not there? 9 Do you prefer that you be right or happy? 10 Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. 11 You will fail. 12 But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.

T-29.VII.2. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. 2 If everything is in him this cannot be so. 3 And therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. 4 This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. 5 And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not.

T-29.VII.3. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. 2 And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks <is> but his death. 3 Its form appears to be outside himself. 4 Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. p617 5 This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled.

T-29.VII.4. Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. 2 For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack <is> death. 3 To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and to have suffered loss. 4 And by this giving up is life renounced. 5 Seek not outside yourself. 6 The search implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are.

T-29.VII.5. Idols must fall <because> they have no life, and what is lifeless is a sign of death. 2 You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? 3 No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. 4 Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole.

T-29.VII.6. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. 2 It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. 3 God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. 4 No idol takes His place. 5 Look not to idols. 6 Do not seek outside yourself.

T-29.VII.7. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. 2 For otherwise, the future will be like the past, and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one, and you see death and disappointment everywhere.

T-29.VII.8. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not know the purpose of the world. 2 You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you decide what it is for. 3 You try to see in it a place of idols found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are between the two. 4 You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been given you. 5 Your idols do what you would have them do, and have the power you ascribe to them. 6 And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own.

T-29.VII.9. Yet where are dreams but in a mind asleep? 2 And can a dream succeed in making real the picture it projects outside itself? p618 3 Save time, my brother; learn what time is for. 4 And speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sick by seeing idols there. 5 Your holy mind is altar unto God, and where He is no idols can abide. 6 The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. 7 It is not the fear of loss of your reality. 8 But you have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect against the light of truth. 9 And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. 10 Salvation thus appears to threaten life and offer death.

T-29.VII.10. It is not so. 2 Salvation seeks to prove there is no death, and only life exists. 3 The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. 4 An idol cannot take the place of God. 5 Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. 6 Seek not outside your Father for your hope. 7 For hope of happiness is <not> despair.

VIII. The Anti-Christ

T-29.VIII.1. What is an idol? 2 Do you think you know? 3 For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. 4 That is the only power that they have. 5 Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, <because> you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. 6 An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. 7 Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. 8 And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. 9 Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.

T-29.VIII.2. Let not their form deceive you. 2 Idols are but substitutes for your reality. 3 In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. 4 They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. 5 No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. 6 And thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. 7 This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace. p619

T-29.VIII.3. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. 2 An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. 3 Yet it is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind that is its source. 4 Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. 5 All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. 6 And fall before His face like a dark veil that seems to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. 7 Yet the light is there. 8 A cloud does not put out the sun. 9 No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the light itself.

T-29.VIII.4. This world of idols <is> a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. 2 A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. 3 Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. 4 Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? 5 What hand could be held up to block God's way? 6 Whose voice could make demand He enter not? 7 The "more-than-everything" is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. 8 Christ's enemy is nowhere. 9 He can take no form in which he ever will be real.

T-29.VIII.5. What is an idol? 2 Nothing! 3 It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and given power that it may be feared. 4 Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what <has> life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. 5 The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. 6 It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. 7 It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it <is.>

T-29.VIII.6. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol "dies." 2 This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. 3 Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. 4 Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to be made the slaves of time. 5 Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. 6 And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain and finally to die. p620

T-29.VIII.7. Where is an idol? 2 Nowhere! 3 Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? 4 A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, <has> no place to be. 5 An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything to be except His Will. 6 Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere.

T-29.VIII.8. What purpose has an idol, then? 2 What is it for? 3 This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. 4 The world believes in idols. 5 No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. 6 Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. 7 It must be more. 8 It does not really matter more of what; more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. 9 But more of something is an idol for. 10 And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. 11 Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes. 12 An idol is a means for getting more. 13 And it is this that is against God's Will.

T-29.VIII.9. God has not many Sons, but only One. 2 Who can have more, and who be given less? 3 In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace. 4 It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols have no purpose here. 5 For more than Heaven can you never have. 6 If Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with Him? 7 God gave you all there is. 8 And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. 9 And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of Himself. 10 No idol can establish you as more than God. 11 But you will never be content with being less. p621

IX. The Forgiving Dream

T-29.IX.1. The slave of idols is a willing slave. 2 For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. 3 What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? 4 Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream.

T-29.IX.2. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. 2 And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son. 3 How can God's Son awaken from the dream? 4 It is a dream of judgment. 5 So must he judge not, and he will waken. 6 For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. 7 Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. 8 Nor can he know the Self he has condemned. 9 Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.

T-29.IX.3. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. 2 Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you <from.> 3 Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? 4 And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. 5 Judgment is an injustice to God's Son, and it <is> justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. 6 God knows of justice, not of penalty. 7 But in the dream of judgment you attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings.

T-29.IX.4. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. 2 For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. 3 Little child, the light is there. 4 You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. 5 Who has need of toys but children? 6 They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. 7 Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. 8 But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own. p622

T-29.IX.5. Nightmares are childish dreams. 2 The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. 3 Yet can a dream attack? 4 Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? 5 This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. 6 And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. 7 Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. 8 He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. 9 And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it.

T-29.IX.6. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. 2 Seek not to retain the toys of children. 3 Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. 4 The dream of judgment is a children's game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. 5 What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. 6 Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. 7 And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. 8 Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. 9 Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand.

T-29.IX.7. The real world still is but a dream. 2 Except the figures have been changed. 3 They are not seen as idols which betray. 4 It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. 5 No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. 6 And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the purpose that it has. 7 Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. 8 And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love.

T-29.IX.8. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. 2 They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. 3 They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. 4 And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. 5 Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. p623 6 And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. 7 And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?

T-29.IX.9. Whenever you feel fear in any form,-and you <are> fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you,-be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. 2 For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. 3 Your self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear <is> judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death.

T-29.IX.10. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. 2 So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to worship idols and to keep attack. 3 Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. 4 And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. 5 He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. 6 And all the while he is remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty. p624

Chapter 30.

THE NEW BEGINNING

Introduction

T-30.in.1. The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. 2 The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. 3 The speed by which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step. 4 Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. 5 And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. 6 They are not new to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. 7 So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. 8 We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need.

I. Rules for Decision

T-30.I.1. Decisions are continuous. 2 You do not always know when you are making them. 3 But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. 4 It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. 5 The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. 6 And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. 7 <Do not fight yourself.> 8 But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. 9 Then try again to have the day you want.

T-30.I.2. (1) The outlook starts with this:

2 Today I will make no decisions by myself.

3 This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. 4 But it must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. 5 For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should react to them. 6 And then another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear. p625

T-30.I.3. This is your major problem now. 2 You still make up your mind, and <then> decide to ask what you should do. 3 And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first. 4 This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. 5 And therefore angry. 6 There are rules by which this will not happen. 7 But it does occur at first, while you are learning how to hear.

T-30.I.4. (2) Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the things you would experience, and say:

2 If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.

3 These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a problem in itself.

T-30.I.5. But there will still be times when you have judged already. 2 Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want an answer that will work. 3 Be certain this has happened if you feel yourself unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given you. 4 This means you have decided by yourself, and can not see the question. 5 Now you need a quick restorative before you ask again.

T-30.I.6. (3) Remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something has occurred that is not part of it. 2 Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and must have set an answer in your terms. 3 Then say:

4 I have no question. 5 I forgot what to decide.

6 This cancels out the terms that you have set, and lets the answer show you what the question must have really been.

T-30.I.7. Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your opposition. 2 For you have already gotten angry. 3 And your fear of being answered in a different way from what your version of the question asks will gain momentum, until you believe the day you want is one in which you get <your> answer to <your> question. 4 And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want. p626 5 This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules that promise you a happy day. 6 Yet this decision still can be undone, by simple methods that you can accept.

T-30.I.8. (4) If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your question go, you can begin to change your mind with this:

2 At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now.

3 This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step.

T-30.I.9. (5) Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with:

2 And so I hope I have been wrong.

3 This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being thrust upon you but is something that you want and that you need, because you do not like the way you feel. 4 This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped.

T-30.I.10. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that you will gain if what you have decided is not so. 2 Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being right. 3 But this much reason have you now attained; you would be better off if you were wrong.

T-30.I.11. (6) This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. 2 You are not coerced, but merely hope to get a thing you want. 3 And you can say in perfect honesty:

4 I want another way to look at this.

5 Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you really want. 6 Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. 7 Thus is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask.

T-30.I.12. (7) This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be helped. 2 It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown: p627

3 Perhaps there is another way to look at this.

4 What can I lose by asking?

5 Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make sense as well. 6 Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is you who will be helped by it.

T-30.I.13. It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. 2 But this takes practice in the rules that will protect you from the ravages of fear. 3 When this has been achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. 4 But meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. 5 Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here.

T-30.I.14. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. 2 This seems to be a real decision in itself. 3 And yet, you <cannot> make decisions by yourself. 4 The only question really is with what you choose to make them. 5 That is really all. 6 The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. 7 You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. 8 For they are made with idols or with God. 9 And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do.

T-30.I.15. Your day is not at random. 2 It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. 3 You always ask advice before you can decide on anything. 4 Let this be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. 5 There is no freedom from what must occur. 6 And if you think there is, you must be wrong.

T-30.I.16. The second rule as well is but a fact. 2 For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. 3 It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. 4 Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. 5 Decisions cause results <because> they are not made in isolation. 6 They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. 7 The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world. 8 Whose kingdom is the world for you today? 9 What kind of day will you decide to have?

T-30.I.17. It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world. p628 2 It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. 3 For they have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. 4 It needs but two. 5 These two are joined before there can be a decision. 6 Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourself. 7 Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. 8 And as you have received, so must you give.

II. Freedom of Will

T-30.II.1. Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight <yourself?> 2 He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. 3 In His Divinity is but your own. 4 And all He knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through Him. 5 God <asks> you do your will. 6 He joins with <you.> 7 He did not set His Kingdom up alone. 8 And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you. 9 No spark of life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. 10 And not one Thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born. 11 God is no enemy to you. 12 He asks no more than that He hear you call Him "Friend."

T-30.II.2. How wonderful it is to do your will! 2 For that is freedom. 3 There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name. 4 Unless you do your will you are not free. 5 And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? 6 God but ensured that you would never lose your will when He gave you His perfect Answer. 7 Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love and learn your will. 8 God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. 9 He joins with you in willing you be free. 10 And to oppose Him is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound.

T-30.II.3. Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. 2 For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear established there. 3 Now hear God speak to you, through Him Who is His Voice and yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate and be a prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life. 4 Your will is boundless; it is not your will that it be bound. p629 5 What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creation's birth. 6 Remember Him Who has created you, and through your will created everything. 7 Not one created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. 8 No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will.

T-30.II.4. What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your blessing to be free? 2 If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. 3 For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. 4 Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. 5 He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. 6 This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free. 7 But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. 8 For it is by your will the world is given freedom. 9 Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share.

T-30.II.5. God turns to you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation is it healed. 2 And no one walks upon the earth but must depend on your decision, that he learn death has no power over him, because he shares your freedom as he shares your will. 3 It <is> your will to heal him, and because you have decided with him, he is healed. 4 And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.

III. Beyond All Idols

T-30.III.1. Idols are quite specific. 2 But your will is universal, being limitless. 3 And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. 4 Idols are limits. 5 They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. 6 It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. 7 This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." 8 And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. 9 Decide for idols and you ask for loss. 10 Decide for truth and everything is yours.

T-30.III.2. It is not form you seek. 2 What form can be a substitute for God the Father's Love? 3 What form can take the place of all the love in the Divinity of God the Son? 4 What idol can make two of what is one? 5 And can the limitless be limited? 6 You do not want an idol. p630 7 It is not your will to have one. 8 It will not bestow on you the gift you seek. 9 When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. 10 So you see your will within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. 11 Yet this could never be your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with small ideas and little things.

T-30.III.3. Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. 2 Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. 3 To seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you believe some form is missing. 4 And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a form you like. 5 This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. 6 Only if you had sinned could this be so. 7 For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. 8 And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself.

T-30.III.4. It never is the idol that you want. 2 But what you think it offers you, you want indeed and have the right to ask for. 3 Nor could it be possible it be denied. 4 Your will to be complete is but God's Will, and this is given you by being His. 5 God knows not form. 6 He cannot answer you in terms that have no meaning. 7 And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap that is not there. 8 It is not this you want. 9 Creation gives no separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of God. 10 What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has?

T-30.III.5. Completion is the <function> of God's Son. 2 He has no need to seek for it at all. 3 Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. 4 For more than whole is meaningless. 5 If there were change in him, if he could be reduced to any form and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God created him. 6 What idol can he need to be himself? 7 For can he give a part of him away? 8 What is not whole cannot make whole. 9 But what is really asked for cannot be denied. 10 Your will <is> granted. 11 Not in any form that would content you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.

T-30.III.6. Nothing that God knows not exists. 2 And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. 3 For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them. 4 And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. p631 5 Thoughts are not born and cannot die. 6 They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a separate life apart from his. 7 The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind which thought of you. 8 And so there are no separate parts in what exists within God's Mind. 9 It is forever One, eternally united and at peace.

T-30.III.7. Thoughts seem to come and go. 2 Yet all this means is that you are sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. 3 An unremembered thought is born again to you when it returns to your awareness. 4 Yet it did not die when you forgot it. 5 It was always there, but you were unaware of it. 6 The Thought God holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. 7 It will always be exactly as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same when you remember. 8 And it is the same within the interval when you forgot.

T-30.III.8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there.

T-30.III.10. Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. 2 Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was. 3 Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace. 4 Here is your one reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. 5 In perfect sureness of its changelessness and of its rest in its eternal home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of its Creator Whom it knows, as its Creator knows that it is there. p633

T-30.III.11. Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol <or> the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.

IV. The Truth behind Illusions

T-30.IV.1. You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up. 2 You always fight illusions. 3 For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. 4 The truth could never be attacked. 5 And this you knew when you made idols. 6 They were made that this might be forgotten. 7 You attack but false ideas, and never truthful ones. 8 All idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. 9 And you attack them for the things you think they represent. 10 What lies beyond them cannot be attacked.

T-30.IV.2. The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys. 2 A child is frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly, or when a soft and silent woolly bear begins to squeak as he takes hold of it. 3 The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his "control" of what surrounds him. 4 And he is afraid, because he thought the rules protected him. 5 Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did not deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. 6 He was mistaken. 7 He misunderstood what made him safe, and thought that it had left.

T-30.IV.3. The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. 2 And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. 3 It never was the thing you thought. p633 4 It must appear to break your rules for safety, since the rules were wrong. 5 But <you> are not endangered. 6 You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to him. 7 Yet while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. 8 So there still are rules that they can seem to break and frighten him. 9 Yet <is> he at the mercy of his toys? 10 And <can> they represent a threat to him?

T-30.IV.4. Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. 2 It is His laws that guarantee your safety. 3 All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws. 4 They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. 5 But then they fall and cannot rise again. 6 They are but toys, my child, so do not grieve for them. 7 Their dancing never brought you joy. 8 But neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. 9 They must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely looked upon as children's toys without a single meaning of their own. 10 See one in them and you will see them all. 11 See none in them and they will touch you not.

T-30.IV.5. Appearances deceive <because> they are appearances and not reality. 2 Dwell not on them in any form. 3 They but obscure reality, and they bring fear <because> they hide the truth. 4 Do not attack what you have made to let you be deceived, for thus you prove that you have been deceived. 5 Attack has power to make illusions real. 6 Yet what it makes is nothing. 7 Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no real effects at all? 8 What could it be but an illusion, making things appear like to itself? 9 Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. 10 Give them not your worship, for they are not there. 11 Yet this is equally forgotten in attack. 12 God's Son needs no defense against his dreams. 13 His idols do not threaten him at all. 14 His one mistake is that he thinks them real. 15 What can the power of illusions do?

T-30.IV.6. Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. 2 And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception. 3 You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand. 4 But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever you believe an idol gives. 5 For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. 6 And thus <is> he free. p634

T-30.IV.7. Salvation is a paradox indeed! 2 What could it be except a happy dream? 3 It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. 4 You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. 5 And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.

T-30.IV.8. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. 2 For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made. 3 No more than this is asked. 4 Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. 5 It asks for nothing in reality. 6 And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. 7 Such is the only rule for happy dreams. 8 The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. 9 Dreams are for nothing. 10 And the Son of God can have no need of them. 11 They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. 12 He is delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. 13 What could God's plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself?

V. The Only Purpose

T-30.V.1. The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. 2 Fear is not its goal, for the escape from guilt becomes its aim. 3 The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the place of idols, which are sought no longer, for their "gifts" are not held dear. 4 No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. 5 Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. 6 And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and <then> understood.

T-30.V.2. Here, it is thought that understanding is acquired by attack. 2 There, it is clear that by attack is understanding lost. 3 The folly of pursuing guilt as goal is fully recognized. 4 And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the sole cause of pain in any form. 5 No one is tempted by its vain appeal, for suffering and death have been perceived as things not wanted and not striven for. 6 The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood. p635 7 The world becomes a place of hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of happiness can be fulfilled. 8 And no one stands outside this hope, because the world has been united in belief the purpose of the world is one which all must share, if hope be more than just a dream.

T-30.V.3. Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. 2 Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself. 3 He has no wish for anything but this. 4 And fear has dropped away, because he is united in his purpose with himself. 5 There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and constant he can barely stay and wait a little longer, with his feet still touching earth. 6 Yet is he glad to wait till every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go with him. 7 For thus is he made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left behind.

T-30.V.4. The final step is God's, because it is but God Who could create a perfect Son and share His Fatherhood with him. 2 No one outside of Heaven knows how this can be, for understanding this is Heaven itself. 3 Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. 4 But fear is gone because its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. 5 And so is Heaven's Son prepared to be himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him.

T-30.V.5. The real world still falls short of this, for this is God's Own purpose; only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly fulfilled. 2 The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived but wanted not. 3 How willingly the mind can let them go when it has understood that idols are nothing and nowhere, and are purposeless. 4 For only then can guilt and sin be seen without a purpose, and as meaningless.

T-30.V.6. Thus is the real world's purpose gently brought into awareness, to replace the goal of sin and guilt. 2 And all that stood between your image of yourself and what you are, forgiveness washes joyfully away. 3 Yet God need not create His Son again, that what is his be given back to him. 4 The gap between your brother and yourself was never there. 5 And what the Son of God knew in creation he must know again.

T-30.V.7. When brothers join in purpose in the world of fear, they stand already at the edge of the real world. 2 Perhaps they still look back, and think they see an idol that they want. 3 Yet has their path been surely set away from idols toward reality. p636 4 For when they joined their hands it was Christ's hand they took, and they will look on Him Whose hand they hold. 5 The face of Christ is looked upon before the Father is remembered. 6 For He must be unremembered till His Son has reached beyond forgiveness to the Love of God. 7 Yet is the Love of Christ accepted first. 8 And then will come the knowledge They are One.

T-30.V.8. How light and easy is the step across the narrow boundaries of the world of fear when you have recognized Whose hand you hold! 2 Within your hand is everything you need to walk with perfect confidence away from fear forever, and to go straight on, and quickly reach the gate of Heaven itself. 3 For He Whose hand you hold was waiting but for you to join Him. 4 Now that you have come, would He delay in showing you the way that He must walk with you? 5 His blessing lies on you as surely as His Father's Love rests upon Him. 6 His gratitude to you is past your understanding, for you have enabled Him to rise from chains and go with you, together, to His Father's house.

T-30.V.9. An ancient hate is passing from the world. 2 And with it goes all hatred and all fear. 3 Look back no longer, for what lies ahead is all you ever wanted in your heart. 4 Give up the world! 5 But not to sacrifice. 6 You never wanted it. 7 What happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain? 8 What moment of content has not been bought at fearful price in coins of suffering? 9 Joy has no cost. 10 It is your sacred right, and what you pay for is not happiness. 11 Be speeded on your way by honesty, and let not your experiences here deceive in retrospect. 12 They were not free from bitter cost and joyless consequence.

T-30.V.10. Do not look back except in honesty. 2 And when an idol tempts you, think of this: