Guiltlessness and Invulnerability

Chapter 13 – 2 – Guiltlessness and Invulnerability

Earlier, I said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers,
whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their
pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wants only this, for sharing the
Father’s Love for his Son, he seeks to remove all guilt from his mind that he
may remember his Father in peace. Peace and guilt are antithetical, and the
Father can be remembered only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and
to accept one is to deny the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it
is the denial of the blamelessness of God’s Son.
 
In the strange world that you have made the Son of God has sinned. How
could you see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution
rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. For
the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can
never be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and God’s Son is without guilt.
 
As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be
tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You are not
guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have “sinned” in the past, but there is
no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but
when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past
behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is
guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And
the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.
 
The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the
journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is
not cruel, and his Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and
that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy
Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where
you must be because he is with you. He has already undone everything
unworthy of the Son of God, for such was his mission, given him by God.
 
And what God gives has always been.
 
You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always
sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to
escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not
denied him. Being in him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter
of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and
the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God’s Mind. God’s
Son will always be as he was created. Deny your world and judge him not,
for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him
forever.
 
When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there
is no guilt in God’s Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you
understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation
of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn
only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God’s Son.
 
You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect
blamelessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness
and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love
of his Father.
 
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize
that there is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who
sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father for you. There is no road to
travel on, and no time to travel through. For God waits not for his Son in
time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been.
 
Let the holiness of God’s Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens
your mind, and by accepting his purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours.
 
You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past
only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what
you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from
past to future. No one who believes this can understand what “always”
means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity.
 
You are immortal because you are eternal, and “always” must be now.
Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the
ego’s continuity. For if what has been will be punished, the ego’s continuity
is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God’s, not the ego’s.
And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while
immortality is constant.
 
Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality is, for by accepting
your guiltlessness you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is
needless and will not be. The future, in time, is always associated with
expiation, and only guilt could induce a sense of a need for expiation.
 
Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God as yours is therefore God’s
way of reminding you of his Son, and what he is in truth. For God has never
condemned his Son, and being guiltless he is eternal.
 
You cannot dispel guilt by making it real, and then atoning for it. This is the
ego’s plan, which it offers instead of dispelling it. The ego believes in
atonement through attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that
attack is salvation. And you who cherish guilt must also believe it, for how
else but by identifying with the ego could you hold dear what you do not
want?
 
The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty, and this must
increase the guilt, for guilt is the result of attack. In the ego’s teaching, then,
there is no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real
there is no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the
calm recognition that it has never been. As he looks upon the guiltless Son
of God, he knows that this is true. And being true for you, you cannot attack
yourself, for without guilt attack is impossible. You, then, are saved because
God’s Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable.