Release from Guilt

Chapter 13 – 11. Release from Guilt

You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain
where it is not. The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real
source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is
insane. Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of
guilt, from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or
you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less
fearful. You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of “sources,”
provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real
relationship at all.
 
Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No
real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its
purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the
person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this
strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot
be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that
which makes them pure. If you pre-empt for your own ends what you
should have given him, he cannot use it for your release. No one who would
unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that
strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.
 
In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or
share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find
satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real.
 
You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is
inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because
they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and
let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving
is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves,
beyond their own control.
 
When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in
the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird
associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand
between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at
all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to “solve” the past, and
still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use
their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted not
salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present,
and hope to find salvation now?
 
Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to
the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will
be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to
the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have
yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you
will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while
you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.
 
As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone,
whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find
Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is
a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has
no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If guilt were real,
 
Atonement would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions,
not to establish them as real and then forgive them.
 
The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and
show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what he has saved you from.
 
What he has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no
reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have him do, and has
always done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches
healing, but he also knows of creation. He would have you see and teach as
he does, and through him. Yet what he knows you do not know, though it is
yours.
 
Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it
is not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark
world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he
has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much
his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his
Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. The moment
that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without
reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
 
You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father’s
Love. And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember
how much you love him. Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within you
is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the
lovely truth in you. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision,
and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. The
altar to your Father is as pure as he who raised it to himself. Nothing can
keep from you what Christ would have you see. His will is like his Father’s,
and he offers mercy to every child of God, as he would have you do.
 
Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look
within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God
himself has always loved his Son. And as his Son loves him. There is no
fear in love, for love is guiltless. You who have always loved your Father
can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. You
cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without reason because it
is not in the Mind of God, where you are. And this is reason, which the
Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would remove only illusions. All else
he would have you see. And in Christ’s vision he would show you the
perfect purity that is forever within God’s Son.
 
You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you
love them all and equally. Love is not special. If you single out part of the
Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and
making them unreal. You can love only as God loves. Seek not to love
unlike him, for there is no love apart from his. Until you recognize that this
is true, you will have no idea what love is like. No one who condemns a
brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. If he is guiltless
and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon
himself. To him I say:
 
Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. In quiet look
upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever
touched him.
 
No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence
in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly
loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together and love him.
 
For in love of him is your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and
gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank
You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created
guiltless forever.
 
Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The
difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this I
treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worth
that God has placed upon you. I love all that he created, and all my faith and
my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give
my Father. My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you
will hear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many
gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that
is of God.
 
Praise be to you who make the Father one with his own Son. Alone we are
all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us
alone can even think of it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom
guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never more be what it
was. Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a
hymn of praise unto your Father. See only praise of him in what he has
created, for he will never cease his praise of you. United in this praise we
stand before the gates of Heaven where we will surely enter in our
sinlessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lack faith in you and love him
perfectly?