The Time of Rebirth

Chapter 15 – 10. The Time of Rebirth

It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the
Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them.
 
Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy
Spirit’s function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is
the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know
not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your
birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to
you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we
celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
 
The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no
guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored
to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer
you? And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift
you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every
sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any
kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation
you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you.
 
We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our
relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union
you will accept all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I
was born to give. Give it to me, that you may have it. The time of Christ is
the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your
acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.
 
It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make
the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there
is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one
mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes
many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and
nothing else.
 
It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it
burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite
different from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as
you would retain the principle that governs all of them. When you are
willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the
same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. The idea is simply
this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This
is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must
make. You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that
sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that
salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of
sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without
sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love.
 
If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. Guilt
cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there is
sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. And the only question
that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.
 
As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away
whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. And the payment does not
seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it
never seems to be demanding it of you. You are unwilling to recognize that
the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are
its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition
would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will
not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight.
 
Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides
behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore inseparable
from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid
by fear.
 
How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you
believe His Love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice.
And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is
judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, perhaps, but the
other to be destroyed. For you see love as destructive, and your only
question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this
question in your special relationships, in which you seem to be both
destroyer and destroyed in part, but able to be neither completely. And this
you think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy
you.
 
You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you
do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. Yet the
demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it
where it is. The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you
have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total
sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you,
and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it
to take His place to protect you from Him. And you do not recognize that it
is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total
sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is
an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the
sacrifice complete.
 
You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no
bargains and would leave you nothing. You must choose between total
freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have
tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one
decision you must make. And yet it is the recognition of the decision, just
as it is, that makes the decision so easy. Salvation is simple, being of God,
and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and
see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer; the
demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.