Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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41 The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He
will correct, but this makes no one fearful. You are indeed afraid to
look within and see the sin you think is there. This you would not be
fearful to admit. Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite
appropriate and smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel
ashamed. It doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not
shake because of this. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to
your desire that it be there to see. This merely seems to be the
source of fear.
42 Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule is tempered, and its
unknown “enemy,” Whom it cannot even see, it fears. Loudly the ego tells
you not to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and
God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not look. Yet
this is not the ego’s hidden fear, nor yours who serve it. Loudly indeed
the ego claims it is—too loudly and too often. For underneath this
constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not certain it is
so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear
and one which makes the ego tremble.
43 What if you looked within and saw no sin? This “fearful” question
is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the
ego’s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend
it is your friend. Those who have joined their brothers have detached
themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy
relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in
truth. And your belief in sin has been already shaken, nor are you
now entirely unwilling to look within and see it not.
44 Your liberation still is only partial—still limited and incomplete,
yet born within you. Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on
much of your insanity and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving
inward, past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you
now, the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit’s purpose was accepted by
the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you. And yet
this part with which you now identify is not afraid to look upon itself.
It knows no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the
Holy Spirit’s purpose as its own?
45 This part has seen your brother and recognized him perfectly since
time began. And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free
again, as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of freedom, the
acceptance of release to come to you. And now you recognize that it was
not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and so there must
be something else. Think not that this is madness. For this your
reason tells you, and it follows perfectly from what you have already
learned.
46 There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is
the reasoning of the sane. You have perceived the ego’s madness and
not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. At times
it still deceives you. Yet in your saner moments, its ranting strikes no
terror in your hearts. For you have realized that all the gifts it would
withdraw from you in rage at your “presumptuous” wish to look within,
you do not want. A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and
catch your eye. Yet you would not “sell” Heaven to have them.
47 And now the ego is afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the other
part hears as the sweetest music—the song it longed to hear since first
the ego came into your minds. The ego’s weakness is its strength. The
song of freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to it
hope of peace. For it remembers Heaven, and now it sees that Heaven
has come to earth at last, from which the ego’s rule has kept it out so
long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on
earth. And earth can hold no longer what has been given Heaven as its
own.
48 Look gently on each other and remember the ego’s weakness is revealed
in both your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and
looks upon the ego unafraid. Little children, innocent of sin, follow in
gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear’s insane
insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What
matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made
meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it
happily and question not what must be so.