Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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Take pity on yourselves, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined
have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. No two can look
on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place and time.
Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed
by each to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different
error, and one the other cannot understand. Brothers, it is the same,
made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the same way.
2 The holiness of your relationship forgives you both, undoing the
effects of what you both believed and saw. And with their going is the
need for sin gone with them. Who has need for sin? Only the lonely and
alone who see their brothers different from themselves. It is this
difference, seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but
seen, seem justified. And all this would be real if sin were so. For an
unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the
other has what he has not. They come together, each to complete himself
and rob the other. They stay until they think there’s nothing left to
steal and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers
unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof
that shelters neither—in the same room and yet a world apart.
3 A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has
looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would
extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. He sees no
difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body.
Therefore, he looks on nothing he would take. He denies not his own
reality, because it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but
close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has Heaven’s
holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven be?
4 Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is belief in
differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to
sameness. [And here is sight of differences transformed to vision.]
And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. It
must extend, as you extended when you joined. It must reach out beyond
itself, as you reached out beyond the body to let yourselves be
joined. And now the sameness which you saw extends and finally removes
all sense of differences so that the sameness that lies beneath them all
becomes apparent. Here is the golden circle where you recognize the Son
of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can never end.