Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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26 Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that
will result in different outcomes, there is first one thing that must be
overlearned. It must become a habit of response so typical of everything
you do that it becomes your first response to all temptation and to
every situation that occurs. Learn this and learn it well, for it is
here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot
realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your
own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact
that you believe them to be yours and therefore meriting a “just”
attack.
27 Why should his sins be sins if you did not believe they could not
be forgiven in you? Why are they real in him if you did not believe that
they are your reality? And why do you attack them everywhere, except you
hate yourself? Are you a sin? You answer “yes” whenever you attack,
for by attack do you assert that you are guilty and must give as you
deserve. And what can you deserve but what you are? If you did not
believe that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give
attack to anyone at all. Why should you? What would be the gain to you?
What could the outcome be that you would want? And how could murder
bring you benefit?
28 Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not
seen as purposes but actions. Bodies act, and minds do not. And
therefore must the body be at fault for what it does. It is not seen to
be a passive thing, obeying your commands and doing nothing of itself at
all. If you are sin you are a body, for the mind acts not. And purpose
must be in the body, not the mind. The body must act on its own and
motivate itself. If you are sin, you lock the mind within the body, and
you give its purpose to its prison-house, which acts instead of it. A
jailer does not follow orders, but enforces orders on the prisoner.
29 Yet is the body prisoner and not the mind. The body thinks no
thoughts. It has no power to learn, to pardon, nor enslave. It gives no
orders that the mind need serve nor sets conditions that it must obey.
It holds in prison but the willing mind that would abide in it. It
sickens at the bidding of the mind that would become its prisoner. And
it grows old and dies because that mind is sick within itself. Learning
is all that causes change. And so the body, where no learning can occur,
could never change unless the mind preferred the body change in its
appearances to suit the purpose given by the mind. For it can learn,
and there is all change made.
30 The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose—that the body be
the source of sin and keep it in the prison-house it chose and guard and
hold itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and
evil, sickness and attack, of pain and age, of grief and suffering. Here
are the thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules and orders
that the world be like itself—a place where nothing can find mercy or
survive the ravages of fear except in murder and in death. For here are
you made sin, and sin cannot abide the joyous and the free, for they are
enemies which sin must kill. In death is sin preserved, and those who
think that they are sin must die for what they think they are.
31 Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it has
been given you to change what you believe. The body will but follow.
It can never lead you where you would not be. It does not guard your
sleep nor interfere with your awakening. Release your body from
imprisonment, and you will see no one as prisoner to what you have
escaped. You will not want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies nor keep
in chains to the illusion of a changing love the ones you think are
friends.
32 The innocent release in gratitude for their release. And what they
see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. Open your mind to
change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother
or yourself. For God has said there is no sacrifice that can be
asked; there is no sacrifice that can be made.