The ego is the part of the mind that believes in division. ²How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? …⁵If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. ⁶Whenever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. ⁷The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. …¹⁰Listening to the ego’s voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you. ¹¹Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected.
⁸Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is unnatural. ⁹Unnatural thinking will always be attended with guilt, because it is the belief in sin. ¹⁰The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love, but as a positive act of assault. ¹¹This is necessary to the ego’s survival because, as soon as you regard sin as a lack, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. ¹²And you will succeed. ¹³The ego regards this as doom, but you must learn to regard it as freedom.
The guiltless mind cannot suffer. ²Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. ³The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything. ⁴I said before that illness is a form of magic. ⁵It might be better to say that it is a form of magical solution. ⁶The ego believes that by punishing itself it will mitigate the punishment of God. (A Course in Miracles, T-5.V.3:1-2,5-7,10-11;4:8-13;5:1-6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)
Love does not condemn. God’s Son is Love’s Creation. We are Love and nothing else. Our Real thoughts must be thoughts of Love. It is impossible that thoughts of Love could be cause for guilt. Thoughts of Love are extensions of Love.
If we feel guilty, we are thinking unnaturally. Thoughts of separation cannot be true but they do repeat the error of belief in what could never be true. Our engagement with the ego thought system engenders guilt. But the ego thought system is only a belief that separation has occurred, though this could never be true.
The antidote to fear and guilt is to undo the mistaken beliefs that are their cause. For this undoing we need Help from beyond the ego. We can use awareness of guilt feelings and thoughts as a reminder to ask the Holy Spirit to heal our fear-based thoughts. This practice interrupts the ego’s guilty scripts and turns our thoughts in the direction of healing.
Today we choose to let our fear-based thoughts be healed, for we want the peace of God.
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