God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.
1. Today we will continue with the theme of happiness.
²This is a key idea for understanding what salvation really means.
³You still believe that salvation demands suffering as penance for your “sins.”
⁴But it does not.
⁵Yet that is what you will surely think as long as you believe that sin is real and that the Son of God can sin.
2. If sin is real, punishment is both just and unavoidable.
²Therefore, salvation can only be attained through suffering.
³If sin is real, then happiness must be an illusion, for both cannot be true.
⁴Sinners deserve only death and pain; and this is what they seek.
⁵For they know this is what awaits them, what will pursue them, and what will find them in the end.
⁶It will come for them somewhere, sometime, in some way that will settle the debt they owe to God.
⁷They want to escape Him out of fear.
⁸But He will hunt them down, and they cannot escape.
3. If sin is real, salvation must be pain. I
²Pain is the cost of sin, and if sin is real then suffering is inevitable.
³Salvation must be feared, for it will kill—but slowly—taking everything before granting its victims the pleasant mercy of death, when they are little more than bones and dust.
⁴Its wrath is vast and ruthless, but entirely just.
4. Who would seek such savage punishment?
²Who would not run from salvation and try in every way to silence the Voice that offers it?
³Why would anyone try to listen and accept its gift?
⁴If sin is real, then what that Voice offers is a cruel death, in keeping with the twisted wishes in which sin was born.
⁵If sin is real, salvation has become your fiercest enemy—God’s curse upon you, for having crucified His Son.
5. Today you must practice with all your heart.
²These exercises are teaching you that sin is not real, and that all the things you think must come from sin will never happen, for they have no cause.
³Accept the Atonement with an open mind—one that does not hold to the persistent belief that you have turned the Son of God into a devil. II
6. Sin does not exist. III
²Today we will practice this thought as often as possible, for it is the foundation of today’s idea.
³God’s Will for you is perfect happiness, because sin does not exist and suffering has no cause.
⁴Joy is wholly fitting; pain is only a sign that you have misunderstood yourself.
7. Do not be afraid of God’s Will.
²Instead, go toward it with full confidence, knowing it will free you from all the consequences that sin has brought about in your feverish imagination.
³Say:
⁴God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.[iv]
⁵Sin does not exist, and it has no effects.
⁶This is how your practice sessions should begin.
⁷Then, once again, try to find the joy these thoughts will bring into your mind.
⁸Gladly give five minutes to lifting off the heavy burden you laid upon yourself with the mad belief that sin is real.
8. Escape from madness today.
²You are already on the path that leads to freedom, and now today’s idea gives you wings to quicken your advance, and hope to go still faster toward the goal of peace that waits for you.
³Sin does not exist.
⁴Remember this today, and tell yourself as often as you can:
⁵God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.
⁶This is the truth, because sin does not exist.
I If the sin (of my brother) is real, then salvation (mine) must be his pain.
This is the world’s way of thinking; but if history has proven anything, it is that this way does not work. It resolves nothing: the fear of punishment does not dissuade the guilty from doing evil; on the contrary, it fuels them. The most punitive societies are also those that harbor the greatest number of criminals.
It is obvious that we must think differently.
II This is an extremely important point in the ontology of this Course and one that must be well understood.
The “moral” reasoning of the world’s thought system runs more or less as follows: your sins deserve punishment in the form of suffering so that you may learn not to sin again; and sinning means doing wrong deliberately—voluntarily breaking the laws of the world.
Those who sin believe that the world is real, that their wrongful actions are real, and they also hold an ingrained sense of “justice,” which leads them to believe that their wrongdoings deserve a just punishment that will cause them real suffering.
Everyone believes and accepts—even the vast majority of students of this Course—that those who do evil suffer and that those who do good are happy, because deep down, everyone assumes there is a kind of retributive system that punishes the wicked and rewards the good. And isn’t that, after all, what our life experience constantly seems to confirm? Do we not feel good when we act rightly and bad when we act wrongly?
The moral principle of good and evil is so deeply rooted in our consciousness that it is almost impossible to see that, in truth, morality is the foundational structure of the ego—its nourishment. Recall how Genesis describes the birth of the ego and of guilt after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This Course, very gently and tenderly, urges you—vehemently—to discard the idea of evil, and, in a far subtler way, it also encourages you to forgive the idea of good as something relative to the world.
What do you think it means when it says that the world is an illusion? What could you possibly find in an illusory world but illusions of evil and illusions of good?
You will not find anything real in this world, because this world is not real. Reflect deeply and recognize that this Course is not moral. How could it be, if God is not? Do you see it now?
Morality is a dualistic code that presupposes the existence of good and also of its opposite—its absence: evil.
You probably remember that absences do not exist. How could they? Only a confused mind could take them into account.
This Course constantly urges you to forgive—to forgive everything—because everything you will let pass was never really there: neither evil nor good.
Your best experience in this world is to witness the miracles that your healed mind will perceive, but understand that even those miracles you see will be illusions—the only real component in them is the Love that inspires them.
Remember the third principle of miracles. Only from this perspective will you understand expressions such as “sin is not real” or “sin does not exist.”You probably make a great effort to be a good person—but wake up! You are not a person! You are the Son of God!
When this Course tells you to forgive, it is not so that you may become a better person; it tells you this because there is nothing to forgive. Sin, offense, harm, resentment, and pain are not real. That is why you must forgive everything. It has nothing to do with good or evil—it has to do with the unreality of evil.
This is not a moral Course, but neither is it amoral. This is a Course on Truth, and Truth is Goodness—Reality—the infinite Love of God, your unlimited Self, the only thing that exists.
Yet as long as you believe yourself to be in this world, all that will be, for you, little more than beautiful words. That is why what you need now is to train your personal mind with patience and perseverance, so that little by little it may be purified of the fearful beliefs that now enslave it.
III 1 John 3:5 “You know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.”
IV Today’s idea is very simple, very beautiful, and very obvious—but notice that it is supported by a basic premise: sin is not real, and therefore it has no consequences. And perhaps you ask again: how, then, is it possible that when I act wrongly, I feel bad, and when I act rightly, I feel good?
Again, none of that is real. Everything you interpret as something happening in your mind or your emotional system is a projection of beliefs arising in the mind of the Son of God.
The first belief—derived from the idea of separation—is that you are a person, a separate being. To this belief—false, like all beliefs, and mother of illusions—are added countless others that, although not truly related, appear to be: the moral beliefs.
Now, the belief in being a person becomes the belief in being a good or bad person, a happy or suffering one, and that is why you always feel as the mind believes it ought to feel. It is the moral principles that feed the ego principle, which cause what you—as a now-separated person—interpret as your emotions. All this is nothing but a fable of the mind. None of it is true. You are the holy Son of God.
The ego will always recoil in horror at the notion of being an effect and not a cause. But trust—you are not an ego, nor a person. You are the holy Son of God, and the sins you believe to be real—yours or anyone else’s—are not real.
To accept this, the separated mind requires the Grace of faith. The real Self that you are, however, knows nothing of such intrigue.
Yet as a separated mind, you will need all your good will and constant practice to heal your nightmare and turn it into a happy dream—a fiction that serves as the antechamber to your true awakening.
Rejoice, then, for you are walking in the right direction.