If I am bound, my Father is not free.
1. If I accept that I am imprisoned within a body, in a world where all things that seem to live appear to die, then my Father is imprisoned with me.
²And this is what I believe when I claim I must obey the laws the world upholds, and that the weaknesses and the sins I perceive are real and unavoidable.
³If I am bound in any way, it is because I do not know my Father or my Self.
⁴And that means I have lost all sense of reality.I
⁵For Truth is free, and what is bound is not a part of it.
2. Father,
²I ask only for the truth.
³I have held many foolish thoughts about myself and my creation,
and I have brought into my mind a dream of fear.
⁴Today I do not wish to dream.
⁵I choose to walk the path that leads to You instead of madness and fear.
⁶For Truth is safe,
and only Love is sure.
I If I am real, how can I feel like a victim? Can reality be a victim of anything? Am I truly a prisoner of the world’s laws, or is that merely another of my absurd beliefs?
When I feel victimized, who is really victimizing me? Is there someone or something outside myself that affects my reality, or are my own interpretations attacking the image I have made of myself? What is in danger is never my real being, but the illusory idea I have of myself.It is crucial to distinguish between what is real and what I believe to be real. They are opposites, not equivalents. My reality—and Reality with a capital “R”—is one, unchanging, limitless, eternal. The “person” I invent in my fear stories has nothing to do with that.
The knowledge of what is real is beyond time, for in knowledge time does not exist. Here, within the dream, I can only believe in it. And yet that is one of the few beliefs that fully align with truth: that I am spirit, that I am the holy Son of God, free and complete.
That is why I must not be afraid. I must not allow illusion to rob me of happiness. Everything that seems to bind or threaten me is false. Protecting my peace and wholeness is as simple as remembering that I am free in God. And when pain, anguish, or hopelessness arise, my sure refuge will always be to call upon my Father and trust in Him. In the moments of deepest turmoil, when there is nothing left to hold on to, the answer is always the same: trust, trust, and trust again.
The lesson expresses it with perfect clarity: “If I am bound, my Father is not free.” What binds me is nothing but my belief in a personal self subject to time, to the body, to sickness, and to death. And by believing myself imprisoned, I imagine that God is imprisoned with me. That is the root of my fear.
But truth is free. If I feel captive, it is because I have lost sight of reality. I have dreamed absurd thoughts about myself and condemned myself to a world of fear. Today I want to take another path: the path to God, which is the path of truth, of love, and of the safety that nothing and no one can threaten.
That is why Jesus invites us to recognize with humility where we truly are: at the beginning of the journey. We still believe in the world’s laws, we still fear to let them go, we still doubt that there could be nothing beyond that door we call “the world.” And yet each step toward forgiveness is a step toward freedom. Salvation is not achieved by our own means, for the personal self can never be saved. Salvation comes from remembering that this self was never real.
Father, teach me not to feel like a victim.
Remind me that Your Son cannot be bound, for You are freedom itself.
In my moments of fear, may I turn to You and trust in Your peace.
Amen.