92 It
is in your power in
time to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt
does stand between them. Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit's function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate
your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I
gave to you. Release
me as I will
your release. The time of Christ we celebrate
together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
93 The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant, no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I will to offer
you? And to see me is to see me in everyone and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself, you ask of me. Learn
now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation, you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer
you.
94 We who are one
cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept
our relationship as real, guilt will hold
no attraction for you. For in our union, you will accept
all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that
you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by
your acceptance of it, you have
offered it to everyone. It
is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be
now.
95 It is possible to do this all at once because there is but
one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but
one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is
always the same idea. What is not love is
always fear and nothing else. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. Yet it
is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the
principle which governs all of them. When you are willing to regard them not as separate but as different manifestations of the
same idea, and one you do not
want, they go together. The idea is simply this—you believe that it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you have, and the decision which you believe that you must make.
96 You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets
nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation
apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love
without sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon—sacrifice is
attack, not love. If you would accept but this
one idea, your fear of love would vanish. Guilt
cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there is sacrifice, as you are convinced, someone must pay and someone must get. And the only question which remains to be decided is
how much is the price for getting
what.
97 As host to the ego, you believe that you can give
all your guilt away
whatever you think and purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be
yours. While it is obvious that the ego
does demand payment, it never seems to be demanding it of
you. For you are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when this recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by
any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight.
98 Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all—that love demands sacrifice and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the
price of love, which must be paid
by fear. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, but the other to be destroyed. For you see love as
destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you are both destroyer and destroyed in part, but with the idea of being able to be neither completely. And this you think saves you from God, Whose total love would completely destroy you.
99 You think that everyone
outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that
only you demand sacrifice and
only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you
cannot accept it where it is. But the
real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, you thought it safer to project Him outward and
away from you and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed the ego's treachery, inviting it to take His place to
protect you from Him. And you do not recognize that it is what
you invited in that would destroy you and
does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but
seems to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.
100 You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. [Nor can you be partial
host to it.] You will have to choose between
total freedom and
total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision which must be made. And yet it is the recognition of the decision
just as it is that makes the decision so easy! Salvation is simple, being of God and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it
outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer—the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.
