Ken’s 10 minute clip on our”deep” sense of guilt:

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On Guilt, Part Two:

(3) Why do I have to look at my guilt?

Ch.11, p.202 par.1-2… Escaping ego guilt by looking at it:

The “Dynamics” of the Ego…

No one can escape from illusions (of sin and guilt in the mind) unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions (by projecting the blame for our lack of peace on our brothers), for they cannot be dangerous (because illusions are not real). We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this (wrong minded choice for the ego) to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.

² What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge (love and truth)? And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of fear, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does not exist. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. If reality is recognized by its extension, what leads to nothing could not be real. Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear (and guilt), for it cannot be seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.

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Ch.12, p.219 par.4-5 … “Little Child, you are hiding your head under the cover:”

⁴ Remember what was said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish. But if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not understand what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do understand yours. Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets (of guilt) you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.

⁵ Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and Help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal. The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your dreams.

⁶ You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a child of God in his purpose. 

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Ch.12, p.220 par.9… Why we keep fear and guilt hidden:

The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would you not exchange this awareness for the awareness of fear? When we have overcome fear—not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, and not by denying its full import in any way—this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacles (sin, guilt and fear in your mind) to real vision  without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against (saying ‘no’ to believing sin, guilt, and fear are real, and very bad). If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, and He will judge truly (He will show us we are still sinless). Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it from you.

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Ch.13, p. 242 par. 1-2    “…it is so crucial to look:”

III. The Fear of Redemption

¹ You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred (and guilt) and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement. We have said that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it. Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. You could look even upon the ego’s darkest cornerstone without fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption.

² Under the ego’s dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed. You realize that, by removing the dark cloud (of guilt) that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer His call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevent you from this. For still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide.

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Ch.13, p. 243 par.4-6 … We must eventually look at our real fear, not only of guilt, but of Love Itself:

You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.

…You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome.

⁶ You must look upon your illusions (sin, guilt and fear in the mind) and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation (being unreal, they have no foundation). In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion (our chosen belief in the ‘tiny, mad idea of separation’… the TMI) on which the others rest. For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied.

… Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit’s vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought (of sin and guilt and fear) you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.

 

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Text p.262 par.7-8… “Guilt makes you blind:”

⁷ Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within you would see only the Atonement (guiltlessness is already a done deal), shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.

⁸ Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.

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Ch.13, p.262 par.1-3… Projecting guilt on others:

X. Release from Guilt

¹ You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not (in my brothers). The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement (projection) always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt (in our mind), from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful (the other guy). You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of “sources,” provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.

² Insane ideas (about sin and guilt) have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release.

³ In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.

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Ch.15, p.317 par.3 … “The attraction of guilt”… attractive only because we have not looked:

³ The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is, and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here.

 

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Ch.31, p. 660 par.2… The cost of guilt is death:

² Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body (the projection of guilt), you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. For constancy (of the real world) arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt (in the mind), because they chose to let it go instead.

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(4) How do I look at guilt?

 

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Ch.5, p.85 par.6 … Only 2 choices in teachers on how to look:

That is why the question, “What do you want?” must be answered. You are answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey. The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. You made the other, and so you can.

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Ch.9, p. 168 par.2-3 … Seeing our brothers as guiltless with the Holy Spirit:

² You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.

³ The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

 

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Ch.9, p.169 par 2, 3, 6 … It’s the HS job, not ours:

² You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors (believing in sin and guilt), or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.

… All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit…  Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning (believing in the tiny mad idea), and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently canceling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.

Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is. (Which is simply to remember to ask Him for help to see our brothers and ourselves in our minds the way He does… guiltless.)

 

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Ch.14, p.280 par. 5-6 … Again! The Holy Spirit does it, not you and me:

 Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden (of guilt) you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt instead of love (by projecting our guilt onto our brother, and then judging him for it). 

⁶ When you have learned how to decide with God (the HS), all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition (I need to do this on my own) seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do (how to look at guilt in the mind, and let it go). He knows. And He will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this (process of the HS forgiveness… recognizing and letting go of guilt).

 

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Ch.14, p.288 par.6-7 … Bring your dark secrets to the HS:

⁶ The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of you together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His.

Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge (oneness). You cannot see alone… The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have.

 

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Ch.14, p.289 par.1 … And bring Him your “dark denial of innocence:”

¹ In the darkness (of guilt) you have obscured the glory God gave you… All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God (the guilt is simply not real, but made-up). It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone. 

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Ch.19, p.422 par.12-14 … Seeing past our brother’s guilt is seeing past our own:

 

¹² This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger. You do not know him, and your interpretation of him is very fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems to be yourself unharmed. Yet in his hands is your salvation. You see his madness (and guilt), which you hate because you share it. And all the pity and forgiveness that would heal it gives way to fear. Brother, you need forgiveness of your brother, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you will raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.

¹³ Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins against him (making him guilty), or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice. He has in him the power to forgive your sin, as you for him. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet your savior stands beside each one. Let him be what he is, and seek not to make of love an enemy.

¹⁴ Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful He is! You thought He sinned because you cast the veil of sin upon Him to hide His loveliness. Yet still He holds forgiveness out to you, to share His holiness. This “enemy,” this “stranger” still offers you salvation (guiltlessness) as His Friend. 

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Ch.13,  p.261, par. 6

 

⁶ See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation (judgement) that you offer the Son of God (your brother and yourself) lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you.

 

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“Guilt, Part One: The What & Where of It”

 

 

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