V. The Denial of God

T-10.V.1. The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. ² Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. ³ Depression means that you have forsworn God. ⁴ Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. ⁵ They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own Identity, and in this sense the wages of sin is death. ⁶ The sense is very literal; denial of life perceives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. ⁷ No one can really do this, but that you can think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute.

T-10.V.2. Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others and not yourself have done this to you. ² You must receive the message you give because it is the message you want. ³ You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them. ⁴ Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them that would bring joy to you. ⁵ It is the denial of the spark that brings depression, for whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God.

T-10.V.3. Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. ² The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. ³ But consider what this means to you. ⁴ Unless you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly want them. ⁵ Blasphemy, then, is self-destructive, not God-destructive. ⁶ It means that you are willing not to know yourself in order to be sick. ⁷ This is the offering your god demands because, having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea. ⁸ He has many forms, but although he may seem to be many different things he is but one idea;—the denial of God.

T-10.V.4. Sickness and death seemed to enter the mind of God's Son against His Will. ² The "attack on God" made His Son think he was Fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression. ³ This was his alternative to joy, because he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created. ⁴ Yet the Son is helpless without the Father, Who alone is his Help.

T-10.V.5. I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. ² If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. ³ It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over nothing. ⁴ Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them. ⁵ You cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. ⁶ If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. ⁷ It can share only what it is. ⁸ Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created.

T-10.V.6. Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. ² Yet this can be corrected and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. ³ You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. ⁴ Your denial of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. ⁵ Remember that what you deny you must have once known. ⁶ And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing.

T-10.V.7. Your Father has not denied you. ² He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return. ³ When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. ⁴ He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son. ⁵ If you hear His message He has answered you, and you will learn of Him if you hear aright. ⁶ The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. ⁷ Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

T-10.V.8. Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. ² When you acknowledge Him you will know that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment of you lies your being. ³ You are not sick and you cannot die. ⁴ But you can confuse yourself with things that do. ⁵ Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated.

T-10.V.9. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. ² What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. ³ Would He allow Himself to suffer? ⁴ And would He offer His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him? ⁵ If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. ⁶ Yet to do this you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. ⁷ This is not because you will be punished otherwise. ⁸ It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father is the acknowledgment of yourself as you are. ⁹ Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. ¹⁰ If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. ¹¹ Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.

T-10.V.10. You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. ² Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. ³ To interfere with you would be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. ⁴ When you deny Him you are insane. ⁵ Would you have Him share your insanity? ⁶ God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. ⁷ That was the condition of His Son's creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. ⁸ To know that is sanity. ⁹ To deny it is insanity. ¹⁰ God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal. ¹¹ Would you deny yourself to Him?

T-10.V.11. Out of your gifts to Him the Kingdom will be restored to His Son. ² His Son removed himself from His gift by refusing to accept what had been created for him, and what he had created in the Name of his Father. ³ Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's Son. ⁴ You are not at home anywhere else, or in any other condition. ⁵ Do not deny yourself the joy that was created for you for the misery you have made for yourself. ⁶ God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. ⁷ Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are.

T-10.V.12. If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. ² If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. ³ If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. ⁴ All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is. ⁵ If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. ⁶ And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.

T-10.V.13. Do not perceive anything God did not create or you are denying Him. ² His is the only Fatherhood, and it is yours only because He has given it to you. ³ Your gifts to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like His, because they are given in His Name. ⁴ That is why your creations are as real as His. ⁵ Yet the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. ⁶ You believe that the sick things you have made are your real creations, because you believe that the sick images you perceive are the Sons of God. ⁷ Only if you accept the Fatherhood of God will you have anything, because His Fatherhood gave you everything. ⁸ That is why to deny Him is to deny yourself.

T-10.V.14. Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. ² As long as both appear to you to be desirable the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. ³ While this is not true in eternity it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. ⁴ Time itself is your choice. ⁵ If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. ⁶ If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. ⁷ As always, your choice is determined by what you value. ⁸ Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. ⁹ If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.