X. Release from Guilt

T-13.X.1. You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. ² 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. ³ Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt, 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. ⁴ 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.

T-13.X.2. Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. ² No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. ³ For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. ⁴ What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! ⁵ And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. ⁶ They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. ⁷ If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. ⁸ For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. ⁹ No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. ¹⁰ It is not shared, and so it is not real.

T-13.X.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. ² Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. ³ You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. ⁴ It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. ⁵ Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. ⁶ They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. ⁷ Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.

T-13.X.4. When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. ² The past is not in you. ³ Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. ⁴ Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. ⁵ Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to "solve" the past, and still to see them as they really are? ⁶ Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. ⁷ You wanted not salvation in the past. ⁸ Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?

T-13.X.5. Determine, then, to be not as you were. ² Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. ³ A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. ⁴ When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. ⁵ For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.

T-13.X.6. As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. ² The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. ³ For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. ⁴ The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. ⁵ If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. ⁶ The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

T-13.X.7. The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. ² What He has saved you from is gone. ³ Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. ⁴ The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. ⁵ He has seen separation, but knows of union. ⁶ He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. ⁷ He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. ⁸ Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.

T-13.X.8. Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. ² As yet it is not now. ³ The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. ⁴ When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. ⁵ And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. ⁶ The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.

T-13.X.9. You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father's Love. ² And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him. ³ Yet it is forever true. ⁴ In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. ⁵ Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. ⁶ Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. ⁷ The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. ⁸ Nothing can keep from you what Christ would have you see. ⁹ His Will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every child of God, as He would have you do.

T-13.X.10. Release from guilt as you would be released. ² There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. ³ And as His Son loves Him. ⁴ There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. ⁵ You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. ⁶ You cannot be as you believed you were. ⁷ Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. ⁸ And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. ⁹ He would remove only illusions. ¹⁰ All else He would have you see. ¹¹ And in Christ's vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God's Son.

T-13.X.11. You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God's Sons unless you love them all and equally. ² Love is not special. ³ If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal. ⁴ You can love only as God loves. ⁵ Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. ⁶ Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. ⁷ No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. ⁸ If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon himself. ⁹ To him I say:

T-13.X.12. No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. ² His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. ³ Let us look upon him together and love him. ⁴ For in love of him is your guiltlessness. ⁵ But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. ⁶ I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.

T-13.X.13. Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. ² The difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. ³ I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. ⁴ My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give my Father. ⁵ My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. ⁶ I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that is of God.

T-13.X.14. Praise be to you who make the Father One with His Own Son. ² Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think of it. ³ Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never more be what it was. ⁴ Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. ⁵ See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of you. ⁶ United in this praise we stand before the gates of Heaven where we will surely enter in our sinlessness. ⁷ God loves you. ⁸ Could I, then, lack faith in you and love Him perfectly?