IV. The Fear to Look Within

T-21.IV.1. The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. ² Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. ³ You are indeed afraid to look within and see the sin you think is there. ⁴ This you would not be fearful to admit. ⁵ Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite appropriate, and smiles approvingly. ⁶ It has no fear to let you feel ashamed. ⁷ It doubts not your belief and faith in sin. ⁸ Its temples do not shake because of this. ⁹ Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to your desire that it be there to see. ¹⁰ This merely seems to be the source of fear.

T-21.IV.2. Remember that the ego is not alone. ² Its rule is tempered, and its unknown "enemy," Whom it cannot even see, it fears. ³ Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. ⁴ This you believe, and so you do not look. ⁵ Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear, nor yours who serve it. ⁶ Loudly indeed the ego claims it is; too loudly and too often. ⁷ For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not certain it is so. ⁸ Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble.

T-21.IV.3. What if you looked within and saw no sin? ² This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. ³ And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend. ⁴ Those who have joined their brothers have detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. ⁵ A holy relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in truth. ⁶ And your belief in sin has been already shaken, nor are you now entirely unwilling to look within and see it not.

T-21.IV.4. Your liberation still is only partial; still limited and incomplete, yet born within you. ² Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much of your insanity and recognize its madness. ³ Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason. ⁴ And what your reason tells you now the ego would not hear. ⁵ The Holy Spirit's purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. ⁶ No more did you. ⁷ And yet this part, with which you now identify, is not afraid to look upon itself. ⁸ It knows no sin. ⁹ How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit's purpose as its own?

T-21.IV.5. This part has seen your brother, and recognized him perfectly since time began. ² And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free again, as once it was. ³ It has been waiting for the birth of freedom; the acceptance of release to come to you. ⁴ And now you recognize that it was not the ego that joined the Holy Spirit's purpose, and so there must be something else. ⁵ Think not that this is madness. ⁶ For this your reason tells you, and it follows perfectly from what you have already learned.

T-21.IV.6. There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. ² This is the reasoning of the sane. ³ You have perceived the ego's madness, and not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. ⁴ At times it still deceives you. ⁵ Yet in your saner moments, its ranting strikes no terror in your heart. ⁶ For you have realized that all the gifts it would withdraw from you, in rage at your "presumptuous" wish to look within, you do not want. ⁷ A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and catch your eye. ⁸ Yet you would not "sell" Heaven to have them.

T-21.IV.7. And now the ego is afraid. ² Yet what it hears in terror, the other part hears as the sweetest music; the song it longed to hear since first the ego came into your mind. ³ The ego's weakness is its strength. ⁴ The song of freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to it hope of peace. ⁵ For it remembers Heaven, and now it sees that Heaven has come to earth at last, from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. ⁶ Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. ⁷ And earth can hold no longer what has been given Heaven as its own.

T-21.IV.8. Look gently on your brother, and remember the ego's weakness is revealed in both your sight. ² What it would keep apart has met and joined, and looks upon the ego unafraid. ³ Little child, innocent of sin, follow in gladness the way to certainty. ⁴ Be not held back by fear's insane insistence that sureness lies in doubt. ⁵ This has no meaning. ⁶ What matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? ⁷ The senseless is not made meaningful by repetition and by clamor. ⁸ The quiet way is open. ⁹ Follow it happily, and question not what must be so.