II. The Difference between Imprisonment and Freedom

T-8.II.1. There is a rationale for choice. ² Only one Teacher knows what your reality is. ³ If learning to remove the obstacles to that knowledge is the purpose of the curriculum, you must learn it of Him. ⁴ The ego does not know what it is trying to teach. ⁵ It is trying to teach you what you are without knowing what you are. ⁶ It is expert only in confusion. ⁷ It does not understand anything else. ⁸ As a teacher, then, the ego is totally confused and totally confusing. ⁹ Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is impossible, you could still learn nothing from the ego, because the ego knows nothing.

T-8.II.2. Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? ² Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make anything but sense? ³ Is this the teacher to whom a Son of God should turn to find himself? ⁴ The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. ⁵ Simply on the grounds of your own experience with its teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? ⁶ Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. ⁷ Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of what you have. ⁸ When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your learning because your learning will imprison you. ⁹ Your will is in your nature, and therefore cannot go against it.

T-8.II.3. The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you will not listen to it. ² It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. ³ That is why the ego is the denial of free will. ⁴ It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will with you. ⁵ His Voice teaches only in accordance with His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson because that is what you are. ⁶ The lesson is that your will and God's cannot be out of accord because they are one. ⁷ This is the undoing of everything the ego tries to teach. ⁸ It is not, then, only the direction of the curriculum that must be unconflicted, but also the content.

T-8.II.4. The ego tries to teach that you want to oppose God's Will. ² This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. ³ The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the Will of the Son is the Father's. ⁴ The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back.

T-8.II.5. We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. ² That is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. ³ You cannot make this distinction without Him because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. ⁴ Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? ⁵ Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they are the same, to teach you how they are different?

T-8.II.6. The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. ² His direction is freedom and His goal is God. ³ Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God's Will to be without you. ⁴ When you have learned that your will is God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. ⁵ This is freedom and this is joy. ⁶ Deny yourself this and you are denying God His Kingdom, because He created you for this.

T-8.II.7. When I said, "All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His," this is what I meant: The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. ² It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. ³ It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things. ⁴ By creating all things, it made them part of itself. ⁵ You are the Will of God because that is how you were created. ⁶ Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. ⁷ You are part of Him Who is all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is.

T-8.II.8. To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God's Kingdom? ² His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is, and for its own acknowledgment of what it is. ³ When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledgment automatically to everyone, because you have acknowledged everyone. ⁴ By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is extended. ⁵ Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God. ⁶ This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice for his Creator, because It is the Voice for his creations and for his own extension.