IV. The Gift of Freedom

T-8.IV.1. If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. ² His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. ³ When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. ⁴ Yet He is All in all. ⁵ His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. ⁶ His laws govern you because they govern everything. ⁷ You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. ⁸ Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.

T-8.IV.2. I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. ² It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. ³ It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. ⁴ I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. ⁵ That is why I am the light of the world. ⁶ If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. ⁷ You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. ⁸ My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. ⁹ I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. ¹⁰ Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. ¹¹ If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. ¹² The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. ¹³ The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you.

T-8.IV.3. You were in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. ² When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. ³ How else could it be perfectly accomplished? ⁴ My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. ⁵ This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. ⁶ Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world. ⁷ The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. ⁸ If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. ⁹ My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. ¹⁰ As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. ¹¹ And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.

T-8.IV.4. Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? ² Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? ³ For unless you do, you will not receive it. ⁴ If you want to have it of me, you must give it. ⁵ Healing does not come from anyone else. ⁶ You must accept guidance from within. ⁷ The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. ⁸ That is why healing is a collaborative venture. ⁹ I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. ¹⁰ Only then will your mind choose to follow me. ¹¹ Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

T-8.IV.5. Healing reflects our joint will. ² This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. ³ Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. ⁴ Separation is overcome by union. ⁵ It cannot be overcome by separating. ⁶ The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. ⁷ Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. ⁸ It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. ⁹ My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. ¹⁰ If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. ¹¹ All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. ¹² Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. ¹³ I cannot will what God does not will. ¹⁴ I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you.

T-8.IV.6. Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. ² God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His. ³ If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. ⁴ If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. ⁵ I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. ⁶ How else can it be, if God's Kingdom is freedom? ⁷ Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. ⁸ God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. ⁹ This is the only lesson I came to teach.

T-8.IV.7. If your will were not mine it would not be our Father's. ² This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. ³ Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. ⁴ I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. ⁵ I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. ⁶ In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. ⁷ And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. ⁸ Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. ⁹ This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. ¹⁰ Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. ¹¹ By offering freedom you will be free.

T-8.IV.8. Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is. ² Freedom is creation, because it is love. ³ Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. ⁴ Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. ⁵ When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. ⁶ Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. ⁷ It cannot be with One and not the Other. ⁸ If you are part of One you must be part of the Other, because They are One. ⁹ The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. ¹⁰ If you exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. ¹¹ You must be included in It, because It is everything. ¹² Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. ¹³ No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.