1. No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. ²There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. ³We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. ⁴Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. ⁵The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. ⁶We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.

2. What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge? ²And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? ³Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of fear, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. ⁴You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. ⁵The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does not exist. ⁶Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. ⁷If reality is recognized by its extension, what leads to nothing could not be real. ⁸Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot be seen. ⁹Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.

3. Let us begin this lesson in “ego dynamics” by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. ²It contains the very contradiction in terms that makes it meaningless. ³“Dynamics” implies the power to do something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. ⁴The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. ⁵Yet the truth is very simple:

⁶All power is of God.
 ⁷What is not of Him has no power to do anything.

4. When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering dynamics but delusions. ²You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real. ³Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if you recognize the ego’s goal, which is so clearly senseless that any effort on its behalf is necessarily expended on nothing. ⁴The ego’s goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. ⁵From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself and independent of any power except its own. ⁶This is why it is the symbol of separation.

5. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural outcome of what it is. ²Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. ³I said before that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. ⁴His Will is One because the extension of His Will cannot be unlike itself. ⁵The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego’s idle wishes and the Will of God, which you share. ⁶Can this be a real conflict?

6. Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy. ²Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares with you. ³By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on Him. ⁴Do not ascribe the ego’s arrogance to Him Who wills not to be independent of you. ⁵He has included you in His Autonomy. ⁶Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? ⁷The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, in which your freedom lies. ⁸The ego sees all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. ⁹But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict.

7. The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. ²Believing it has the power to do this it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy is nothing else. ³The ego is totally confused about reality, but it does not lose sight of its goal. ⁴It is much more vigilant than you are, because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. ⁵You are confused because you do not recognize yours.

8. You must recognize that the last thing the ego wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. ²For if the ego could give rise to fear, it would diminish your independence and weaken your power. ³Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can give power to you. ⁴Without this belief you would not listen to it at all. ⁵How, then, can its existence continue if you realize that, by accepting it, you are belittling yourself and depriving yourself of power?

9. The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, “lighthearted,” distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved and even desperate, but not really afraid. ²Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. ³How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?

10. Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. ²Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. ³For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it. ⁴Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. ⁵If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. ⁶By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power. ⁷Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. ⁸And no one wants to find what he believes would destroy him.

11. If the ego’s goal of autonomy could be accomplished God’s purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. ²Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true. ³According to the ego’s teaching, its goal can be accomplished and God’s purpose can not. ⁴According to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, only God’s purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already.

12. God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because His Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. ²You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with Him, and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. ³The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. ⁴But it is given you to know that God’s function is yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from Your joint Will. ⁵Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. ⁶Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe. ⁷Yet God’s Son is not insane, and cannot believe it. ⁸Let him but recognize it and he will not accept it. ⁹For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. ¹⁰But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.

13. The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. ²The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out. ³The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. ⁴The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. ⁵Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. ⁶The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.

14. The ego’s interpretations of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s. ²The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. ³It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake consistent truth must be meaningless. ⁴The next step, then, is obvious. ⁵If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. ⁶Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error.

15. The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly. ²Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. ³This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. ⁴And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.

16. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego’s demonstrations to those who would listen. ²Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses are consistent. ³The case for insanity is strong to the insane. ⁴For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. ⁵Yet reasoning without meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be deluded. ⁶Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? ⁷Can it perceive what it has denied? ⁸Its witnesses do attest to its denial, but hardly to what it has denied. ⁹The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.

17. Would you remember the Father? ²Accept His Son and you will remember Him. ³Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. ⁴What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is the Father must be. ⁵Accept what God does not deny, and it will demonstrate its truth. ⁶The witnesses for God stand in His light and behold what He created. ⁷Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God’s Son, and in the Presence of Christ they need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. ⁸They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words they speak.

18. Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. ²Everyone convinces you of what you want to perceive, and of the reality of the kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. ³Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true. ⁴Every brother has the power to release you, if you choose to be free. ⁵You cannot accept false witness of him unless you have evoked false witnesses against him. ⁶If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him. ⁷You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him.