1. The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. ²It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. ³Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. ⁴Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: “Seek and do not find.” ⁵This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. ⁶For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its judgment, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.

2. The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. ²And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. ³For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. ⁴The search is inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. ⁵For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. ⁶Yet it is also your mind that has the power to deny the ego’s existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey is on which the ego sets you.

3. It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. ²Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love’s presence, for it could not respond at all. ³Then, you would have to abandon the ego’s guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response you need. ⁴The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. ⁵Follow its teaching, then, and you will search for love, but will not recognize it.

4. Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? ²To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. ³Is this the promise you would keep? ⁴The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. ⁵For His promise is always, “Seek and you will find,” and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. ⁶His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. ⁷For He will never deceive God’s Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father.

5. You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. ²And you will search for your home whether you realize where it is or not. ³If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. ⁴You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. ⁵Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission. ⁶As He fulfills His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. ⁷By guiding your brothers home you are but following Him.

6. Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. ²For death is not your Father’s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. ³You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. ⁴If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. ⁵And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. ⁶Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁷Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. ⁸There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him.

7. The Atonement is not the price of your wholeness, but it is the price of your awareness of your wholeness. ²For what you chose to “sell” had to be kept for you, since you could not “buy” it back. ³Yet you must invest in it, not with money but with spirit. ⁴For spirit is will, and will is the “price” of the Kingdom. ⁵Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. ⁶The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.