1. Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that you are free? ²Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? ³Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? ⁴Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? ⁵Until you realize you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. ⁶And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. ⁷Yet though you do not see them, they are there. ⁸Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in.

2. You have accepted healing’s cause, and so it must be you are healed. ²And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. ³The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. ⁴Nor is it, in itself, a cause. ⁵But where its cause is must it be. ⁶Now is it caused, though not as yet perceived. ⁷And its effects are there, though not yet seen. ⁸Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace.

3. It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. ²It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. ³For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. ⁴Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wherever they are not. ⁵Why are you not rejoicing? ⁶You are free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. ⁷No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the effects of love.

4. Your Guest has come. ²You asked Him, and He came. ³You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. ⁴And yet His gifts came with Him. ⁵He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. ⁶He needs your help in giving them to all who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. ⁷They will be healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid.

5. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have received. ²Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you invited Him to be. ³There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. ⁴And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. ⁵For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. ⁶You cannot see your Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. ⁷And when you look on them, you will believe His Presence must be there. ⁸For what you now can do could not be done without the love and grace His Presence holds.

6. Such is the promise of the living God; His Son have life and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. ²What you have given “life” is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive apart from life; alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. ³Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. ⁴Its basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. ⁵Yet what is that except the state confusion really means? ⁶Stability to those who are confused is meaningless, and shift and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.

7. The body does not change. ²It represents the larger dream that change is possible. ³To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. ⁴There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. ⁵Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. ⁶And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. ⁷The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. ⁸Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body is.

8. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. ²Its nothingness is guarantee that it can not be sick. ³In your demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. ⁴For it asks that God be less than all He really is. ⁵What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? ⁶For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. ⁷He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is lessened by the loss of you. ⁸And what is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him.

9. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. ²And so it seems to be a thing with power in itself. ³As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. ⁴And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. ⁵And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not more than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that it is nothing. ⁶Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee.

10. As “something” is the body asked to be God’s enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. ²It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. ³For if He be the sum of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and His completion is its nothingness. ⁴Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto death. ⁵He lives in God, and it is this that makes him savior unto you, and only this. ⁶His body’s nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death. ⁷For what is yours cannot be more or less than what is his.