Chapter Four
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1. Introduction
2. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit
3. The Voice for God
4. The Guide to Salvation
5. Teaching and Healing
6. The Ego's Use of Guilt
7. Time and Eternity
8. The Decision for God
The Decision for God
Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God's? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than he can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon him because he careth for you. You are his care because he loves you. His voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of his care. You cannot choose to escape his care because that is not his will, but you can choose to accept his care and use the infinite power of his care for all those he created by it.
There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals himself, he cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed because God created it whole. You are merely asked to return to God the mind as he created it. He asks you only for what he gave, knowing that this giving will heal you. Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers is yours.
Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the voice for God is in you? God commended his spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace, because you are of one mind and spirit with him. Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed.
But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the remedy could not be of your making. God himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you made that is not in accord with his holy will. I am making his plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfill it. God weeps at the "sacrifice" of his children who believe they are lost to him.
Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God's creations. Perceiving this as "sin" you become defensive because you expect attack. The decision to react in this way is yours, and can therefore be undone. It cannot be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you.
Decision cannot be difficult. This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences
of my wrong decision if I will let him.
I choose to let him, by allowing him to decide for God for me.