3. It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards spirit as its “enemy.” ²The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. ³The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. ⁴All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. ⁵It tells you this life is your existence because it is its own. ⁶Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. ⁷No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. ⁸How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God? 

⁷Peace is the ego’s greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. ⁸The ego becomes strong in strife. ⁹If you believe there is strife you will react viciously, because the idea of danger has entered your mind. ¹⁰The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. ¹¹The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego welcomes it. ¹²The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. ¹³Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war.

⁴The ego’s “enemy” is therefore your friend.

3. I said before that the ego’s friend is not part of you, because the ego perceives itself at war and therefore in need of allies. ²You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brothers, because only equals are at peace. ³Because God’s equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. ⁴Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has entered their minds. ⁵Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. ⁶It is the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted the impossible as true. ⁷Is that different from saying you perceive yourself as unreal?

4. Much of the ego’s strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of guilt. ²To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. ³Those who do not attack are its “enemies” because, by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent position to let it go. ⁴They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone in the ego’s foundation, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence depends on keeping this secret. ⁵So it is this secret that we must look upon, for the ego cannot protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is dispelled.

⁴The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escape from guilt. 

⁵You have no other “enemy,” and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only Friend. ⁶He is the strong protector of the innocence that sets you free. ⁷And it is His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. 

Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection. ⁴For the shadow figures you would make immortal are “enemies” of reality. ⁵Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did not do. ⁶The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he did what 

5. Yet hate must have a target. ²There can be no faith in sin without an enemy. ³Who that believes in sin would dare believe he has no enemy? ⁴Could he admit that no one made him powerless? ⁵Reason would surely bid him seek no longer what is not there to find. ⁶Yet first he must be willing to perceive a world where it is not. ⁷It is not necessary that he understand how he can see it. ⁸Nor should he try. ⁹For if he focuses on what he cannot understand, he will but emphasize his helplessness, and let sin tell him that his enemy must be himself. ¹⁰But let him only ask himself these questions, which he must decide, to have it done for him:

¹¹Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me?

¹²Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless?

¹³Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin?

¹⁴And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?

4. How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless. ²How insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom love has joined! ³This is your “enemy,”—a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. ⁴How likely is it that it will succeed? ⁵Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one? ⁶Which is the stronger? ⁷Is it this tiny mouse or everything that God created? ⁸You and your brother are not joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of God. ⁹And can a mouse betray whom God has joined? 

10. All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here: the “enemy” made strong by keeping hidden the valuable inheritance that should be yours; your justified position and attack for what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss the enemy must suffer to save yourself. ²Thus do the guilty ones protest their “innocence.” ³Were they not forced into this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, they would respond with only kindness. 

⁶For enemies do not give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to share the things they value.

⁶Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God.

⁶The secret enemies of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of love.

complex of superiority thinking you are more special cause you think you are more good rich ect... ⁵The special ones feel weak and frail because of differences, for what would make them special is their enemy. ⁶Yet they protect its enmity and call it “friend.” ⁷On its behalf they fight against the universe, for nothing in the world they value more.

⁴You are his enemy in specialness; his friend in a shared purpose.

³Your brother’s specialness and yours are enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same.specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies. ³Everything else becomes your enemy; feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction. 

⁴Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its hate is real. ⁵In danger of destruction it must kill, and you are drawn to it to kill it first. ⁶And such is guilt’s attraction. ⁷Here is death enthroned as savior; crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can only mean destruction of the world, except yourself. 

⁴A sinless brother is its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, would be its friend. ⁵Your brother’s sin would justify itself, and give it meaning that the truth denies. ⁶All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. ⁷All that is false proclaims his sins as real. ⁸If he is sinful, then is your reality not real, but just a dream of specialness that lasts an instant, crumbling into dust.

5. Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. ²Only this is certain in this shifting world that has no meaning in reality: When peace is not with you entirely, and when you suffer pain of any kind, you have beheld some sin within your brother, and have rejoiced at what you thought was there. ³Your specialness seemed safe because of it. ⁴And thus you saved what you appointed to be your savior, and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. ⁵So are you bound with him, for you are one. ⁶And so is specialness his “enemy,” and yours as well.

⁴For you have hurt yourself, and made your Self your “enemy.” (⁹He has forsworn his Father and himself, and made Them both his enemies in hate. (⁷And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies.

12. A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream. ²Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in which you become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of your brother and the world alike.

 ³Here is the cause of suffering, the space between your little dreams and your reality. ⁴The little gap you do not even see, the birthplace of illusions and of fear, the time of terror and of ancient hate, the instant of disaster, all are here. ⁵Here is the cause of unreality. ⁶And it is here that it will be undone. (In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. 

You had decided that your brother is your enemy. ⁵Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. ⁶But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again into an enemy. 

⁷Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you approached, did he but instantly withdraw. ⁸A cautious friendship, and limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty that you had made with him. ⁹Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact. ¹⁰And violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed.

Why 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. (⁸Christ’s enemy is nowhere. (. Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. (⁴Thereis an ancient battle being waged against the truth, but truth does not respond. ⁵Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? ⁶He has no enemy in truth. (⁶You will not want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies, nor keep in chains, to the illusion of a changing love, the ones you think are friends.

7. The innocent release in gratitude for their release. ²And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. ³Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or yourself. ⁴For God has said there is no sacrifice that can be asked; there is no sacrifice that can be made.⁶Would you not rather look upon yourself as needed for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation’s enemy? ⁴I make all things my enemies, so that my anger is justified and my attacks are warranted. ⁵I have not realized how much I have misused everything I see by assigning this role to it. ⁶I have done this to defend a thought system that has hurt me, and that I no longer want. 

⁷I am willing to let it go. There will be no past, and therefore no enemies. ⁷And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before.He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. ⁵Let him be savior unto you today. ⁶Such is his role in God your Father’s plan. Think of your “enemies” a little while, and tell each one, as he occurs to you:

²My brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may have God’s peace and joy as mine.love can have no enemy And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior; from the devil into Christ.

 ⁶You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. 

 Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy”; its cruelty as now a part of love. ⁴And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself? 

⁵The blood appears to be upon His Lips; the fire comes from Him. ⁶And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.But having been made enemy, he must accept the guilt and heavy-laid reproach that thus is put upon him. ⁵Is this love? ⁶Or is it rather treachery to one who needs salvation from the pain of guilt? ⁷What could the purpose be, except to keep the witnesses of guilt away from love? Enemies are useless now, because humility does not oppose. Enemies do not share a goal. 

⁵It is in this their enmity is kept. ⁶Their separate wishes are their arsenals; their fortresses in hate. 

⁷The key to rising further still in prayer lies in this simple thought; this change of mind:

⁸We go together, you and I.³But once the need to hold the other as an enemy has been questioned, and the reason for doing so has been recognized if only for an instant, it becomes possible to join in prayer.

 No one who wants an enemy will fail to find one. ⁸But just as surely will he lose the only true goal that is given him. ⁹Think of the cost, and understand it well. ¹⁰All other goals are at the cost of Gods peace happiness.  

Hold out your hand. ⁴This enemy has come to bless you. ⁵Take his blessing, and feel how your heart is lifted and your fear released. ⁶Do not hold on to it, nor onto him. ⁷He is a Son of God, along with you. ⁸He is no jailer, but a messenger of Christ. ⁹Be this to him, that you may see him thus. (Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety.