Text borrowed from:
Gifts from A Course in Miracles
 

ANGER & ATTACK

Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.

Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for.

To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified.

All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty.

Those who attack do not know they are blessed. They attack because they believe they are deprived. Give, therefore, of your abundance, and teach your brothers theirs. Do not share their illusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.

If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your brother when you attack him.

You will fear what you attack. Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack.

Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are.

Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete.

Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this, forgiveness rests, and is but natural.

Perception

Perception is a Mirror.

You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave.

Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it.

You cannot be aware without interpretation, for what you perceive is your interpretation.

Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response.

Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It literally picks it out as the mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are not equal… For what you look for you are far more likely to discover than what you would prefer to overlook.

The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them.

Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help.

Perception is a choice of what you want yourself to be; the world you want to live in, and the state in which you think your mind will be content and satisfied.

It chooses where you think your safety lies, at your decision. It reveals yourself to you as you would have you be.

And always is it faithful to your purpose. Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it has been given you to change what you believe.

If you perceive truly you are canceling out misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneously. Because you see them as they are, you offer them your acceptance of their truth so they can accept it for themselves.

Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete.

As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself.  

JUDGMENT 

The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace. 

You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment. Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire. 

You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment enters reality has slipped away. 

No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation.  Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can perceive. 

Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. 

Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely. 

Wisdom is not judgment; It is the relinquishment of judgment. "When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see."

PRACTICING FORGIVENESS

Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive.

Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is healing explained.

What could you want, forgiveness cannot give?

Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world?

Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you.

You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. In complete forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old.

Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. Lift up your eyes and look on one another in innocence born of complete forgiveness of each other's illusions.

Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one reaches love with fear beside him.

Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it.

Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart.

Forgiveness is the answer to attack of any kind. So is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the name of love.

Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto you. As you give you will receive.

Giving and receiving are the same. Illusions about yourself and the world are one. That is why all forgiveness is a gift to yourself.

Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions.  Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them.

He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Forgiveness is the key to happiness. Here is the answer to your search for peace.

Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace.

Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

PAIN

Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth.

Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception.  It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright.

Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. Pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless?

Seek not outside yourself... For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. Look about the world, and see the suffering there.

Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest? They must await your own release. They stay in chains till you are free. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression.

No one but yourself affects you.

There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are.

I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.

GUILT  

Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other.

While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt.

Guilt is always disruptive. Guilt is the result of attack.

The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason.

Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love.

Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted. Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions.

The guiltless mind cannot suffer. All salvation is escape from guilt.

Only my condemnation injures me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free.

The ERRORS of EGO

What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are.

The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own.

Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make

Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquishment of the ego.

Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace.

Yet in this war there is no opponent.

Peace is the ego's greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival.

The ego becomes strong in strife.

Even the wished-for can become unwelcome. That must be so because the ego cannot be at peace.

When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know this need not be.

You can be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them.

Defensiveness

When you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion.

It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down.

It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God.

No one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified.

Defenses are but foolish guardians of mad illusions. Defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth.

Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them.  Recognize this, and they will disappear.

FEAR 

Fear is not justified in any form. 

"There is nothing to fear." This simply states a fact. It is not a fact to those who believe in illusions, but illusions are not facts. 

In truth there is nothing to fear. Fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. 

Only your mind can produce fear. Attempting the mastery of fear is useless. 
In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered. The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love. 

The need to recognize fear and face it without disguise is a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. 

Fear itself is an appeal for help. 

This is what recognizing fear really means. 

Fear and attack are inevitably associated. If only attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn on you. For fear is a call for love.

The Holy Relationship
 

Those who have joined their brothers have detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy relationship is one in which you join with what is a part of you in truth.

An unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not... A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. He sees no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body.

You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created like you. When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion, but will also understand peace and joy.

The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone.

There is no veil the Love of God in us together cannot lift.

When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became a giver of peace.

No illusion can disturb the peace of a relationship that has become the means of peace.

In your relationship is this world’s light. Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.

You are one Self with me,

United with our Creator in this Self

I honor you because of what I am,

And what He is, Who loves us both as one.