Introduction

T-22.in.1. Take pity on yourself, so long enslaved. 2 Rejoice whom God hath joined have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. 3 No two can look on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place and time. 4 Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself. 5 And each one seems to make a different error, and one the other cannot understand. 6 Brother, it is the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the same way. 7 The holiness of your relationship forgives you and your brother, undoing the effects of what you both believed and saw. 8 And with their going is the need for sin gone with them.

T-22.in.2. Who has need for sin? 2 Only the lonely and alone, who see their brothers different from themselves. 3 It is this difference, seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but seen, seem justified. 4 And all this would be real if sin were so. 5 For an unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not. 6 They come together, each to complete himself and rob the other. 7 They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on. 8 And so they wander through a world of strangers, unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a world apart.

T-22.in.3. A holy relationship starts from a different premise. 2 Each one has looked within and seen no lack. 3 Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. 4 He sees no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body. 5 Therefore, he looks on nothing he would take. 6 He denies not his own reality because it is the truth. 7 Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth. 8 For this relationship has Heaven's Holiness. 9 How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven be?

T-22.in.4. Think what a holy relationship can teach! 2 Here is belief in differences undone. 3 Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. 4 And here is sight of differences transformed to vision. 5 Reason now can lead you and your brother to the logical conclusion of your union. 6 It must extend, as you extended when you and he joined. 7 It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body, to let you and your brother be joined. 8 And now the sameness that you saw extends and finally removes all sense of differences, so that the sameness that lies beneath them all becomes apparent. 9 Here is the golden circle where you recognize the Son of God. 10 For what is born into a holy relationship can never end.