IV. The Gift of Freedom

T-8.IV.1. If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. 2 His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. 3 When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. 4 Yet He is All in all. 5 His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. 6 His laws govern you because they govern everything. 7 You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. 8 Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.

T-8.IV.2. I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. 2 It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. 3 It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. 4 I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. 5 That is why I am the light of the world. 6 If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. 7 You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. 8 My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. 9 I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. 10 Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. 11 If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. 12 The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. 13 The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you.

T-8.IV.3. You were in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. 2 When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. 3 How else could it be perfectly accomplished? 4 My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. 5 This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. 6 Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world. 7 The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. 8 If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. 9 My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. 10 As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. 11 And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.

T-8.IV.4. Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? 2 Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? 3 For unless you do, you will not receive it. 4 If you want to have it of me, you must give it. 5 Healing does not come from anyone else. 6 You must accept guidance from within. 7 The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. 8 That is why healing is a collaborative venture. 9 I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. 10 Only then will your mind choose to follow me. 11 Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

T-8.IV.5. Healing reflects our joint will. 2 This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. 3 Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. 4 Separation is overcome by union. 5 It cannot be overcome by separating. 6 The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. 7 Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. 8 It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. 9 My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. 10 If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. 11 All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. 12 Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. 13 I cannot will what God does not will. 14 I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you.

T-8.IV.6. Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. 2 God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His. 3 If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. 4 If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. 5 I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. 6 How else can it be, if God's Kingdom is freedom? 7 Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. 8 God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. 9 This is the only lesson I came to teach.

T-8.IV.7. If your will were not mine it would not be our Father's. 2 This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. 3 Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. 4 I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. 5 I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. 6 In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. 7 And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. 8 Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. 9 This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. 10 Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. 11 By offering freedom you will be free.

T-8.IV.8. Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is. 2 Freedom is creation, because it is love. 3 Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. 4 Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. 5 When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. 6 Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. 7 It cannot be with One and not the Other. 8 If you are part of One you must be part of the Other, because They are One. 9 The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. 10 If you exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. 11 You must be included in It, because It is everything. 12 Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. 13 No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.