VII. The Two Evaluations

T-9.VII.1. God's Will is your salvation. 2 Would He not have given you the means to find it? 3 If He wills you to have it, He must have made it possible and easy to obtain it. 4 Your brothers are everywhere. 5 You do not have to seek far for salvation. 6 Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. 7 Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. 8 God wills you perfect happiness now. 9 Is it possible that this is not also your will? 10 And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers?

T-9.VII.2. Consider, then, that in this joint will you are all united, and in this only. 2 There may be disagreement on anything else, but not on this. 3 This, then, is where peace abides. 4 And you abide in peace when you so decide. 5 Yet you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to peace. 6 The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often overlooked. 7 The ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. 8 Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking.

T-9.VII.3. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on you. 2 His evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. 3 And this evaluation must be in your mind, because He is. 4 The ego is also in your mind, because you have accepted it there. 5 Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does not love you. 6 It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. 7 The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. 8 That is its range. 9 It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. 10 And it can never go beyond it because it can never be certain.

T-9.VII.4. You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your mind, and they cannot both be true. 2 You do not yet realize how completely different these evaluations are, because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. 3 He is not deceived by anything you do, because He never forgets what you are. 4 The ego is deceived by everything you do, especially when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times its confusion increases. 5 The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly, because it has evaluated you as unloving and you are going against its judgment. 6 The ego will attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. 7 This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. 8 Yet it is surely pointless to attack in return. 9 What can this mean except that you are agreeing with the ego's evaluation of what you are?

T-9.VII.5. If you choose to see yourself as unloving you will not be happy. 2 You are condemning yourself and must therefore regard yourself as inadequate. 3 Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced, and must maintain for its existence? 4 Can you escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?

T-9.VII.6. You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. 2 Its range precludes this. 3 You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. 4 Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. 5 With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your littleness. 6 Within the system that dictated this choice the lament is inevitable. 7 Your littleness is taken for granted there and you do not ask, "Who granted it?" 8 The question is meaningless within the ego's thought system, because it would open the whole thought system to question.

T-9.VII.7. I have said that the ego does not know what a real question is. 2 Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know, and this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. 3 Not to question your littleness therefore is to deny all knowledge, and keep the ego's whole thought system intact. 4 You cannot retain part of a thought system, because it can be questioned only at its foundation. 5 And this must be questioned from beyond it, because within it its foundation does stand. 6 The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought system merely because He knows its foundation is not true. 7 Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. 8 He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. 9 If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. 10 If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.

T-9.VII.8. Whenever you question your value, say: 2 God Himself is incomplete without me. 3 Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. 4 The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. 5 Choose, then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him. 6 You do not want anything else. 7 Return your part to Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for the return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.