There is NOTHING outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn,
for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you.
For God created only this, and He did not depart from it, nor leave it
separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling-place of
the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him.
Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of
perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing
outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.

What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else IS there to
give? The belief that you could give and GET something else, something
OUTSIDE yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven, and the loss of
your identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize.
You have displaced your guilt to your bodies from your minds. Yet a body
CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you
hate your bodies deceive yourselves. You hate your MINDS, for guilt has
entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they cannot do.

Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the
properties of the body does separation seem to be possible. And it is
MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. Its guilt, which
KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies
because it is attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it
NOT KNOW its identity. Mind cannot attack, but it CAN make fantasies and
direct the body to act them out. Yet it is never what the body does that
seems to satisfy. Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting
out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection
of its guilt upon it.

In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it
maintains it CAN, and uses what it does to hurt the body to PROVE it
can. The mind cannot attack, but it CAN deceive itself. And this is all
it does when it believes it has attacked the body. It can project its
guilt, but it will not LOSE it through projection. And though it clearly
can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its function
from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The body was not made by
love. Yet love does not condemn it, and can use it lovingly, respecting
what the Son of God has made, and using it to save him from illusions.

Would you not have the instruments of separation re-interpreted as means
for salvation, and used for purposes of love? Would you not welcome and
support the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your
perception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon
the body. For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have
no real effect at all. And what God created is only what He would have
it be, being His Will. You CANNOT make His Will destructive. You can
make fantasies in which your will conflicts with His, but that is all.

It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its
attack and blaming it for what you wished it to do. It is IMPOSSIBLE to
act out fantasies. For it is still the FANTASIES you want, and they have
nothing to do with what the body does. IT does not dream of them, and
they but make it a liability where it could be an asset. For fantasies
have made your body your “enemy,” weak, vulnerable and treacherous,
worthy of the hate which you invest in it. How has this served you? You
have IDENTIFIED with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance
and the perceived source of your guilt. You have done this to a thing
that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling-place of the Son
of God, and turning it against him.

This is the host of God that YOU have made. And neither God nor His most
holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate, and where you have sown
the seeds of vengeance, violence and death. This thing you made to serve
your guilt stands between you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but
you do not identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate
prison, removed and
unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You hate this
prison you have made, and would destroy it. But you would not escape
from it, leaving it unharmed, without your guilt upon it.

Yet only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; the
place you set aside to house your hate is not a prison, but an illusion
of YOURSELF. The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication
which is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is INTERNAL.
Mind reaches to ITSELF. It does not go OUT. Within itself it has no
limits, and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses you entirely;
you within it, and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere or
ever.

The body is outside you, and but SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off
from others, and keeping you apart from them. It is not there. There IS
no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from
himself except in illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes
it is. Yet this could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to
create differently, and to have separated Himself from His Son to make
this possible. He would have had to create different things, and to
establish different ORDERS of reality, only SOME of which were love. Yet
love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever
without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around
yourself because God placed none between Himself and you.

You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are
joined have begun to reach beyond the body, but NOT outside yourselves,
to reach your shared identity TOGETHER. Could this be OUTSIDE you? Where
God is NOT? Is HE a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where
He cannot be? You are surrounded only by HIM. What limit can there be on
you whom He encompasses? Everyone has experienced what he would call a
sense of being transported beyond himself. This feeling of liberation
far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes experienced in special
relationships. It is a sense of actual ESCAPE from limitations.

If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will
realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of
yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it.
It becomes part of you, as you unite with it. And both
become whole, as neither is perceived as separate. What really happens
is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost
your fear of union. The love that instantly replaces it EXTENDS to what
has freed you, and unites with it. And while this lasts, you are not
uncertain of your identity, and would not limit it. You have escaped
from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting
it. You have accepted this INSTEAD of the body, and have let yourself be
one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be LIMITED
by it.

This can occur regardless of the physical distance which seems to be
between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space;
and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not
relevant; it can occur with something past, present or anticipated. The
“something” can be anything and anywhere; a sound, a sight, a thought, a
memory, and even a general idea without specific reference. Yet in every
case, you joined it without reservation because you love it, and would
be with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away,
suspending all the “laws” your body obeys, and gently setting them
aside.

There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not attacked,
but simply properly PERCEIVED. It does not limit you, merely because you
would not have it so. You are not really “lifted out” of it; it cannot
CONTAIN you. You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of
self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you
experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the
barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and,
above all, the lack of awareness of the body, and of the questioning
whether or not all this is possible.

It is possible because you WANT it. The sudden expansion of the self
which takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the
holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe
embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to
openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you
can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a
“breaking out,” but merely by a quiet “melting in.” For peace will join
you there simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you
have placed upon love, and
joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call
to BE at peace.