Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole IDEA of
sacrifice. And to accept the peace He gave instead, without the limits
which would hold its extension back, and so would limit YOUR awareness
of it. For what He gives must be extended, if you would have its
limitless power, and use it for the Son of God’s release. It is not this
you would be rid of, and having it you CANNOT limit it. If peace is
homeless, so are you and so am I. And He Who is our home is homeless
WITH us. Is this your will? Would you forever be a wanderer in search of
peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what MUST
fail?

Faith in the eternal is always justified, for the eternal is forever
kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you
wholly, and give you peace. Yet it can unite only with what ALREADY is
at peace in you, immortal as itself. The body can bring you neither
peace nor turmoil; neither pain nor joy. It is a means, and not an end.
It has NO purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will
seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign
to it. Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be attained.
And these conditions are the home of the emotion which called them
forth, and therefore is compatible with
them. But think you which it is that is compatible with YOU.

Here is your choice, and it IS free. But all that lies in it WILL come
with it, and what you think you are can never be apart from it. The body
is the great seeming betrayer of faith. In it lies disillusionment and
the seeds of faithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot
give. Can your mistake be reasonable grounds for depression and
disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think has failed
you? Use not your error as the justification for your faithlessness. You
have not sinned, but you have been mistaken in what is faithful. And the
correction of your mistake will GIVE you grounds for faith.

It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and NOT find
pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is
one the ego sees as PROOF of sin. It is not really punitive at all. It
is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which
is the INVITATION to pain. For it invites fear to enter, and become your
purpose. The attraction of guilt MUST enter with it, and whatever fear
directs the body to do is therefore painful. It will share the pain of
ALL illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be the SAME as pain.

Is not this inevitable? Under fear’s orders, the body will pursue guilt,
serving its master whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole
illusion of its existence. This, then, IS the attraction of pain. Ruled
by this perception, the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it
dutifully, and obeying the idea that pain is pleasure. It is this idea
that underlies all of the ego’s heavy investment in the body. And it is
this insane relationship which it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. To
YOU it teaches that the body’s pleasure is happiness. Yet to ITSELF it
whispers, “It is death.”

Why should the body be anything to you? Certainly what it is made of is
not precious. And just as certainly, it has no feeling. It transmits to
you the feelings that you WANT. Like any communication medium, the body
receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for
them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the
sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize
this, and both also recognize that here the sender and receiver are the
SAME. The Holy Spirit tells
you this with joy. The ego hides it, for it would keep you unaware of it.
Who would send messages of hatred and attack if he but understood he
sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn
HIMSELF?

The ego’s messages are always sent AWAY from you, in the belief that for
your message of attack and guilt will someone other than yourself
suffer. And even if you suffer, yet someone else will suffer more. The
great deceiver recognizes that this is not so, but as the “enemy” of
peace, it urges you to send out all your messages of hate and free
YOURSELF. And to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search
for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure and offering it to
you as freedom FROM attack.

Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not
that the ego has dedicated the body to the goal of sin, and places in it
all its faith that this can be accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the
body’s praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego’s rule. Not
one but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guilt is the
ESCAPE from pain. Not one but must regard the body as himself, without
which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally
inevitable.

It is not given to the ego’s disciples to realize that they have
dedicated THEMSELVES to death. Freedom is offered them, but they have
not accepted it, and what is offered must also be received, to be truly
given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving
from the Father and offering His messages unto the Son. Like the ego,
the Holy Spirit is both the sender and the receiver. For what is sent
through Him RETURNS to Him, seeking itself along the way, and finding
what it seeks. So does the ego find the death IT seeks, returning it to
YOU.