Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and ALWAYS
obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son.
There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there IS no other
love. This is the ONLY love that is fully given and fully returned.
Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in
it HAS everything. This is not the basis for ANY relationship in which
the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks IS
special. The ego establishes relationships only to GET something. And it
would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt.

It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without
anger, for the ego believes that anger makes FRIENDS. This is not its
statement, but it IS its purpose. For the ego really BELIEVES that it
can get and keep BY MAKING GUILTY. This is its ONE attraction; an
attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all, except that no-one
RECOGNIZES it. For the ego always SEEMS to attract through love, and has
no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through
GUILT.

The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it IS. For
having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and
by withdrawing your INVESTMENT in it, to learn to let it go. No-one
would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of
guilt has value to you only because you have NOT looked at what it is,
and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your
only question will be why it was you EVER wanted it. You have nothing to
lose by looking open-eyed at this, for ugliness such as this belongs not
in your holy mind. The host of God CAN have no real investment here.

We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but
in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to YOU. For it
is the ego’s fundamental doctrine that what you do to others YOU HAVE
ESCAPED. The ego wishes NO-ONE well. Yet its survival depends on your
belief that YOU are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels,
therefore, that if you are host to IT, it will enable you to direct the
anger that it holds outward, thus PROTECTING you. And thus it embarks on
an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of
anger, and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you
invest OUTSIDE yourself, the safer YOU become.

It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it is this
chain the Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind. For the chain of
savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who
CANNOT make himself host to the ego. In the name of his release, and in
the Name of Him Who would release him, let us look more closely at the
relationships which the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge
them truly. For it is certain that, if you will LOOK at them, you will
offer them gladly to Him. What HE can make of them you do not know, but
you will become willing to find out, if you are willing, first, to
perceive what YOU have made of them.

In one way or another, every relationship which the ego makes is based
on the idea that by SACRIFICING itself, it becomes BIGGER. The
“sacrifice,” which it regards as purification, is actually the root of
its bitter resentment. For it would much prefer to attack directly, and
avoid delaying what it REALLY wants. Yet the ego acknowledges “reality”
as it sees it, and recognizes that no-one could interpret DIRECT attack
as love. Yet to make guilty IS direct attack, but does not SEEM to be.
For the guilty EXPECT attack, and having ASKED for it, they are
ATTRACTED to it.

In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want
seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you DO. For each
one thinks that he has sacrificed something to the other, and HATES him
for it. Yet this is what he thinks he WANTS. He is not in love with the
other at all. He merely believes he is in love with SACRIFICE. And for
this sacrifice, which he demanded of HIMSELF, he demands the OTHER
accept the guilt, and sacrifice himself as well. Forgiveness becomes
impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another is to LOSE him.
For it is only by attack WITHOUT forgiveness that the ego can ensure the
guilt which holds all its relationships together.

Yet they only SEEM to be together. For relationships, to the ego, mean
only that BODIES are together. It is always physical closeness that the
ego demands, and it does not object where the MIND goes or what IT
thinks, for this seems unimportant. As long as the body is there to
receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego, the mind is private,
and only the BODY can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern,
except as they draw the body of another closer or farther. And it is in
these terms that it evaluates ideas as good or bad. What makes another
guilty and HOLDS him through guilt is “good.”What RELEASES him from
guilt is “bad,” because he would no longer
believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be “gone.”

Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would “bless”
all unions. And those who are united at its altar ACCEPT suffering and
sacrifice as the price of union. In their angry alliances, born of the
fear of loneliness and yet dedicated to the CONTINUANCE of loneliness,
they seek relief from guilt by increasing it in the OTHER. For they
believe that this decreases it in THEM. The other seems always to be
attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps
“unconsciously,” yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury of
those joined at the ego’s altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For
what the ego REALLY wants you do not realize.

Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special
relationship which the ego has “blessed,” for anger IS its blessing.
Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn
that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love,
and MUST be anger. ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to make
someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego
accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has,
and as long as you identify with it, guilt will REMAIN attractive to
you.

Yet remember this; to be with a body is NOT communication. And if you
think it is, you will feel guilty about communication, and will be
AFRAID to hear the Holy Spirit, recognizing in His Voice your OWN need
to communicate. The Holy Spirit CANNOT teach through fear. And how can
He communicate with you, while you believe that to communicate is to
make yourself ALONE? It is clearly insane to believe that by
communicating you will be abandoned. And yet you DO believe it. For you
think that your minds must be kept private or you will LOSE them, and if
your BODIES are together your minds remain your own. The union of bodies
thus becomes the way in which you would keep MINDS apart. For bodies
cannot forgive. They can only do as the mind directs.

The illusion of the autonomy of the body and ITS ability to overcome
loneliness is but the working of the ego’s plan to establish its OWN
autonomy. As long as you believe that to be with a body is
companionship, you will be compelled to attempt to keep your
brother in his body, held there by guilt. And you will see SAFETY in
guilt and DANGER in communication. For the ego will ALWAYS teach that
loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the CAUSE of
loneliness. And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, you have
LEARNED it.

Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt.
It is the Holy Spirit’s teaching function to instruct those who believe
that communication is damnation that communication is SALVATION. And He
will do so, for the power of God in Him AND you is joined in REAL
relationship, so holy and so strong that it can overcome even THIS
without fear. It is through the holy instant that what seems impossible
is ACCOMPLISHED, making it evident that it is NOT impossible. In the
holy instant guilt holds NO attraction, since communication has been
restored. And guilt, whose ONLY purpose is to disrupt communication, has
no function here.

Here there is no concealment, and no private thoughts. The willingness
to communicate attracts communication TO it, and overcomes loneliness
completely. There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to
exclude anyone from your completion, in sudden recognition of the value
of his part in it. In the protection of YOUR wholeness, all are invited
and made welcome. And you understand that your completion is God’s,
Whose only need is to have YOU be complete. For your completion makes
you His in your awareness. And here it is that you experience yourself
as you were created, and as you ARE.