Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 29: Undoing the Gap of Separation
6. The Secret Vow and the Promise of Creation
Who judges and finds the body wanting is delusional. For the little gap is perceived in the body and yet it is not there. The body has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. It does not attempt to make a joy of pain or seek for lasting pleasure in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is, and doesn’t have the ability to understand what it is for. It does not victimize because in itself it has no will, no preferences, and no doubts. It does not question what it is, and so it has no need to be competitive. It can be victimized but cannot feel itself as victim. It accepts no role, but simply does what it is told, without attack.
It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for perception a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like although it cannot hear. The body suffers not the judgments you lay upon it because in truth it has no feeling. It behaves in ways you want, but isn’t the choice maker. In reality it is not born and does not die. It can merely follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. It takes no sides, and judges not the road it travels. It perceives no gap where illusions seem to dwell, because it does not hate. It can be used for hate, but it cannot be made hateful thereby.
The body does not know the thing you hate and fear and loathe and yet want. You send the body forth to seek for separation and to be separate. And then you disdain it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it looks upon and listens to, and despise its frailty and its littleness. And you seem to despise its acts, but not your own. It perceives and acts as directed by you. It hears your voice. And it is frail and little by your wish. You believe that it punishes you, and thus deserves your bitter disappointment for the limitations that it brings to you. Yet you have made of it a symbol of the limitations that you want your mind to perceive and have and keep.
This symbol is the secret vow that you have made with every sister and brother who would walk apart. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You chafe at the limitations you believe it imposes, yet you think it is your identity, and that without it would your identity be lost. Maintaining the gap of separation through its symbol is the secret oath you take again whenever you perceive yourself attacked. Unstated, and unheard in consciousness, is every pledge to sickness and apparent harm that seems to come to you from outside yourself. No one can suffer if they do not perceive themself attacked, and losing by this attack. Yet is this sick exchange a promise to another to seem to be hurt by them, and to attack them – in thought at least – in return.
Sickness is a form of anger in the mind taken out upon the body so that it will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of the vow that was made in secret, in agreement with another’s secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from them. Unless you both agree that this is your wish, it can have no effects. Whoever says, “There is no gap between my mind and yours,” has kept the Divine’s Promise, not their own tiny oath to be forever faithful to separation unto death. And by their healing are their sisters and brothers healed. Let this be your Agreement with each one: that you be One with them and not apart. And they will keep the Promise that you make with them because it is the One that you have made to the Divine, as the Divine has made to you.
The Divine keeps Its Promises, and Its Children keep theirs. In their Creation did their Creator say:
You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as Myself, for you will always be One with Me.
Its Children have temporarily forgotten that they replied, “I will,” though in that Promise they were created. Yet the Divine reminds them of It every time they choose not to share a secret vow to be sick or otherwise attacked, but to let their minds be healed and unified. Their secret vow is powerless before the Will of the Divine, Whose Promise they share. For they cannot substitute their will who have made Promise of themselves to the Divine.
