 We continue today with Chapter 28. The secret vows. Who punishes the body is insane. For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. It is not to seek, to make of pain a joy, and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is, and cannot understand what it is for. It does not victimize because it has no will, no preferences, and no doubts. It does not wonder 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 does what it is told, without attack. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. It is not born, and does not die. It can but follow aimlessly on the path which it has been set. And if that path is changed, it walks us easily another way. It takes no sides, and judges not the road it travels. It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby. The thing you hate, and fear, and loathe and want, the body does not know. You send it forth to seek for separation, and be separate. And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it sees, and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. And you despise its acts, but not your own. It sees and acts for you. It hears your voice. And it is frail and little by your wish. It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have, and see, and keep. 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 hate it, that you think it is yourself, and that without it, yourself would be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked and losing by attack. Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret in agreement with another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. Unless you both agree that as your wish it can have no effects. Whoever says there is no gap between my mind and yours has kept God's promise, and not his tiny oath, to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing is his brother healed. Let this be your agreement with each one, that you be one with him and not apart. And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. God keeps his promises, his son keeps his. In his creation did his father say, you are beloved of me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as myself, for you can never be apart from me. His son remembers not that he replied, I will, though in that promise he was born. Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. His secret bowels are powerless before the will of God, whose promises he shares. And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God. And from the workbook, lesson 223. God is my life, I have no life but his. I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached and housed within a body. Now I know my life is God's, I have no other home and I do not exist apart from him. He has no thoughts that are not part of me and I have none but those which are of him. Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes, for we who are your holy Son are sinless. We would look upon our sinlessness for guilt proclaims that we are not your Son and we would not forget you longer. We are lonely here and long for heaven where we are at home. Today we would return. Our name is yours and we acknowledge that we are your Son. Amen.