1. It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. 2For the body is a limit on love. 3The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. 4Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you. 5Can you who see yourself within a body know yourself as an idea? 6Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. 7You cannot even think of God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize.
2. The body cannot know. 2And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. 3God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. 4Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. 5The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. 6It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.
3. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. 2And to defend this little speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. 3This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. 4In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. 5Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. 6The sun becomes the sunbeam’s “enemy” that would devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.
4. Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. 2They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. 3Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not survive apart from them. 4And what it thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on them for its being. 5Its whole existence still remains in them. 6Without the sun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.
5. Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. 2Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. 3Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing another for some things, but by no means totally dependent on its one Creator for everything; needing the whole to give it any meaning, for by itself it does mean nothing. 4Nor has it any life apart and by itself.
6. Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as you. 2It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the whole be whole without it. 3It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. 4Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. 5This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. 6It leads no separate life, because its life is the oneness in which its being was created.
7. Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself. 2The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you are. 3The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. 4Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. 5Would you remain within your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all that he surveys, who looks on nothing yet who would still die to defend it? 6This little self is not your kingdom. 7Arched high above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to every part. 8The little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception.
8. Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. 2Its total lack of limit is its meaning. 3It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. 4In your tiny kingdom you have so little! 5Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? 6Look at the desert—dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless—that makes up your little kingdom. 7And realize the life and joy that love would bring to it from where it comes, and where it would return with you.
9. The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. 2See how life springs up everywhere! 3The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. 4Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was. 5And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you. 6They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone. 7The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with you. 8And under its beneficence your little garden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone.
10. Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. 2And lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there. 3So will it grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, and leaving you inside. 4And you will recognize yourself, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the Love of its Creator shining upon it.
11. The holy instant is your invitation to love to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. 2Love’s answer is inevitable. 3It will come because you came without the body, and interposed no barriers to interfere with its glad coming. 4In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. 5Asking for everything, you will receive it. 6And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven straight to Heaven. 7No part of love calls on the whole in vain. 8No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood.
12. Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully at your weak request. 2You do not recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother. 3And you and he will not be able to give love welcome separately. 4You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother. 5But together you could no more be unaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.
13. You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over. 2You are still worn and tired, and the desert’s dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. 3Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome you. 4He has waited long to give you this. 5Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him. 6Only a little wall of dust still stands between you and your brother. 7Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. 8And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you.