T-19.IV-B:The Attraction of Pain

9. 1Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of sacrifice. 2And to accept the peace He gives instead, without the limits that would hold its extension back, and so would limit your awareness of it. 3For what He gives must be extended if you would have its limitless power, and use it for the Son of God’s release. 4It is not this you would be rid of, and having it you cannot limit it. 5If peace is homeless, so are you and so am I. 6And He Who is our home is homeless with us. 7Is this your wish? 8Would you forever be a wanderer in search of peace? 9Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must fail?

10. 1Faith in the eternal is always justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience and wholly loving. 2It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. 3Yet it can unite only with what already is at peace in you, immortal as itself. 4The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; neither joy nor pain. 5It is a means, and not an end. 6It has no purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. 7The body will seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign to it. 8Only the mind can set a purpose, and only the mind can see the means for its accomplishment, and justify its use. 9Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be attained. 10And these conditions are the home of the emotion that calls them forth, and therefore is compatible with them.

11. 1But think you which it is that is compatible with you. 2Here is your choice, and it is free. 3But all that lies in it will come with it, and what you think you are can never be apart from it. 4The body is the great seeming betrayer of faith. 5In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot give. 6Can your mistake be reasonable grounds for depression and disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think has failed you? 7Use not your error as the justification for your faithlessness. 8You have not sinned, but you have been mistaken in what is faithful. 9And the correction of your mistake will give you grounds for faith.

12. 1It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain. 2It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is one the ego sees as proof of sin. 3It is not really punitive at all. 4It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is the invitation to pain. 5For it invites fear to enter and become your purpose. 6The attraction of guilt must enter with it, and whatever fear directs the body to do is therefore painful. 7It will share the pain of all illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be the same as pain.

13. 1Is not this inevitable? 2Under fear’s orders the body will pursue guilt, serving its master whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole illusion of its existence. 3This, then, is the attraction of pain. 4Ruled by this perception the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully and obeying the idea that pain is pleasure. 5It is this idea that underlies all of the ego’s heavy investment in the body. 6And it is this insane relationship that it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. 7To you it teaches that the body’s pleasure is happiness. 8Yet to itself it whispers, “It is death.”

14. 1Why should the body be anything to you? 2Certainly what it is made of is not precious. 3And just as certainly it has no feeling. 4It transmits to you the feelings that you want. 5Like any communication medium the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. 6It has no feeling for them. 7All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver. 8The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize this, and both also recognize that here the sender and receiver are the same. 9The Holy Spirit tells you this with joy. 10The ego hides it, for it would keep you unaware of it. 11Who would send messages of hatred and attack if he but understood he sends them to himself? 12Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn himself?

15. 1The 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. 2And even if you suffer, yet someone else will suffer more. 3The 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. 4And 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.

16. 1Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. 2Forget 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. 3Its sad disciples chant the body’s praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego’s rule. 4Not one but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guilt is the escape from pain. 5Not one but must regard the body as himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable.

17. 1It is not given to the ego’s disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death. 2Freedom is offered them but they have not accepted it, and what is offered must also be received, to be truly given. 3For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving from the Father and offering His messages unto the Son. 4Like the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and the receiver. 5For what is sent through Him returns to Him, seeking itself along the way, and finding what it seeks. 6So does the ego find the death it seeks, returning it to you.