T-8.VII:The Body as a Means of Communication

1. 1Attack is always physical. 2When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since this is the ego’s interpretation of the body. 3You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation. 4You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack can get you something you want. 5If you did not believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for you. 6When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression. 7When a child of God thinks of himself in this way he is belittling himself, and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. 8Since he can find himself only in them, he has cut himself off from salvation.

2. 1Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication. 2Being the Communication Link between God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made in the light of what He is. 3The ego separates through the body. 4The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others. 5You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does, because you do not regard bodies solely as a means of joining minds and uniting them with yours and mine. 6This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. 7Of itself it has none.

3. 1If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. 2If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies, and teach them through the body that this is not so, you will understand the power of the mind that is in you. 3If you use the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it for attack. 4In the service of uniting it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion is. 5This is God’s way of making unlimited what you have limited. 6The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do, because He knows the only reality of anything is the service it renders God on behalf of the function He gives it.

4. 1Communication ends separation. 2Attack promotes it. 3The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. 4And in the body of another you will see the use to which you have put yours. 5If the body becomes a means you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not see anything physical except as what it is. 6Use it for truth and you will see it truly. 7Misuse it and you will misunderstand it, because you have already done so by misusing it. 8Interpret anything apart from the Holy Spirit and you will mistrust it. 9This will lead you to hatred and attack and loss of peace.

5. 1Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. 2Loss of any kind is impossible. 3But when you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and glory are “lost” to you and so are yours. 4You have attacked him, but you must have attacked yourself first. 5Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which must bring him his. 6Do not allow him to belittle himself in your mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and thus escape from yours. 7As part of you, he is holy. 8As part of me, you are. 9To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of you.

6. 1Rejoice, then, that of yourself you can do nothing. 2You are not of yourself. 3He of Whom you are has willed your power and glory for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you accept it for yourself. 4He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you believe you have withdrawn them from Him. 5Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name’s sake, because His Name is yours.

7. 1The Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.” 2Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. 3Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. 4Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical. 5Yet thought is communication, for which the body can be used. 6This is the only natural use to which it can be put. 7To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.

8. 1There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as a curriculum he cannot learn. 2His sense of adequacy suffers, and he must become depressed. 3Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world. 4In fact, it is ultimately why the world itself is depressing. 5The Holy Spirit’s curriculum is never depressing, because it is a curriculum of joy. 6Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

9. 1In this world, not even the body is perceived as whole. 2Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions with little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. 3Guided by the ego, it is. 4Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is not. 5It becomes a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to spirit. 6The ego’s temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. 7In this sense the body does become a temple to God; His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.

10. 1Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. 2Since this is natural it heals by making whole, which is also natural. 3All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical, or not mind, is a fragmented or sick interpretation. 4Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself. 5By reaching out, the mind extends itself. 6It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. 7A mind that has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has turned against itself.

11. 1The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. 2Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind that is working through the body, but not in it. 3If the mind believes the body is its goal it will distort its perception of the body, and by blocking its own extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering separation. 4Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. 5A medium of communication loses its usefulness if it is used for anything else. 6To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose.

12. 1To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. 2How can you do both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer? 3Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose. 4This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood. 5To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both. 6Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it. 7This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds, and does not arrest itself in its extension. 8This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind’s function.

13. 1The opposite of joy is depression. 2When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God’s joyous Teacher and learning His lessons. 3To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to hurt yourself. 4Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. 5If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind’s purpose is one. 6Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body, because apart from the mind the body has no purpose at all.

14. 1You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be made flesh. 2Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and does not interpret it as limitation. 3Whenever you see another as limited to or by the body, you are imposing this limit on yourself. 4Are you willing to accept this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape from limitations? 5To conceive of the body as a means of attack and to believe that joy could possibly result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. 6He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum, and one that is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own.

15. 1Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God’s. 2When yours is unified it is His. 3Believe you can interfere with His purpose, and you need salvation. 4You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. 5Therefore it is not true. 6No more are any of its seeming results. 7When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him because you have condemned yourself. 8Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no results.

16. 1Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. 2Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. 3In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for release. 4But what other hope would you want? 5Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. 6There is no attack, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. 7The power of wholeness is extension. 8Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to creation in God.