The Secret Vows

Chapter 28 – 6. 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 does
not 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 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, 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, yet you think it is your
self, and that, without it, would your self 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 is your wish, it can have no effects. Whoever says,
“There is no gap between my mind and yours” has kept God’s promise, 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 vows 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.