The Attraction of Guilt

Chapter 19 – 6. The Attraction of Guilt

The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on
guilt at all. It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth, for there it
sees itself, with which it would unite in holy union and completion. As love
must look past fear, so must fear see love not. For love contains the end of
guilt, as surely as fear depends on it. Overlooking guilt completely, it sees
no fear. Being wholly without attack, it could not be afraid. Fear is attracted
to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon does
not exist. Fear looks on guilt with just the same devotion that love looks on
itself. And each has messengers which they send forth, and which return to
them with messages written in the language in which their going forth was
asked.
 
Love’s messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love and
gentleness. The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and
cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them
on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master.
 
Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messages of different
things in different languages. What fear would feed upon, love overlooks.
 
What fear demands, love cannot even see. The fierce attraction that guilt
holds for fear is wholly absent from love’s gentle perception. What love
would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible.
 
Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen. And this
depends on which emotion was called on to send its messengers to look
upon it, and return with word of what they saw. Fear’s messengers are
trained through terror, and they tremble when their master calls on them to
serve him. For fear is merciless even to its friends. Its messengers steal
guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving
and made very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon
what they return to him. No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes.
 
And in their savage search for sin they pounce on any living thing they see,
and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured.
 
Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast upon it and to
prey upon reality. For they will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh.
 
They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges
filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things are beautiful,
because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. For they are frantic
with pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him who sends them
forth by offering him what they hold dear.
 
The Holy Spirit has given you love’s messengers to send instead of those
you trained through fear. They are as eager to return to you what they hold
dear as are the others. If you send them forth, they will see only the
blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be as careful
to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little
breath of love escape their notice. And they will return with all the happy
things they found, to share them lovingly with you. Be not afraid of them.
 
They offer you salvation. Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the
world as kind.
 
If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting no
messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. The world will be
transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed with
beauty. The world contains no fear that you laid not upon it. And none you
cannot ask love’s messengers to remove from it, and see it still. The Holy
Spirit has given you his messengers to send to your brother and return to
you with what love sees. They have been given to replace the hungry dogs
of fear you sent instead. And they go forth to signify the end of fear.
 
Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless
cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous
whispering is ever heard. This is a feast that honors your holy relationship,
and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a holy
instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentleness before
the table of communion. And I will join you there, as long ago I promised
and promise still. For in your new relationship am I made welcome. And
where I am made welcome, there I am.
 
I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last
forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die
instead of you. To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved
through murder. Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the Son of
God was killed instead of you. Yet no one can die for anyone, and death
does not atone for sin. But you can live to show it is not real. The body does
appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get you what
you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will also
believe that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happy
with so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would
have calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete.
 
This is completion as the ego sees it. For guilt creeps in where happiness
has been removed, and substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of
completion, which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.