T. 19. IV. B. 10 – 14. Jesus: “Peace or guilt are both conditions of the mind, conditions to be attained. And each of these conditions is the home of the emotion that calls it forth, love or fear, and is what is most compatible with it. But ask you now just which it is that is compatible with you!
Here is your choice, and in making this choice, you are free indeed. But be aware of this: All that lies in the alternative you choose will come with it, and what you think you are can never be apart from what you have chosen!
Seemingly, the body is the ‘great betrayer’ of your faith! In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot give! But can your past mistake be reasonable grounds for depression and disillusionment, and for ‘retaliative attack’ on this thing you think has failed you?
Use no more, as justification for your faithlessness, your own past error in choosing guilt! You have not sinned, but you have been mistaken in what you have been faithful to. Now only the correction of your mistake will give you real grounds for faith. But be aware that it is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain!
It is essential that this relationship be clearly understood, for it is one the ego would have you see as proof that you have sinned, although it is not really punitive at all. It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is the invitation to pain for it invites fear to enter your mind. The attraction of guilt must enter with it, and whatever fear directs the body to do is therefore painful. It will share the pain of all illusions, for all illusions are painful, and even the illusion of pleasure will become to you the same as pain!
But is this not inevitable? Under fear’s orders the body will pursue perceptions of guilt, merely serving its master, the ego, whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole illusion of its existence. This, then, is also the attraction of pain! Ruled by this guilty perception, the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully and obeying the dictum that pain is somehow good for you!
It is this idea that underlies the ego’s heavy investment in the body, and in fact, all of it. And it is this insane relationship that the ego keeps hidden, yet feeds upon. To you the ego teaches that the body’s pleasure is your happiness. Yet to itself the ego smiles approvingly and whispers, ‘Good! This is death!’
Why, then, should the body be anything to you? What it is made of is certainly not precious. And just as certainly, the body itself has no feeling. It merely transmits to you the feelings you have decided that you want to have!”