VI. The Secret Vows

T-28.VI.1. Who punishes the body is insane. 2 For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. 3 It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. 4 It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. 5 It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. 6 It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. 7 It does not wonder what it is. 8 And so it has no need to be competitive. 9 It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. 10 It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

T-28.VI.2. 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. 2 It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. 3 It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. 2 4 It is not born and does not die. 5 It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. 6 And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. 7 It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. 8 It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. 9 It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.

T-28.VI.3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. 2 You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. 3 And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. 4 You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. 5 And you despise its acts, but not your own. 6 It sees and acts for you. 7 It hears your voice. 8 And it is frail and little by your wish. 9 It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. 10 Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.

T-28.VI.4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. 2 You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. 3 This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. 4 This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. 5 No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. 6 Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. 7 Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

T-28.VI.5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. 2 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. 3 Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. 4 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. 5 And by his healing is his brother healed.

T-28.VI.6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. 2 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. 3 God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. 4 In his creation did his Father say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. 5 Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me." 6 His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," though in that promise he was born. 7 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. 8 His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. 9 And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.