1. The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. ²If it were elsewhere it would rest on contingency, but there is nothing else. ³And this is wholly loving and forever. ⁴Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. ⁵His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. ⁶The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. ⁷The one created by his Father is wholly Self-encompassing and Self-extending. ⁸The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.

2. Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. ²The first is based on love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. ³The body does not intrude upon it. ⁴Any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. ⁵Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. ⁶It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. ⁷It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood.

3. But idols do not share. ²Idols accept, but never make return. ³They can be loved, but cannot love. ⁴They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. ⁵The love of them has made love meaningless. ⁶They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body’s darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. ⁷And they have no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. ⁸They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see.

4. Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. ²It does not seek for power, but for relationships. ³The body is the ego’s chosen weapon for seeking power through relationships. ⁴And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are it does not even see. ⁵It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. ⁶The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. ⁷Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.

5. The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a relationship. ²The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. ³Here the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. ⁴Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. ⁵Here it is “safe,” for here love cannot enter. ⁶The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. ⁷Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?

6. You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit’s temple, and it will never be the seat of love. ²It is the home of the idolater, and of love’s condemnation. ³For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. ⁴Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded in mystery, and kept apart from those who worship them. ⁵This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and no return. ⁶Here is the “mystery” of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. ⁷What God would have not be is here kept “safe” from Him. ⁸But what you do not realize is what you fear within your brother, and would not see in him, is what makes God seem fearful to you, and kept unknown.

7. Idolaters will always be afraid of love, for nothing so severely threatens them as love’s approach. ²Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. ³Brother, you tremble with them. ⁴Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. ⁵This place of darkness is not your home. ⁶Your temple is not threatened. ⁷You are an idolater no longer. ⁸The Holy Spirit’s purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your body. ⁹You have escaped the body. ¹⁰Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His temple there.

8. There is no order in relationships. ²They either are or not. ³An unholy relationship is no relationship. ⁴It is a state of isolation, which seems to be what it is not. ⁵No more than that. ⁶The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships were made meaningless. ⁷In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea and give it the illusion of reality. ⁸And so it seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. ⁹For what could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant?

9. Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going. ²The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. ³Is this the substitute you want for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited beneficence? ⁴Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood and so invested in a false attraction your preference to the holy instant, which offers you peace and understanding? ⁵Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. ⁶And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. ⁷For no illusions can attract the mind that has transcended them, and left them far behind.

10. The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality. ²The Holy Spirit rests within it in the certainty it will endure forever. ³Its firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. ⁴Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. ⁵Here is the way to true relationships held gently open, through which you and your brother walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind and resting in the Everlasting Arms. ⁶Love’s Arms are open to receive you, and give you peace forever.

11. The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. ²This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. ³And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion. ⁴Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death’s idols and then pass on. ⁵And here he is more dead than living. ⁶Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love. ⁷Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or let himself be given freedom from it. ⁸Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace the unholy one he chose before. ⁹And here can he learn relationships are his salvation, and not his doom.

12. You who are learning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. ²The holy instant is of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned you really want but one. ³This is no time for sadness. ⁴Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement. ⁵You have a real relationship, and it has meaning. ⁶It is as like your real relationship with God as equal things are like unto each other. ⁷Idolatry is past and meaningless. ⁸Perhaps you fear your brother a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. ⁹Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship beyond the body? ¹⁰Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? ¹¹And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father from themselves, and keep remembrance of His Love apart from their awareness?